APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/wmn_white/WHITE_4

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June 16th. –; I have a few lines more to add to this day's entry before
I go to bed tonight.

About two hours after Sir Percival rose from the luncheontable to
receive his solicitor, Mr Merriman, in the library, I left my room alone
to take a walk in the plantations. Just as I was at the end of the
landing the library door opened and the two gentlemen came out. Thinking
it best not to disturb them by appearing on the stairs, I resolved to
defer going down till they lad crossed the hall. Although they spoke to
each other in guarded tones, their words were pronounced with sufficient
distinctness of utterance to reach my ears.

`Make your mind easy, Sir Percival,' I heard the lawyer say; `it all
rests with Lady Glyde.'

I had turned to go back to my own room for a minute or two, but the
sound of Laura's name on the lips of a stranger stopped me instantly. I
daresay it was very wrong and very discreditable to listen, but where is
the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions
by the abstract principles of honour, when those principles point one
way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them,
point the other ?

I listened –; and under similar circumstances I would listen again –;
yes! with my ear at the keyhole, if I could not possibly manage it in
any other way.

`You quite understand, Sir Percival,' the lawyer went on. `Lady Glyde is
to sign her name in the presence of a witness –; or of two witnesses, if
you wish to be particularly careful –; and is then to put her finger on
the seal and say, ``I deliver this as my act and deed.'' If that is done
in a week's time the arrangement will be perfectly successful, and the
anxiety will be all over. If not –;'

`What do you mean by ``if not''?' asked Sir Percival angrily. `lf the
thing must be done it shall be done. I promise you that, Merriman-'

`Just so, Sir Percival –; just so; but there are two alternatives in all
transactions, and we lawyers like to look both of them in the face
boldly. If through any extraordinary circuinstance the arrangement
should not be made, I think I may be able to get the parties to accept
bills at three months. But how the money is to be raised when the bills
fall due –;'

`Damn the bills! The money is only to be got in one way, and in that
way, I tell you again, it shall be got. Take a glass of wine, Merriman,
before you go.'

`Much obliged, Sir Percival, I have not a moment to lose if l am to
catch the up-train. You will let me know as soon as the arrangement is
complete? and you will not forget the caution l recommended –;'

`Of course I won't. There's the dog-cart at the door for you. My groom
will get you to the station in no time. Benjamin, drive like mad! Jump
in. If Mr Merriman misses the train you lose your place. Hold fast,
Merriman, and if you are upset trust to the devil to save his own.' With
that parting benediction the baronet turned about and walked back to the
library.

I had not heard much, but the little that had reached my ears was enough
to make me feel uneasy. The `something' that `had happened' was but too
Plainly a serious money embarrassment, and Sir Percival's relief from it
depended upon Laura. The prospect of seeing her involved in her
husband's secret difficulties filled me with dismay, exaggerated, no
doubt, by my ignorance of business and my settled distrust of Sir
Percival. Instead of going out, as I proposed, I went back immediately
to Laura's room to tell her what I had heard.

She received my bad news so composedly as to surprise me. She evidently
knows more of her husband's character and her husband's embarrassments
than I have suspected up to this time.

`I feared as much,' she said, `when I heard of that strange gentleman
who called, and declined to leave his name.'

`Who do you think the gentleman was, then?' I asked.

`Some person who has heavy claims on Sir Percival,' she answered, `and
who has been the cause of Mr Merrinian's visit here today.'

`Do you know anything about those claims?'

`No, I know no particulars.'

`You will sign nothing, Laura, without first looking at it?'

`Certainly not, Marian. Whatever I can harmlessly and honestly do to
help him I will do –; for the sake of making your life and mine, love,
as easy and as happy as possible. But I will do nothing ignorantly,
which we might, one day, have reason to feel ashamed of. Let us say no
more about it now. You have got your hat on –; suppose we go and dream
away the afternoon in the grounds?'

On leaving the house we directed our steps to the nearest shade.

As we passed an open space among the trees in front of the house, there
was Count Fosco, slowly walking backwards and forwards on the grass,
sunning himself in the full blaze of the hot June afternoon. He had a
broad straw hat on, with a violetcoloured ribbon round it. A blue
blouse, with profuse white fancv-work over the bosom, covered his
prodigious body, and was girt about the place where his waist might once
have been with a broad scarlet leather belt. Nankeen trousers,
displaying more white fancy-work over the ankles, and purple morocco
slippers, adorned his lower extremities. He was singing Figaro's famous
song in the Barber of Seville. with that crisply fluent vocalisation
which is never heard from any other than an Italian throat, accompanying
himself on the concertina, which he played with ecstatic throwings-up of
his arms, and graceful twistings and turnings of his head, like a fat St
Cecilia masquerading in male attire. `Figaro qua ! Figaro la! Figaro su
! Figaro giu !' sang the Count, jauntily tossing up the concertina at
arm's length, and bowing to us, on one side of the instrument, with the
airy grace and elegance of Figaro himself at twenty vicars of age.

