“Now, Mr. Jarndyce”—­Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest attention all along—­“I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don’t often happen.  If ever delay was dangerous, it’s dangerous now; and if ever you couldn’t afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the time.  Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared.  I am charged to find her.  I am Inspector Bucket.  Besides all the rest that’s heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of murder.  If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to desperation.  But if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering to the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for—­I ask no question, and I say no more than that—­she will give me credit for being friendly.  Let me come up with her and be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for’ard, and I’ll save her and prevail with her if she is alive.  Let me come up with her alone—­a hard matter—­and I’ll do my best, but I don’t answer for what the best may be.  Time flies; it’s getting on for one o’clock.  When one strikes, there’s another hour gone, and it’s worth a thousand pound now instead of a hundred.”

This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be questioned.  Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to Miss Summerson.  Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping his man in sight.  So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the gloom of the staircase while they confer.  In a very little time Mr. Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him where he pleases.  Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and awaits her coming at the door.

There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.  Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.  But the figure that he seeks is not among them.  Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the river’s level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention.

Where is she?  Living or dead, where is she?  If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there?  On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which