Sir Leicester Dedlock, whom Mr. Boythorn so loved to torment, was seventy years old. His wife, many years younger than himself, he had married for love. Lady Dedlock was not noble by birth—no one, indeed, knew who she had been before her marriage—but she was very beautiful. She was as proud and haughty, too, as she was lovely, and was much sought after. But with all her popularity she had few close friends, and no one in whom she confided.

Even her housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, a fine, handsome old woman who had been Sir Leicester\'s servant for fifty years, thought her cold and reserved. Mrs. Rouncewell herself had had a son George, who many years before had gone off to be a soldier and had never come back; and, looking at her mistress\'s face, she often wondered if the shadow of pain there was the mark of some old grief or loss of which no one knew. However that may have been, the old baronet loved his wife and was very proud of her.

Sir Leicester\'s family lawyer was named Tulkinghorn. He was a dull, dignified man who always[Pg 391] dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he had to. His one passion was the discovery of other people\'s secrets. He knew more family secrets than any one else in London, and to discover a new one he would have risked all his fortune.

Now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the famous Jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was Sir Leicester Dedlock, and one day (the Chancery Court having actually made a little progress) Mr. Tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers to read to him.

As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered that it was the work of one of his copyists. A moment later, as he went on reading, they found that Lady Dedlock had fainted away.

Her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but Mr. Tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that Lady Dedlock had a secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that what this secret was, he, Tulkinghorn, would discover.

He easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called himself "Nemo," and who lived above Krook\'s rag-and-bottle shop, a neighbor to crazy little Miss Flite of the Chancery Court and the many bird-cages.

Krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old[Pg 392] rascal, whose sole occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which stood always near him. His only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered cat called "Lady Jane," who, when not lying in wait for Miss Flite\'s birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up like a hairy feather. People in the neighborhood called his dirty shop the "Court of Chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out again.

In return for Mr. Tulkinghorn\'s money Krook told him all he knew about his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend—Joe, a wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a coin.

Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.

Curious to see how Lady Dedlock would receive this news, Mr. Tulkinghorn called on her and told her of the unknown man\'s death. She pretended to listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply moved by it, and he became[Pg 393] more anxious than ever to find out what connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.

Chance favored Mr. Tulkinghorn\'s object. One night he saw Joe, the ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a French shawl, the gate of the cemetery where Nemo had been buried. Later, at Sir Leicester\'s, he saw Lady Dedlock\'s maid, Hortense—a black-haired, jealous French woman, with wolf-like ways—wearing the same shawl.

He cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to face with Joe. By the boy\'s actions Mr. Tulkinghorn decided at once that Joe had never seen Hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the truth—that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really Lady Dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid\'s clothes to mislead any observer.

This was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper purpose, Hortense flew into a passion with him. He sneered at her and turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have her put into prison. Because of this she began to hate him with a fierceness which he did not guess.[Pg 394]

Mr. Tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. But he now had to find out who Nemo really had been.

If he had only known it, Krook could have aided him. The old man had found a bundle of old letters in Nemo\'s room after his death, and these were all addressed to "Captain Hawdon."

Krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and he had no idea what th............