“Very unwell, guardian.  I fear it will be some time before she regains her health and strength.”

“What do you call some time, now?” asked my guardian thoughtfully.

“Some weeks, I am afraid.”

“Ah!” He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much.  “Now, what do you say about her doctor?  Is he a good doctor, my love?”

I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his opinion to be confirmed by some one.

“Well, you know,” returned my guardian quickly, “there’s Woodcourt.”

I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise.  For a moment all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me.

“You don’t object to him, little woman?”

“Object to him, guardian?  Oh no!”

“And you don’t think the patient would object to him?”

So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a great reliance on him and to like him very much.  I said that he was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind attendance on Miss Flite.

“Very good,” said my guardian.  “He has been here to-day, my dear, and I will see him about it to-morrow.”

I felt in this short conversation—­though I did not know how, for she was quiet, and we interchanged no look—­that my dear girl well remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no other hands than Caddy’s had brought me the little parting token.  This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master’s love.  Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life that was in store for for me.  If ever my darling were fonder of me at one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that night.  And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before.  I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.