There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting with Volumnia’s.  That fair young creature cannot believe there ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold.  The majority incline to the debilitated cousin’s sentiment, which is in few words—­“no business—­Rouncewell’s fernal townsman.”  Sir Leicester generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of his own.

There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.  It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for candles.  Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes forward to a table for a glass of water.  Winking cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of contrast.

CHAPTER XLI

In Mr. Tulkinghorn’s Room

Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the journey up, though leisurely performed.  There is an expression on his face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were, in his close way, satisfied.  To say of a man so severely and strictly self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any romantic weakness.  He is sedately satisfied.  Perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down.

There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty large accumulation of papers.  The green lamp is lighted, his reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed.  But he happens not to be in a business mind.  After a glance at the documents awaiting his notice—­with his head bent low over the table, the old man’s sight for print or writing being defective at night—­he opens the French window and steps out upon the leads.  There he again walks slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool may have any need to subside, from the story he has related downstairs.

The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read their fortunes there.  Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon.  If he be seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented below.  If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other characters nearer to his hand.