“Now, it’s a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of us professional men—­which I may call myself, for though not admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge and Carboy, on my mother’s advancing from the principal of her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy—­that I have encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her.  That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.”

Is the dead colour on my Lady’s face reflected from the screen which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on her?

“Did your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “ever happen to hear of Miss Barbary?”

“I don’t know.  I think so.  Yes.”

“Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship’s family?”

My Lady’s lips move, but they utter nothing.  She shakes her head.

“Not connected?” says Mr. Guppy.  “Oh!  Not to your ladyship’s knowledge, perhaps?  Ah!  But might be?  Yes.”  After each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head.  “Very good!  Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely close—­seems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversation—­and my witness never had an idea whether she possessed a single relative.  On one occasion, and only one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single point, and she then told her that the little girl’s real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.”

“My God!”

Mr. Guppy stares.  Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead.  He sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what he has said.  All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.

“Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?”

“I have heard it before.”

“Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s family?”

“No.”

“Now, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “I come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up.  It’s going on, and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on.  Your ladyship must know—­if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know already—­that there was found dead at the house of a person named Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great distress.  Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown.  But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s name was Hawdon.”