Page 1103 - bleak-house

‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,’ proceeds Mr. Buck-
et, who delights in a full title and does violence to himself
when he dispenses with any fragment of it, ‘the last point in
the case which I am now going to mention shows the neces-
sity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in
a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday without her
knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in compa-
ny with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had
so much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in her
face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her
ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bring-
ing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I
had been a younger hand with less experience, I should have
taken her, certain. Equally, last night, when her ladyship, as
is so universally admired I am sure, come home looking—
why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from
the ocean—it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think
of her being charged with a murder of which she was inno-
cent that I felt quite to want to put an end to the job. What
should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I should
have lost the weapon. My prisoner here proposed to Mrs.
Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should
go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at a
very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house
of entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner
got up to fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom
where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone and
came back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home
this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket, along with her ob-

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