Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles, and begins again lower down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the fire, and appears to have a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities, as ranging among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot, where my Lady sits; and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless, but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the papers on the table—looks at them nearer—looks at them nearer stil—asks impulsively :
“Who copied that?”
Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her unusual tone.
“Is it what you people call law-hand?” she asks, looking full at him in her careless way again, and toying with her screen.
“Not quite. Probably”—Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks—“the legal character it has, was acquired after the original hand was formed. Why do you ask?”
“Anything to vary this detestable monotony. O, go on, do!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater, my Lady screens her face. Sir Leicester doses, starts up suddenly, and cries “Eh? what do you say?”
“I say I am afraid,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has risen hastily, “that Lady Dedlock is ill.”
“Faint,” my Lady murmurs, with white lips, only that; “but it is like the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my room!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to return.
“Better now,” quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down and read to him alone. “I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying—and she really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire.”
CHAPTER III.
A progress.
I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my doll, when we were alone together, “Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!” And so she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at me—or not so much at me, I think, as at nothing—while I busily stitched away, and told her every one of my secrets.
My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else. It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me, when I
