Many years before, when a young woman, she had run away from home with him. A little child was born to them whom she named Esther. When she and Hawdon had separated, her sister, to hide from the world the knowledge of the elopement, had told her the baby Esther was dead, had taken the child to another part of the country, given her the name of Summerson, and, calling herself her godmother instead of her aunt, brought her up in ignorance of the truth. Years had gone by and Captain Hawdon was reported drowned. At length the little Esther's mother had met and married Sir Leicester Dedlock, and in his love and protection had thought her dark past buried from view for ever. All this the pitiless lawyer read in the letters, and knew that Lady Dedlock's happiness was now in his hands. And as he thought how, with this knowledge, he could torture her with the fear of discovery, his face took on the look of a cat's when it plays with a mouse it has caught. 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.