“I have heard it before.”
“Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s family?”
“No.”
“Now, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “I come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up. It’s going on, and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must know—if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know already—that there was found dead at the house of a person named Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s name was Hawdon.”
“And what is that to me?”
“Aye, your ladyship, that’s the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that man’s death. A lady started up, a disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any time.”
The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does not wish to have him produced.
“Oh, I assure your ladyship it’s a very queer start indeed,” says Mr. Guppy. “If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you’d think it quite romantic.”
There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to the young man of the name of Guppy.