`Take my woid for it, Laura, that man knows something of Sir Percival's
embarrassments,' I said, as we returned the Count's salutation from a
safe distance.

`What makes you think that?' she asked.

`How should he have known, otherwise, that Mr Merriman was Sir
Percival's solicitor ?' I rejoined. ` Besides, when I followed you out
of the luncheon-room, he told me. without a single word of inquiry on mv
part, that something had happened. Depend upon it, he knows more than we
do.'

`Don't ask him any questions if he does. Don't take him into our
confidence.

`You seem to dislike him, Laura, in a very determined manner. What has
he said or done to justify you?'

`Nothing, Marian. On the contrary, he was all kindness and attention on
our journey home, and he several times checked Sir Percival's outbreaks
of temper, in the most considerate manner towards me. Perhaps I dislike
him because he has so much more power over my husband than I have.
Perhaps it hurts my pride to be under any obligations to his
interference. All I know is, that I do dislike him.'

The rest of the day and evening passed quietly enough. The count and I
played at chess. For the fist two gaines he politely allowed me to
conquer him, and then, when he saw that I had found him out, begged my
pardon, and at the third game checkmated me in ten minutes. Sir Percival
never once referred, all through the evening, to the lawyer's visit. But
either that event, or something else, had produced a singular alteration
for the better in him. He was as polite and agreeable to all of us, as
he used to be in the days of his probation at Limmeridge, and he was so
amazingly attentive and kind to his wife, that even icy Madame Fosco was
roused into looking at him with a grave surprise. What does this mean? I
think I can guess –; I am afraid Laura can guess –; and I am sure Count
Fosco knows. I caught Sir Percival looking at him for approval more than
once in the course of the evening.

June 17th. –; A day of events. I most fervently hope I may not have to
add, a day of disasters as well.

Sir Percival was as silent at breakfast as he had been the evening
before, on the subject of the mysterious `arrangement' (as the lawyer
called it) which is hanging over our heads. An hour afterwards, however,
he suddenly entered the mormingroom, where his wife and I were waiting,
with our hats on, for Madame Fosco to join us, and inquired for the
Count.

`We expect to see him here directly,' I said.

`The fact is,' Sir Percival went on, walking nervously about the room,
`I want Fosco and his wife in the library, for a mere business
formality, and I want you there, Laura, for a minute too.' He stopped,
and appeared to notice, for the first time, that we were in our walking
costume. `Have you just come in?' he asked, `or were you just going
out?'

`We were all thinking of going to the lake this morning,' said Laura.
`But if you have any other arrangement to propose –;'

`No, no,' he answered hastily. `My arrangement can wait. After lunch
will do as well for it as after breakfast. All going to the lake, eh? A
good idea. Let's have an idle morning –; I'll be one of the party.'

There was no mistaking his manner, even if it had been possible to
mistake the uncharacteristic ieadiness which his words expressed, to
submit his own plans and projects to the convenience of others. He was
evidently relieved at finding any excuse for delaying the business
formality in the library, to which his own words had refeired. My heart
sank within me as I drew the inevitable inference.

The Count and his wife joined us at that moment. The lady had her
husband's embroidered tobacco-pouch, and her store of paper in her hand,
for the manufacture of the eternal cigarettes. The gentleman, dressed,
as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, cariied the gay little
pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and smiled on them, and
on us, with a bland amiability which it was impossible to resist.

`With your kind permission,' said the Count, `I will take my small
family here –; my pooi-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an airing
along with us. There are dogs about the house, and shall I leave my
forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs ? Ah, never !'

He chiriuped paternally at his small white children through the bars of
the pagoda, and we all left the house for the lake.

In the plantation Sir Percival strayed away from us. It seems to be part
of his restless disposition always to separate himself from his
companions on these occasions, and always to occupy himself when he is
alone in cutting new walking-sticks for his own use. The mere act of
cutting and lopping at hazard appears to please him. He has filled the
house with walking-sticks of his own making, not one of which he ever
takes up for a second time. When they have been once used his interest
in them is all exhausted, and he thinks of nothing but going on and
making more.

At the old boathouse he joined us again. I will put down the
conversation that ensured when we were all settled in our places exactly
as it passed. It is an important conversation, so far as I am concerned,
for it has seriously disposed me to distrust the influence which Count
Fosco has exeicised over my thoughts and feelings, and to resist it for
the future as resolutely as I can.

