It must have been two years afterward, and I was almost fourteen, when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock, as I always did, to read the Bible to her; and was reading, from St. John, how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him. "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her!'" I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head, and crying out, in an awful voice, from quite another part of the book: "'Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'" In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded through the house, and been heard in the street. She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little altered outwardly; with her old handsome, resolute frown that I so well knew, carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immovable. To the very last, and even afterward, her frown remained unsoftened. On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in black with the white neckcloth re-appeared. I was sent for by Mrs. Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone away. "My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn." I replied, that I remembered to have seen him once before. "Pray be seated--here, near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you, who were acquainted with the late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her; and that this young lady, now her aunt is dead--" "My aunt, sir!" "It really is of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to be gained by it," said Mr. Kenge, smoothly. "Aunt in fact, though not in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs. Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a--Jarndyce and Jarndyce." "Never," said Mrs. Rachel. "Is it possible," pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses, "that our young friend--I _beg_ you won't distress yourself!--never heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?" I shook my head, wondering even what it was.