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Updated: June 15, 2025
I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the polite world." Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these remarks. "Mr. Rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it. Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side."
The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.
Upon this wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that, and all is heavier than before. Rouncewell and George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room.
Rouncewell, housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night, 'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!" All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least within the last four hours.
If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house.
"Am I to understand, sir," says Sir Leicester, "and is my Lady to understand" he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on her sense "am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?"
Rouncewell can trust to the discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace came to have that ghostly name.
They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr. Tulkinghorn's room. The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door.
Sir Leicester is fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the goat; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room. "Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa.
But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir Leicester as soon as he got better. "Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester, Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the doctor's injunctions, replies, in London. "Where in London?" Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.
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