The boat-house was large enough to hold us all, but Sir Percival
remained outside trimming the last new stick with his pocketaxe. We
three women found plenty of room on the large seat. Laura took her work,
and Madame Fosco began her cigarettes. I, as usual. had nothing to do.
My hands always were, and always will be, as awkward as a man's. The
Count good-humouredly took a stool many sizes too small for him, and
balanced himself on it with his back against the side of the shed, which
creaked and groaned under his weight. He put the Pagoda-cage on his lap,
and let out the mice to crawl over him as usual. They are pretty,
innocent-looking little creatures, but the sight of them creeping about
a man's body is for some reason not pleasant to me. It excites a strange
responsive creeping in my own neives, and suggests hideous ideas of men
dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the dungeon preying on
them undisturbed.

The morning was windy and cloudy, and the rapid alternations of shadow
and sunlight over the waste of the lake inade the view look doubly wild,
weird, and gloomy.

`Some people call that picturesque,' said Sir Percival, pointing over
the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. `I call it a
blot on a gentleman's property. In my great-grandfather's time the lake
flowed to this place. Look at it now. It is not four feet deep anywhere,
and it is all puddles and pools. I wish I could afford to drain it, and
plant it all over. My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite
sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think,
Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn't it?'

`My good Percival,' remonstrated the Count. `What is your solid English
sense thinking of ? The water is too shallow to hide the body, and there
is sand everywhere to print off the murderer's footsteps. It is, upon
the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes
on.'

`Humbug !' said Sir Percival, cutting away fiercely at his stick. `You
know what I mean. The dreary scenery, the lonely situation. If you
choose to understand me, you can –; if you don't choose, I am not going
to trouble myself to explain my meaning.'

`And why not,' asked the Count, `when your meaning can be explained by
anybody in two words? If a fool was going to commit a murder, your lake
is the first place he would choose for it. If a wise man was going to
commit a murder, your lake is the last place he would choose for it. Is
that your meaning? If it is, there is your explanation for you ready
made. Take it, Percival. with your good Fosco's blessing.'

Laura looked at the Count with her dislike for him appearing a little
too plainly in her face. He was so busy with his mice that he did not
notice her.

`I am sorry to hear the lake-view connected with anything so horrible as
the idea of murder,' she said. `And if Count Fosco must divide murderers
into classes, I think he has been very unfortunate in his choice of
expressions. To describe them as fools only seems like treating them
with an indulgence to which they have no claim. And to describe them as
wise men sounds to me like a downright contradiction in terms. I have
always heard that truly wise men are truly good men, and have a horror
of crime.'

`My dear lady,' said the Count, `those are admirable sentiments, and I
have seen them stated at the tops of copy-books.' He hfted one of the
white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical
way. `My pretty little smooth white rascal,' he said, `here is a moral
lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that,
if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your
cage again as long as you live.'

`It is easy to turn everything into ridicule,' said Laura resolutely;
`but you will not find it quite so easy, Count Fosco, to give me an
instance of a wise man who has been a great criminal.'

The Count shrugged his huge shoulders, and smiled on Laura in the
friendliest manner.

`Most true!' he said. `The fool's crime is the crime that is found out,
and the wise man's crime is the crime that is not found out. If I could
give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man. Dear
Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for me. It
is checkmate for me this time, Miss Halcombe –; ha?'

`Stand to your guns, Laura,' sneered Sir Percival, who had been
listening in his place at the door. `Tell him next, that crimes cause
their own detection. There's another bit of copybook morality for you,
Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug !'

`I believe it to be true,' said Laura quietly.

Sir Percival burst out laughing, so violently, so outrageously, that he
quite startled us all –; the Count more than any of us.

`I believe it too,' I said, coming to Laura's rescue.

Sir Percival, who had been unaccountably amused at his wife's remark,
was just as unaccountably irritated by mine. He struck the new stick
savagely on the sand, and walked away from us.

`Poor dear Percival!' cried Count Fosco, looking after him gailv, `he is
the victim of English spleen. But, my dear Miss Halcombe, my dear Lady
Glyde, do you really believe that crimes cause their own detection? And
you, my angel,' he continued, turning to his wife, who had not uttered a
word yet, `do you think so too?'

`I wait to be instructed,' replied the Countess, in tones of freezing
reproof, intended for Laura and me, `before I venture on giving my
opinion in the presence of well-informed men.'

`Do you, indeed?' I said. `l remember the time, Countess, when you
advocated the Rights of Women, and freedom of female opinion was one of
them.'

`What is your view of the subject, Count?' asked Madame Fosco, calmly
proceeding with her cigarettes, and not taking the least notice of me.

The Count stroked one of his white mice reflectively with his chubby
little finger before he answered.

