, and holds it open while she passes
out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner, and insolent
grace. They meet again at dinner - again, next day - again, for many days in
succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by
worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at
her own shrine. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of
noble confidences: so oddly out of place, and yet so perfectly at home. They
appear to take as little note of one another, as any two people, enclosed within
the same walls, could. But, whether each evermore watches and suspects the
other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore
prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each
would give to know how much the other knows - all this is hidden, for the time,
in their own hearts.
 

                                  Chapter XIII

                               Esther's Narrative

We held many consultations about what Richard was to be; first, without Mr.
Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him; but it was a long time
before we seemed to make progress. Richard said he was ready for anything. When
Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether he might not already be too old to enter the Navy,
Richard said he had thought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Jarndyce asked
him what he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of that, too, and
it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr. Jarndyce advised him to try and decide within
himself, whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary boyish
inclination, or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well, he really had tried
very often, and he couldn't make out.
    »How much of this indecision of character,« Mr. Jarndyce said to me, »is
chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on
which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't pretend to say; but that
Chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it, I can plainly
see. It has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off - and trusting
to this, that, and the other chance, without knowing what chance - and
dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of
much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances
surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy's, in its formation,