adviser of the Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his
office with that name outside as if the present baronet were the
coin of the conjuror's trick and were constantly being juggled
through the whole set. Across the hall, and up the stairs, and
along the passages, and through the rooms, which are very brilliant
in the season and very dismal out of it--fairy-land to visit, but a
desert to live in--the old gentleman is conducted by a Mercury in
powder to my Lady's presence.

The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made
good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and
aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a
mysterious halo of family confidences, of which he is known to be
the silent depository. There are noble mausoleums rooted for
centuries in retired glades of parks among the growing timber and
the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroad
among men, shut up in the breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what
is called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any school
that seems never to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tied
with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his
black clothes and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted,
is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to any
glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses when
not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless but
quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses
and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable
intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and where half
the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" He
receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with
the rest of his knowledge.