`lt is truly wonderful,' he said, `how easily Society can console itself
for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of clap-trap. The
machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably
ineffective –; and yet only invent a moral epigram, saving that it works
well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes
cause their own detection. do they? And murder will out (another moral
epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at inquests in large towns if
that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of life-assurance companies if
that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your own public journals. In the few
cases that get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain
bodies found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that
are reported by the cases that are not reported, and the bodies that are
found by the bodies that are not found, and what conclusion do you come
to? This. That there are foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise
criminals who escape. The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a
crime, what is it? A trial of skill between the police on one side, and
the individual on the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant
fool, the police in nine cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a
resolute, educated, highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out
of ten lose. If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the
pohce lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation
you build up your comfortable moral maxim that Crime causes its own
detection ! Yes –; all the crime you know of. And what of the rest?'

`Devilish true, and very well put,' cried a voice at the entrance of the
boat-house. Sir Percival had recovered his equanimity, and had come back
while we were listening to the Count.

`Some of it may be true,' I said, `and all of it may be very well put.
But I don't see why Count Fosco should celebrate the victory of the
criminal over Society with so much exultation, or why you, Sir Percival,
should applaud him so loudly for doing it.'

`Do you hear that, Fosco?' asked Sir Percival. `Take my advice, and make
your peace with your audience. Tell them virtue's a fine thing –; they
like that, I can promise you.'

The Count laughed inwardly and silently, and two of the white mice in
his waistcoat, alarmed by the internal convulsion going on beneath them.
darted out in a violent hurry, and scrambled into their cage again.

`The ladies, my good Percival, shall tell me about virtue,' he said.
`They are better authorities than I am, for they know what virtue is,
and I don't.'

` You hear him ?' said Sir Percival. `Isn't it awful ?'

`It is true,' said the Count quietly. `I am a citizen of the world, and
I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I
am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is
the wrong. Here, in England, there is one virtue. And there, in China,
there is another virtue. And John Englishman says my virtue is the
genuine virtue. And John Chinaman says my virtue is the genuine virtue.
And I say Yes to one, or No to the other, and am just as much bewildered
about it in the case of John with the top-boots as I am in the case of
John with the pigtail. Ah, nice little Mousey ! come, kiss me. What is
your own Private notion of a virtuous man, my piet-pret-pretty? A man
who keeps you warm, and gives you plenty to eat. And a good notion, too,
for it is intelligible, at the least.'

`Stay a minute, Count,' I interposed. `Accepting your illustration,
surely we have one unquestionable virtue in England which is wanting in
China. The Chinese authorities kill thousands of innocent people on the
most frivolous pretexts. We in England are free from all guilt of that
kind –; we commit no such dreadful crime –; we abhor reckless bloodshed
with all our hearts.'

`Quite right, Marian,' said Laura. `Well thought of, and well
expressed.'

`Pray allow the Count to Proceed,' said Madame Fosco, with stern
civility. `You Will find, young ladies, that he never speaks without
having excellent reasons for all that he says.'

`Thank you, my angel,' replied the Count. `Have a bonbon?' He took out
of his pocket a pretty little inlaid box, and placed it open on the
table. `Chocolate à la Vanille,' cried the impenetrable man,
cheerfully rattling the sweetmeats in the box, and bowling all round.
`Offered by Fosco as an act of homage to the charming Society.'

`Be good enough to go on, Count,' said his wife, with a spiteful
reference to myself. `Oblige me by answering Miss Halcombe.'

`Miss Halcombe is unanswerable,' replied the polite Italian; `that is to
say, so far as she does. Yes! I agree with her. John Bull does abhor the
crimes of John Chinaman. He is the quickest old gentleman at finding out
faults that are his neighbours', and the slowest old gentleman at
finding out the faults that are his own, who exists on the face of
creation. Is he so very much better in his way than the people whom he
condemns in their way? English Society, Miss Halcombe, is as often the
accomplice as it is the enemy of crime. Yes ! yes! Crime is in this
country what crime is in other countries –; a good friend to a man and
to those about him as often as it is an enemy. A great rascal provides
for his wife and family. The worse he is the more he makes them the
objects for your sympathy. He often provides also for himself. A
profligate spendthrift who is always borrowing money will get more from
his friend than the rigidly honest man who only borrows of them once,
under pressure of the direct want. In the one case the friends will not
be at all surprised, and they will Five. In the other case they will be
very much surprised, and they will hesitate. Is the prison that Mr
Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place
than the workhouse that Mr Honesty hves in at the end of his career?
When John-Howard-Philanthropist wants to relieve misery he goes to find
it in prisons, where crime is wretched –; not in huts and hovels. where
virtue is wretched too. Who is the English poet who has won the most
universal sympathy –; who makes the easiest of all subjects for pathetic
writing and pathetic painting? That nice young person who began life
with a forgery, and ended it by suicide –; your dear, romantic,
interesting Chatterton. Which gets on best, do you think, of two poor
starving dressmakers –; the woman who resists temptation and is honest,
or the woman who falls under temptation and steals? You all know that
the stealing is the making of that second woman's fortune –; it
advertises her from length to breadth of goodhumoured, charitable
England –; and she is relieved, as the breaker of a commandment, when
she would have been left to starve, as the keeper of it. Come here, my
jolly little Mouse! Hey! presto! pass ! I transform you, for the time
being, into a respectable lady. Stop there, in the palm of my great big
hand, my dear, and listen. You marry the poor man whom you love, Mouse,
and one half your friends pity, and the other half blame you. And now,
on the contrary, you sell yourself for gold to a man you don't care for,
and all your friends rejoice over you, and a minister of public worship
sanctions the base horror of the vilest of all human bargains and smiles
and smirks afterwards at your table, if you are polite enough to ask him
to breakfast. Hey! presto! pass ! Be a mouse again, and squeak. If you
continue to be a lady much longer, I shall have you telling me that
Society abhors crime –; and then, Mouse, I shall doubt if your own eyes
and ears are really of any use to you. Ah! I am a bad man, Lady Glyde,
am I not? I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of
the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine
is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the hare
bones beneath. I will get up on my big elephant's legs, before I do
myself any more harm in your amiable estimations –; I will get up and
take a little airy walk of my own. Dear ladies, as your excellent
Sheridau said, I go –; and leave my character behind :ne.'

