“If you will parlay, you know,” says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, “you must take the consequences.  Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer.”

“Lie!” cries mademoiselle.  “All lie!”

“The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you know under what circumstances.  Now, I beg of you to follow me close with your attention for a minute or two.  I was sent for, and the case was entrusted to me.  I examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything.  From information I received (from a clerk in the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions—­even threatening him, as the witness made out.  If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand.  Now, observe!”

As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—­for him—­and inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly together.

“I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket.  She had made a mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever—­in fact, overdid it.  Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn.  By the living Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!”

Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and lips the words, “You are a devil.”

“Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the murder?  She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult; and I laid a trap for her—­such a trap as I never laid yet, and such a venture as I never made yet.  I worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at supper.  When I went upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise and told her all about it.  My dear, don’t you give your mind to that again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.”  Mr. Bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder.