It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on thissame miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery butthat we may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crowflies. Both the world of fashion and the Court of Chancery arethings of precedent and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles whohave played at strange games through a deal of thundery weather;sleeping beauties whom the knight will wake one day, when all thestopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously!

　　It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours,which has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you havemade the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond),it is a very little speck. There is much good in it; there aremany good and true people in it; it has its appointed place. Butthe evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too muchjeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of thelarger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun.

　　It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy forwant of air.

　　My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few daysprevious to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends tostay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. Thefashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise wereto be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what shecalls, in familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire. Thewaters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the parkhas been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground forhalf a mile in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy treesfor islands in it and a surface punctured all over, all day long,with falling rain. My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremelydreary. The weather for many a day and night has been so wet thatthe trees seem wet through, and the soft loppings and prunings ofthe woodman's axe can make no crash or crackle as they fall. Thedeer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. The shot ofa rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke movesin a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped,that makes a background for the falling rain. The view from myLady Dedlock's own windows is alternately a lead-coloured view anda view in Indian ink. The vases on the stone terrace in theforeground catch the rain all day; and the heavy drops fall--drip,drip, drip--upon the broad flagged pavement, called from old timethe Ghost's Walk, all night. On Sundays the little church in thepark is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a cold sweat; andthere is a general smell and taste as of the ancient Dedlocks intheir graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking out inthe early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge and seeingthe light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising fromthe chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into therain to meet the shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming throughthe gate, has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock saysshe has been "bored to death."Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place inLincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and therabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. Thepictures of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish intothe damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper haspassed along the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when theywill next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which,like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not thefuture--cannot yet undertake to say.

　　Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightierbaronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitelymore respectable. He has a general opinion that the world mightget on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. Hewould on the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low,perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an ideadependent for its execution on your great county families. He is agentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness andmeanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you mayplease to mention rather than give occasion for the leastimpeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate,truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectlyunreasonable man.

　　Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady.

　　He will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yetsixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks alittle stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-greyhair and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat,and his blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He isceremonious, stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, andholds her personal attractions in the highest estimation. Hisgallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he courted her,is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.

　　Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about thatshe had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much familythat perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. Butshe had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enoughto portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, addedto these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my LadyDedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence andat the top of the fashionable tree.

　　How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybodyknows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter havingbeen rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, havingconquered HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into thefreezing, mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, anequanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction,are the trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred.

　　If she could be translated to heaven to-morrow, she might beexpected to ascend without any rapture.

　　She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yetin its autumn. She has a fine face--originally of a character thatwould be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved intoclassicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state.

　　Her figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not thatshe is so, but that "the most is made," as the Honourable BobStables has frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points."The same authority observes that she is perfectly got up andremarks in commendation of her hair especially that she is thebest-groomed woman in the whole stud.

　　With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come upfrom her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionableintelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous toher departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay someweeks, after which her movements are uncertain. And at her housein town, upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of theHigh Court of Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legaladviser of the Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in hisoffice with that name outside as if the present baronet were thecoin of the conjuror's trick and were constantly being juggledthrough the whole set. Across the hall, and up the stairs, andalong the passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliantin the season and very dismal out of it--fairy-land to visit, but adesert to live in--the old gentleman is conducted by a Mercury inpowder to my Lady's presence.

　　The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have madegood thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements andaristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by amysterious halo of family confidences, of which he is known to bethe silent depository. There are noble mausoleums rooted forcenturies in retired glades of parks among the growing timber andthe fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroadamong men, shut up in the breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of whatis called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any schoolthat seems never to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tiedwith ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of hisblack clothes and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted,is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to anyglancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses whennot professionaly consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless butquite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country housesand near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionableintelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and where halfthe Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" Hereceives these salutations with gravity and buries them along withthe rest of his knowledge.

　　Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which isalways agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind oftribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind oftribute in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, ina general way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, thesteward of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, ofthe Dedlocks.

　　Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or itmay not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted ineverything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class--asone of the leaders and representatives of her little world. Shesupposes herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reachand ken of ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, whereindeed she looks so. Yet every dim little star revolving abouther, from her maid to the manager of the Italian Opera, knows herweaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices andlives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice a measure of hermoral nature as her dressmaker takes of her physical proportions.

　　Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a newform of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a newanything, to be set up? There are deferential people in a dozencallings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostrationbefore her, who can tell you how to manage her as if she were ababy, who do nothing but nurse her all their lives, who, humblyaffecting to follow with profound subservience, lead her and herwhole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook all and bear themoff as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet of the majesticLilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir," say Blaze andSparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people Lady Dedlock and therest--"you must remember that you are not dealing with the generalpublic; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and theirweakest place is such a place." "To make this article go down,gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to their friends themanufacturers, "you must come to us, because we know where to havethe fashionable people, and we can make it fashionable." "If youwant to get this print upon the tables of my high connexion, sir,"says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you want to get this dwarfor giant into the houses of my high connexion, sir, or if you wantto secure to this entertainment the patronage of my high connexion,sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for I have beenaccustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion, sir, and Imay tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my finger"--in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not exaggerate atall.

　　Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing inthe Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.

　　"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.

　　"Yes. It has been on again to-day," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies,making one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near thefire, shading her face with a hand-screen.

　　"It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness ofthe place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything hasbeen done.""Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day,"replies Mr. Tulkinghorn.

　　"Nor ever will be," says my Lady.

　　Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit.

　　It is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. Tobe sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, herpart in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he hasa shadowy impression that for his name--the name of Dedlock--to bein a cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a mostridiculous accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even ifit should involve an occasional delay of justice and a triflingamount of confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with avariety of other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom forthe eternal settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he isupon the whole of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of hiscountenance to any complaints respecting it would be to encouragesome person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere--like WatTyler.

　　"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon thetroublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients withany new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn,taking no more responsibility than necessary--"and further, as Isee you are going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket."(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delightof the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place themon a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on hisspectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.

　　"'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce--'"My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formalhorrors as he can.

　　Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lowerdown. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention.

　　Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears tohave a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities asranging among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire ishot where my Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautifulthan useful, being priceless but small. My Lady, changing herposition, sees the papers on the table--looks at them nearer--looksat them nearer still--asks impulsively, "Who copied that?"Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation andher unusual tone.

　　"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full athim in her careless way again and toying with her screen.

　　"Not quite. Probably"--Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--"the legal character which it has was acquired after the originalhand was formed. Why do you ask?""Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screensher face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "Eh?

　　What do you say?""I say I am afraid," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,"that Lady Dedlock is ill.""Faint," my Lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it islike the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take meto my room!"Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feetshuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.

　　Tulkinghorn to return.

　　"Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit downand read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knewmy Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and shereally has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."