He got up, put the cage on the table, and paused for a moment to count
the imice in it. `One, two, three, four –; Ha!' he cried, with a look of
horror, `where, in the name of Heaven, is the fifth –; the youngest, the
whitest, the most amiable of all –; my Benjamin of mice !'

Neither Laura nor I were in any favourable disposition to be amused. The
Count's glib cynicism had revealed a new aspect of his nature from which
we both recoiled. But it was impossible to resist the comical distress
of so very large a man at the loss of so very small a mouse. We laughed
in spite of ourselves; and when Madame Fosco rose to set the example of
leaving the boathouse empty, so that her husband might search it to its
remotest corners, we lose also to follow her out.

Before we had taken three steps, the Count's quick eye discovered the
lostmouse under the seat that we had been occupying. He pulled aside the
bench, took the little animal up in his hand, and then suddenly stopped,
on his knees, looking intently at a particular place on the ground just
beneath him.

When he rose to his feet again, his hand shook so that he could hardly
put the mouse back in the cage, and his face was of a faint livid yellow
hue all over.

`Percival!' he said, in a whisper. `percival ! come here.'

Sir Percival had paid no attention to any of us for the last ten
minutes. He had been entirely absorbed in writing figures on the sand.
and then rubbing them out again with the point of his stick.

`What's the matter now?' he asked, lounging carelessly into the
boat-house.

`Do you see nothing there?' said the Count, catching him nervously by
the collar with one hand, and pointing with the other to the place near
which he had found the mouse.

`I see plenty of dry sand,' answered Sir Percival, `and a spot of dirt
in the middle of it.'

`Not dirt,' whispered the Count, fastening the other hand suddenly on
Sir Percival's collar, and shaking it in his agitation. `Blood.'

Laura was near enough to hear the last word, softly as he whispered it.
She turned to me with a look of terror.

`Nonsense, my dear,' I said. `There is no need to be alarmed. It is only
the blood of a poor little stray dog.'

Everybody was astonished, and everybody's eyes were fixed on me
inquiringly.

`How do you know that? ' asked Sir Percival, speaking first.

`I found the dog here, dying, on the day when you all returned from
abroad,' I replied. `The poor creature had strayed into the plantation,
and had been shot by your keeper.'

`Whose dog was it?' inquired Sir Percival. `Not one of mine?'

`Did you try to save the poor thing?' asked Laura earnestly. `Suiely vou
tried to save it, Marian?'

`Yes,' I said, `the housekeeper and I both did our best –; but the dog
was mortally wounded, and he died under our hands.'

`Whose dog was it?' persisted Sir Percival, repeating his question a
little irritably. `One of mine?'

`No, not one of yours.'

`Whose then? Did the housekeeper know?'

The housekeeper's report of Mrs Catherick's desire to conceal her visit
to Blackwater Park from Sir Percival's knowledge recurred to my memory
the moment he put that last question, and I half doubted the discretion
of answering it; but in my anxiety to quiet the general alarm, I had
thoughtlessly advanced too far to draw hack, except at the risk of
exciting suspicion, which might only make matters worse. There was
nothing for it but to answer at once, without reference to results.

`Yes,' I said. `The housekeeper knew. She told me it was Mrs Catherick's
dog.'

Sir Percival had hitherto remained at the inner end of the boat-house
with Count Fosco, while I spoke to him from the door. But the instant
Mrs Catherick's name passed my lips he pushed by the Count roughly, and
placed himself face to face with me under the open daylight.

