Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater;
my Lady screens her face. Sir Leicester dozes,
starts up suddenly, and cries, “Eh? What
do you say?”
“I say I am afraid,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn,
who had 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.”
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 came home from school of a day to run
upstairs to my room and say, “Oh, you dear faithful
Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!” and
then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow
of her great chair, and tell her all I had noticed
since we parted. I had always rather a noticing
way—not a quick way, oh, no!—a
silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking
I should like to understand it better. I have
not by any means a quick understanding. When
I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to
brighten. But even that may be my vanity.
I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance—like
some of the princesses in the fairy stories, only
I was not charming—by my godmother.
At least, I only knew her as such. She was a
good, good woman! She went to church three times
every Sunday, and to morning prayers on Wednesdays
and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there were lectures;
and never missed. She was handsome; and if she
had ever smiled, would have been (I used to think)
like an angel—but she never smiled.
She was always grave and strict. She was so
very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other
people made her frown all her life. I felt so
different from her, even making every allowance for
