Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it necessary to explain.
“Miss Dedlock don’t speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my youngest. I have found him. He has come home.”
Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. “George? Your son George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?”
The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. “Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester.”
Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he think, “Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in his?”
It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be understood.
“Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?”
“It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being well enough to be talked to of such things.”
Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell’s son and that she was not to have told. 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,