`How came the housekeeper to know it was Mrs Catherick's dog?' he asked,
fixing his eyes on mine with a frowning interest and attention, which
half angered, half startled me.

`She knew it,' I said quietly, `because Mrs Catherick brought the dog
with her.'

`Brought it with her? Where did she bring it with her?'

`To this house.'

`What the devil did Mrs Catherick want at this house?'

The manner in which he put the question was even more offensive than the
language in which he expressed it. I marked my sense of his want of
common politeness by silently turning away from him.

Just as I moved the Count's persuasive hand was laid on his shoulder,
and the Count's mellifluous voice interposed to quiet him.

`My dear Percival ! –; gently –; gently !'

Sir Percival looked round in his angriest manner. The Count only smiled
and repeated the soothing application.

`Gently, my good friend –; gently !'

Sir Percival hesitated, followed me a few steps, and, to my great
surprise, offered me an apology.

`I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe,' he said. `I have been out of order
lately, and I am afraid I am a little irritable. But I should like to
know what Mrs Catherick could possibly want here. When did she come? Was
the housekeeper the only person who saw her ?'

`The only person,' I answered, `so far as I know.'

The Count interposed again.

`In that case why not question the housekeeper?' he said. `Why not go,
Percival, to the fountain-head of information at once ?'

`Quite right!' said Sir Percival. `Of course the housekeeper is the
first person to question. Excessively stupid of me not to see it
myself.' With those words he instantly left us to return to the house.

The motive of the Count's interference, which had puzzled me at first,
betrayed itself when Sir Perciyal's back was turned. He had a host of
questions to put to me about Mrs Catherick, and the cause of her visit
to Blackwater Park, which he could scarcely have asked in his friend's
presence. I made my answers as short as I civilly could, for I had
already determined to check the least approach to any exchanging of
confidences between Count Fosco and myself. Laura, however,
unconsciously helped him to extract all my information, by making
inquiries herself, whicli left me no alternative but to reply to her, or
to appear in the very unenviable and very false character of a
depositary of Sir Percival's secrets. The end of it was, that, in about
ten minutes' time, the Count knew as much as I know of Mrs Catherick,
and of the events which have so strangely connected us with her
daughter, Anne, from the time when Hartright met with her to this day.

The effect of my information on him was, in one respect, curious enough.

Intimately as he knows Sir Percival, and closely as he appears to be
associated with Sir Percival's private affairs in general, he is
certainly as far as I am from knowing anything of the true story of Anne
Catherick. The unsolved mystery in connection with this unhappy woman is
now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute conviction
which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir Percival from
the most intimate friend he has in the world. It was impossible to
mistake the eager curiosity of the Count's look and manner while he
drank in greedily every word that fell from my lips. There are many
kinds of curiosity, I know –; but there is no misinterpreting the
curiosity of blank surprise: if I ever saw it in my life I saw it in the
Count's face.

While the questions and answers were going on, we had all been strolling
quietly back through the plantation. As soon as we reached the house the
first object that we saw in front of it was Sir Percival's dog-cart,
with the horse put to and the groom waiting by it in his stable-jacket.
If these unexpected appearances were to be trusted, the examination of
the housekeeper had produced important results already.

`A fine horse, my friend,' said the Count, addressing the groom with the
most engaging familiarity of manner. `You are going to drive out?'

`I am not going, sir,' replied the man, looking at his stablejacket, and
evidently wondering whether the foreign gentleman took it for his
livery. `My master drives himself.'

`Aha!' said the Count, `does he indeed? I wonder he gives himself the
trouble when he has got you to drive for him. Is he going to fatigue
that nice, shining, pretty horse by taking him very far today?'

`I don't know, sir,' anwered the man. `The horse is a mare, if you
please, sir. She's the highest-couraged thing we've got in the stables.
Her name's Brown Molly, sir, and she'll go till she drops. Sir Percival
usually takes Isaac of York for the short distances.'

`And your shining courageous Brown Molly for the long?'

`Yes, sir.'

`Logical inference, Miss Halcombe,' continued the Count, wheeling round
briskly, and addressing me. `Sir Percival is going a long distance
today.'

I made no reply. I had my own inferences to draw, from what I knew
through the housekeeper and from what I saw before me, and I did not
choose to share them with Count Fosco.

When Sir Percival was in Cumberland (I thought to myself), he walked
away a long distance, on Anne's account, to question the family at
Todd's Corner. Now he is in Hampshire, is he going to drive away a long
distance, on Anne's account again, to question Mrs Catherick at
Welmingham?

We all entered the house. As we crossed the hall Sir Percival came out
from the hbrary to meet us. He looked hurried and pale and anxious –;
but for all that, he was in his most polite mood when he spoke to us.

