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.”

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 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