has been so wet that the trees

seem wet through, and the soft loppings

and prunings of the woodman’s axe can make no crash or crackle as they

fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires where they pass. The shot

of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its smoke moves in a

tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a

background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock’s own

windows is alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink.

The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day;

and the heavy drops fall—drip, drip, drip—upon the broad flagged

pavement, called from old time the Ghost’s Walk, all night. On Sundays

the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a

cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient

Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking

out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper’s lodge and seeing

the light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the

chimney, and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to

meet the shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate,

has been put quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been

‟bored to death.”

Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in

Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits,

and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the

Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in

mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along the old

rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come forth

again, the fashionable intelligence—which, like the fiend, is omniscient

of the past and present, but not the future—cannot yet undertake to say.

Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier

baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more

respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on

without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on thewhole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not

enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on

your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict conscience,

disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest

notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give

occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable,

obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly

unreasonable man.

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

will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty-seven.

He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a little stiffly. He is of

a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair and whiskers, his fine shirtfrill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright buttons

always buttoned. He is ceremonious, stately, most polite on every

occasion to my Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest

estimation. His gallantry 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 that she

had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that

perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had

beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion

out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon

floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has been at the

centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of the fashionable

tree.

How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer,

everybody knows—or has some reason to know by this time, the matter

having been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having

conquered her world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the

freezing, mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an

equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the