“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved.  “I am not sure that I understand you.  You want—­”

“To be lost to all here.  I leave Chesney Wold to-night.  I go this hour.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head.  She rises, but he, without moving hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, shakes his head.

“What?  Not go as I have said?”

“No, Lady Dedlock,” he very calmly replies.

“Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be?  Have you forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and who it is?”

“No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means.”

Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot or raising his voice, “Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the alarm-bell and rouse the house.  And then I must speak out before every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it.”

He has conquered her.  She falters, trembles, and puts her hand confusedly to her head.  Slight tokens these in any one else, but when so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn’s sees indecision for a moment in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.

He promptly says again, “Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,” and motions to the chair from which she has risen.  She hesitates, but he motions again, and she sits down.

“The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for them.  The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery.”

“Sir,” she returns without looking up from the ground on which her eyes are now fixed, “I had better have gone.  It would have been far better not to have detained me.  I have no more to say.”

“Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear.”

“I wish to hear it at the window, then.  I can’t breathe where I am.”

His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant’s misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the terrace below.  But a moment’s observation of her figure as she stands in the window without any support, looking out at the stars —­not up—­gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens, reassures him.  By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little behind her.

“Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision satisfactory to myself on the course before me.  I am not clear what to do or how to act next.  I must request you, in the meantime, to keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I keep it too.”