`I am sorry to say I am obliged to leave you,' he began –; `a long drive
–; a matter that I can't very well put off. I shall be back in good
tiine tomorrow –; but before I go I should like that little
business-formality, which I spoke of this morning, to be settled. Laura,
will you come into the library? It won't take a minute –; a mere
formality. Countess, may I trouble you also? I want you and the
Countess, Fosco, to be witnesses to a signature –; nothing more. Come in
at once and get it over.'

He held the library door open until they had passed in, followed them,
and shut it softly.

I remained, for a moment afterwards, standing alone in the hall, with my
heart beating fast and my mind misgiving me sadly. Then I went on to the
staircase, and ascended slowly to my own room.




June 17th. –; rust as my hand was on the door of my room, I heard Sir
Percival's voice calling to me from below.

`I must beg you to come downstairs again,' he said. `It is Fosco's
fault, Miss Halcombe, not mine. He has started some nonsensical
objection to his wife being one of the witnesses, and has obliged me to
ask you to join us in the library.'

I entered the room immediately with Sir Percival. Laura was waiting by
the writing-table, twisting and turning her garden hat uneasily in her
hands. Madame Fosco sat near her, in an arm-chair, imperturbably
admiring her husband, who stood by himself at the other end of the
library, picking off the dead leaves from the flowers in the window.

The moment I appeared the Count advanced to meet me, and to offer his
explanations.

`A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe,' he said. `You know the character
which is given to my countrymen by the English? We Italians are all wily
and suspicious by nature, in the estimation of the good John Bull. Set
me down, if you please, as being not better than the rest of my race. I
am a wily Italian and a suspicious Italian. You have thought so
yourself, dear lady, have you not? Well! it is part of my wiliness and
part of my suspicion to object to Madame Fosco being a witness to Lady
Glyde's signature, when I am also a witness myself.'

`There is not the shadow of a reason for his objection,' interposed Sir
Percival. `I have explained to him that the law of England allows Madame
Fosco to witness a signature as well as her husband.'

`I admit it,' resumed the Count. `The law of England says, Yes, but the
conscience of Fosco says, No.' He spread out his fat fingers on the
bosom of his blouse, and bowed solemnly, as if he wished to introduce
his conscience to us all, in the character of an illustrious addition to
the society. `What this document which Lady Glyde is about to sign may
be,' he continued, `I neither know nor desire to know. I only say this,
circumstances may happen in the future which may oblige Percival, or his
representatives, to appeal to the two witnesses, in which case it is
certainly desirable that those witnesses should represent two opinions
which are pefectly independent the one of the other. This cannot be if
my wife signs as well as myself, because we have but one opinion between
us, and that opinion is mine. I will not have it cast in my teeth, at
some future clay, that Madame Fosco acted under my coercin, and was, in
plain fact, no witness at all. I speak in Percival's interest, when I
propose that my name shall appear (as the nearest friend of the
husband), and your name, Miss Halcombe (as the nearest friend of the
wife). I am a Jesuit, if you please to think so –; a splitter of straws
–; a man of trifles and crochets and scruples –; but you will humour me.
I hope, in merciful consideration for my suspicious Italian character,
and my uneasy Italian conscience.' He bowed again, stepped back a few
paces, and withdrew his conscience from our society as politely as he
had introduced it.

The Count's scruples might have been honourable and reasonable enough,
but there was something in his manner of expressing them which increased
my unwillingness to be concermed in the business of the signature. No
consideration of less importance than iny consideration for Laura would
have induced me to consent to be a witness at all. One look, however, at
her anxious face decided me to risk anything rather than desert her.

`I will readily remain in the room,' I said. `And if I find no reason
for starting any small scruples on my side, you may rely on me as a
witness.'

Sir Percival looked at me sharply, as if he was about to say something.
But at the same moment, Madame Fosco attracted his attention by rising
from her chair. She had caught her husband's eye, and had evidently
received her orders to leave the room.

`You needn't go,' said Sir PercivaL

Madame Fosco looked for her orders again, got them again, said she would
prefer leaving us to our business, and resolutely walked out. The Count
lit a cigarette, went back to the flowers in the window, and puffed
little jets of smoke at the leaves, in a state of the deepest anxiety
about killing the insects.

Meanwhile Sir Percival unlocked a cupboard beneath one of the
book-cases, and produced from it a piece of parchment, folded longwise,
many times over. He placed it on the table, opened the last fold only,
and kept his hand on the rest. The last fold displayed a strip of blank
parchment with little wafers stuck on it at certain places. Every line
of the writing was hidden in the part which he still held folded up
under his hand. Laura and I looked at each other. Her face was pale, but
it showed no indeci–; sion and no fear.

Sir Percival dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his wife.

