Meanwhile Lady Dedlock had suffered much. The knowledge that Hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. And the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. She felt Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what he might know.
In the midst of these fears, she accidentally discovered one day that the baby name of Esther Summerson of Bleak House had been, not Summerson, but Hawdon.
This made Lady Dedlock guess the whole truth—that Esther was in reality her own daughter. As soon as she was alone, she threw herself on her knees in the empty room with sobs, crying:
"Oh, my child! My child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had renounced me and my name! Oh, my child! My child!"
III
LITTLE JOE PLAYS A PART
While these events, which so closely concerned Esther, were occurring in London, life at Bleak House went quietly on. Ada and Esther had become bosom friends, and both loved and respected Mr. Jarndyce above every one. Harold Skimpole, as charming and careless as ever, and as willing as ever that some one else should pay his debts for him, was often there, and whenever they went to the city they saw Miss Flite and Mrs. Jellyby, the latter still busily sending letters about the growing of coffee and the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
Esther grew especially to like Caddy, the slipshod daughter to whom Mrs. Jellyby dictated her letters. The poor girl had much good in her, and Esther encouraged and helped her all she could. Caddy finally fell in love with Prince Turveydrop, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired young man whose father kept a dancing school.
Old Mr. Turveydrop, his father, was a fat man with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, a wig and a padded chest. He always carried a cane, eye-glass and snuff-box and was so tightly buttoned up that when he bowed you could almost see creases come into the whites of his eyes. He thought himself a model of politeness and stood about to show off his clothes while he made his son, Prince, do all the teaching.
Caddy was so tired of hearing about Africa that at last she married Prince and moved into the Turveydrop dancing school, and Mrs. Jellyby had to hire a boy to help her with her great plans for the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
Once Esther and Ada went with Mr. Jarndyce to visit Mr. Boythorn—the man with the tremendous laugh and the pet canary—at his country house where he lived in one perpetual quarrel with his neighbor, Sir Leicester Dedlock. Esther had often heard of the beauty of Lady Dedlock, and one Sunday in the village church she saw her. There was something strangely familiar in her look that reminded Esther of her godmother. An odd sensation came over her then and she felt her heart beat quickly. But this was before Lady Dedlock had guessed the truth, and Esther and she did not meet.