“Sir,” she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, “I will make it plainer.  I do not dispute your hypothetical case.  I anticipated it, and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr. Rouncewell here.  I knew very well that if he could have had the power of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my great and distinguished patronage.  But I have an interest in her, or I should rather say—­no longer belonging to this place—­I had, and if you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.

“You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too.  Is there anything that you require of me?  Is there any claim that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in obtaining his release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery?  I will write anything, here and now, that you will dictate.  I am ready to do it.”

And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand with which she takes the pen!

“I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock.  Pray spare yourself.”

“I have long expected this, as you know.  I neither wish to spare myself nor to be spared.  You can do nothing worse to me than you have done.  Do what remains now.”

“Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done.  I will take leave to say a few words when you have finished.”

Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened window.  Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one.  The narrow one!  Where are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn existence?  Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet?  Curious questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under the watching stars upon a summer night.

“Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine,” Lady Dedlock presently proceeds, “I say not a word.  If I were not dumb, you would be deaf.  Let that go by.  It is not for your ears.”

He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with her disdainful hand.

“Of other and very different things I come to speak to you.  My jewels are all in their proper places of keeping.  They will be found there.  So, my dresses.  So, all the valuables I have.  Some ready money I had with me, please to say, but no large amount.  I did not wear my own dress, in order that I might avoid observation.  I went to be henceforward lost.  Make this known.  I leave no other charge with you.”