“Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard.  There may be no occasion for it.  Very well.  Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss Summerson.  I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were.  That if there was anything to be blown upon, it is blown upon.  That the visitors I have alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it.  And that the money is made, or making.”

Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.

“Your ladyship, you know best whether there’s anything in what I say or whether there’s nothing.  Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss Summerson’s wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I had begun to do, as far as possible; that’s sufficient for me.  In case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your guard when there’s no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation.  I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and assure you that there’s no danger of your ever being waited on by me again.”

She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.

“Where is Sir Leicester?”

Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.

“Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?”

Several, on business.  Mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy.  Enough; he may go.

So!  All is broken down.  Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—­may be spreading while she thinks about it—­and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.

Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.  Her enemy he is, even in his grave.  This dreadful accusation comes upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand.  And when she recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the hangman’s hands were at her neck.

She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch.  She rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks and moans.  The horror that is upon her is unutterable.  If she really were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.