“I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my own.  It is done.  What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now—­ not what I shall be a little while hence.  Remember this, and keep my confidence.  Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!”

She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the room.  Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state.  As indifferent as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its other departed monsters.

Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her appearance.  Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to the library.  Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him first.

“Sir Leicester, I am desirous—­but you are engaged.”

Oh, dear no!  Not at all.  Only Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Always at hand.  Haunting every place.  No relief or security from him for a moment.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock.  Will you allow me to retire?”

With a look that plainly says, “You know you have the power to remain if you will,” she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a chair.  Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite.  Interposed between her and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls upon her, and he darkens all before her.  Even so does he darken her life.

It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into stone rather than originally built in that material.  It is a street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone chargers of noble statues.  Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart gas.  Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which bold boys aspire to throw their friends’ caps (its only present use), retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of departed oil.  Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high and dry master in the House of Lords.

Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair, could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands.  And yet—­and yet—­she sends a look in that direction as if it were her heart’s desire to have that figure moved out of the way.