Page 966 - bleak-house

CHAPTER XLVIII

Closing in

The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again,
and the house in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Ded-
locks of the past doze in their picture-frames, and the low
wind murmurs through the long drawing-room as if they
were breathing pretty regularly. In town the Dedlocks of the
present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the dark-
ness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or
hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great hu-
mility, loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows
of the hall. The fashionable world—tremendous orb, near-
ly five miles round—is in full swing, and the solar system
works respectfully at its appointed distances.
Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are bright-
est, where all the senses are ministered to with the greatest
delicacy and refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shin-
ing heights she has scaled and taken, she is never absent.
Though the belief she of old reposed in herself as one able
to reserve whatsoever she would under her mantle of pride
is beaten down, though she has no assurance that what she
is to those around her she will remain another day, it is not

966 Bleak House