Lady Dedlock Timeline and Summary

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• As a young woman, Honoria Barbary is engaged to Captain Hawdon. She becomes pregnant and has a baby. The baby is immediately taken away by her sister, who tells her that it died.
• The navy reports that her fiancé drowned.
• Honoria marries Sir Leicester Dedlock, who is twenty years older than she is, and becomes Lady Dedlock. She enters the very heights of society and thrives.
• Lady Dedlock has a minor connection with the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit in Chancery Court.
• One day, seeing documents from this suit, Lady Dedlock recognizes the handwriting of her fiancé and starts asking about the writer of the document. She tries to pass this off as idle curiosity, but the family lawyer, Tulkinghorn, is suspicious and investigates.
• Tulkinghorn informs Lady Dedlock that the writer of the document (a law copyist), called himself Nemo, lived in deep poverty, and killed himself with a lethal dose of opium.
• Lady Dedlock finds Jo, a boy who knew Nemo and who tried to testify at his inquest. She pays him to take her to the place he lived and died, where he got his freelance copying assignments, and where he was buried.
• She leaves for the Dedlock country estate. There she sees and likes Rosa, a young new maid. Lady Dedlock hires her as her own personal maid and fires the original, Hortense, who is furious at this.
• At the church near her country house, Lady Dedlock sees Esther Summerson and is stunned. A few days later Lady Dedlock runs into Jarndyce, Esther, and Ada out for a walk and talks to Jarndyce while ignoring the two young women.
• Lady Dedlock grows more and more scared of Tulkinghorn, who is in turn more and more suspicious of her.
• She gets a visit from the law clerk Guppy, who tells her about a pack of letters from a Captain Hawdon that were found with the dead Nemo. Guppy would like to give these letters to Lady Dedlock as a gesture of his love for Esther. She agrees.
• Guppy returns to say that the letters have already fallen into someone else's hands.
• Lady Dedlock learns that Esther has been very ill and travels back to her country estate to see the recuperating young woman.
• She finds her out for a walk and confesses to being her mother. There are tears and happiness and sadness all around. Then Lady Dedlock tells Esther that they can never see each other again. Both are heartbroken.
• That evening Tulkinghorn demonstrates that he knows everything about Lady Dedlock's past by reciting her story (without using names) as an interesting anecdote. Lady Dedlock confronts him later and asks when he will tell her husband. He promises not to for the time being, as long as she does nothing out of the ordinary.
• Worried about Rosa, Lady Dedlock sends her away to be educated by her future father-in-law, Mr. Rouncewell.
• Tulkinghorn declares that this breaks their agreement and says he's going to tell Sir Dedlock about her past the next day. He goes home, and she goes out alone for a walk. He is murdered.
• As the investigation into his death proceeds, Lady Dedlock gets more and more ill.
• One day she gets a visit from Guppy, who tells her that the people who have the letters are now trying to blackmail her husband with them.
• Lady Dedlock freaks out and runs away from home, despite the night's extreme cold, snow, and sleet. She first goes to look for Esther at Bleak House. When she doesn't find her, she goes to the house of the brickmakers. There she bribes Jenny with her gold watch to switch clothes with her. Jenny goes north dressed as a lady, and Lady Dedlock goes back to London dressed a poor woman.
• In London Lady Dedlock tries to find Hawdon's cemetery. When she gets lost she asks Guster, the epileptic servant of the Snagsbys, for directions, and leaves a suicide note.
• Lady Dedlock finds the grave of her dead fiancé and lies down on it. She quickly dies of exposure.
• Her body is found by Esther and Inspector Bucket.
• She is buried in the Dedlock family mausoleum by a loving and totally forgiving Sir Dedlock.