“I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure, day by day?” she asks, still looking at the distant sky.
“Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock.”
“It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?”
“I am sure that what I recommend is necessary.”
“I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the signal?” she said slowly.
“Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without forewarning you.”
She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory or calling them over in her sleep.
“We are to meet as usual?”
“Precisely as usual, if you please.”
“And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?”