I never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than I thought it.”
Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies lived in strongholds, and had unscrupulous attendants within call, when that poor life of yours would not have been worth a minute's purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at this moment.
My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again, what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her?
“Your ladyship,” replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, “I am coming to that. Dash these notes. Dash these notes. O! Mrs. Chadband.” Yes.”
Mr. Guppy draws his chair a little forward, and seats himself again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of graceful ease than usual, perhaps; and never falters in her steady gaze. “A—stop a minute, though!” Mr. Guppy refers again. “E. S. twice? O yes! yes, I see my way now, right on.
Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
“Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact, because—which I mention in confidence—I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss Summerson's image is imprinted on my art. If I could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having the honor to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more decided favor on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In fact, as yet she hasn't favored them at all.”
A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's face.
“Now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of us professional men—which I may call myself, for though not admitted yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy—that I have encountered the person, who lived as servant with the lady who brought Miss Summerson up, before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.”
Is the dead color on my Lady's face, reflected from the screen which has a green silk ground, and which she holds in her raised hand as if she had forgotten it; or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on her?
“Did your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “ever happen to hear of Miss Barbary?”
“I don't know. I think so. Yes.”
“Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?”
My lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
“Not connected? says Mr. Guppy. “O! Not to your ladyship's knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.” After each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head. “Very good! Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely close—seems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversation—and my witness never had an idea whether she
