“With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce,” she was careful to explain.  “Not the least pain.  Pleasure to see you well again.  Pleasure at having the honour of being admitted to see you.  I am so much fonder of you, my love, than of the Chancellor.  Though I do attend court regularly.  By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs—­”

Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the place where the coach stopped.  Charley glanced at me and looked unwilling to pursue the suggestion.

“Ve-ry right!” said Miss Flite, “Ve-ry correct.  Truly!  Highly indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn’t think it) a little—­rambling you know,” said Miss Flite, touching her forehead.  “Nothing more.”

“What were you going to tell me?” said I, smiling, for I saw she wanted to go on.  “You have roused my curiosity, and now you must gratify it.”

Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who said, “If you please, ma’am, you had better tell then,” and therein gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.

“So sagacious, our young friend,” said she to me in her mysterious way.  “Diminutive.  But ve-ry sagacious!  Well, my dear, it’s a pretty anecdote.  Nothing more.  Still I think it charming.  Who should follow us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet—­”

“Jenny, if you please, miss,” said Charley.

“Just so!” Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity.  “Jenny.  Ye-es!  And what does she tell our young friend but that there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz Jarndyce’s health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce’s!  Now, you know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!”

“If you please, miss,” said Charley, to whom I looked in some astonishment, “Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the baby’s little things.  I think, if you please, partly because it was yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.”

“Diminutive,” whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about her own forehead to express intellect in Charley.  “But ex-ceedingly sagacious!  And so dear!  My love, she’s clearer than any counsel I ever heard!”

“Yes, Charley,” I returned.  “I remember it.  Well?”

“Well, miss,” said Charley, “and that’s the handkerchief the lady took.  And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn’t have made away with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and left some money instead.  Jenny don’t know her at all, if you please, miss!”

“Why, who can she be?” said I.

“My love,” Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with her most mysterious look, “in my opinion—­don’t mention this to our diminutive friend—­she’s the Lord Chancellor’s wife.  He’s married, you know.  And I understand she leads him a terrible life.  Throws his lordship’s papers into the fire, my dear, if he won’t pay the jeweller!”