`Sign your name there,' he said, pointing to the place. `You and Fosco
are to sign afterwards, Miss Halcombe, opposite those two wafers. Come
here, Fosco ! witnessing a signature is not to be done by mooning out of
window and smoking into the flowers.'

The Count threw away his cigarette, and joined us at the table, with his
hands carelessly thrust into the scarlet belt of his blouse, and his
eyes steadily fixed on Sir Percival's face. Laura, who was on the other
side of her husband, with the pen in her hand, looked at him too. He
stood between them, holding the folded parchment down firmly on the
table, and glancing across at me, as I sat opposite to him, with such a
sinister mixture of suspicion and embarrassment on his face, that he
looked more like a prisoner at the bar than a gentleman in his own
house.

`Sign there,' he repeated, turning suddenly on Laura, and pointing once
more to the place on the parchment.

`What is it I am to sign?' she asked quietly.

`I have no time to explain,' he answered. `The dog-cart is at the door,
and I must go directly. Besides, if I had time, you wouldn't understand.
It is a purely formal document, full of legal technicalities, and all
that sort of thing. Come ! come l sign your name, and let us have done
as soon as possible.'

`I ought surely to know what I am signing, Sir Percival, before I write
my name?'

`Nonsense! What have women to do with business? I tell you again, you
can't understand it.'

`At any rate, let me try to understand it. Whenever Mr Gilmore had any
business for me to do, he always explained it first, and I always
understood him.'

`l dare say he did. He was your servant, and was obliged to explain. I
am your husband, and am not obliged. How much longer do you mean to keep
nie here? I tell you again, there is no time for reading anything –; the
dog-cart is waiting at the door. Once for all, will you sign or will vou
not?'

She still had the pen in her hand, but she made no approach to signing
her name with it.

`If my signature pledges me to anything,' she said, `surely I have some
claim to know what that pledge is?'

He lifted up the parchment, and struck it angrily on the table.

`Speak out!' he said. `You were always famous for telling the truth.
Never mind Miss Halcombe, never mind Fosco –; say, in plain terms, you
distrust me.'

The Count took one of his hands out of his belt and laid it on Sir
Percival's shoulder. Sir Percival shook it off irritably. The Count put
it on again with unruffled composure.

`Control your unfortunate temper, Percival,' he said. `Lady Glyde is
right.'

`Right!' cried Sir Percival. `A wife right in distrusting her husband !'

`It is unjust and cruel to accuse me of distrusting you,' said Laura.
`Ask Marian if I am not justified in wanting to know what this writing
requires of me before I sign it.'

`l won't have any appeals made to Miss Halcombe,' retorted Sir Percival.
`Miss Halcombe has nothing to do with the matter.'

I had not spoken hitherto, and I would much rather not have spoken now.
But the expression of distress in Laura's face when she turned it
towards me, and the insolent injustice of her husband's conduct, left me
no other alternative than to give my opinion, for her sake, as soon as I
was asked for it.

`Excuse me, Sir Percival,' I said –; `but as one of the witnesses to the
signature, I venture to think that I have something to do with the
matter. Laura's objection seems to me a perfectly fair one, and speaking
for myself only, I cannot assume the responsibility of witnessing her
signature, unless she first understands what the writing is which you
wish her to sign.'

`A cool declaration, upon my soul!' cried Sir Percival. `The next time
you invite yourself to a man's house, Miss Halcombe, I recommend you not
to repay his hospitality by taking his wife's side against him in a
matter that doesn't concern you.'

I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been a
man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door, and
have left his house, never on any earthly consideration to enter it
again. But I was only a woman –; and I loved his wife so dearly !

Thank God, that faithful love helped me, and I sat down again without
saying a word. She knew what I had suffered and what I had suppressed.
She ran round to me, with the tears streaming from her eyes. `Oh,
Marian!' she whispered softly. `If my mother had been alive, she could
have done no more for me.

`Come back and sign!' cried Sir Percival from the other side of the
table.

`Shall I?' she asked in my ear; `I will, if you tell me.'

`No,' I answered. `The right and the truth are with you –; sign nothing,
unless you have read it first.'

`Come back and sign !' he reiterated, in his loudest and angriest tones.

The Count, who had watched Laura and me with a close and silent
attention, interposed for the second time.

`Percival!' he said. `I remember that I am in the presence of ladies. Be
good enough, if you please, to remember it too.'

Sir Percival turned on him speechless with passion. The Count's firm
hand slowly tightened its grasp on his shoulder, and the Count's steady
voice quietly repeated, `Be good enough, if you please, to remember it
too.'

They both looked at each other. Sir Percival slowly drew his shoulder
from under the Count's hand, slowly turned his face away from the
Count's eyes, doggedly looked dowm for a little while at the parchment
on the table, and then spoke, with the sullen submission of a tamed
animal, rather than the becoming resignation of a convinced man.

`I don't want to offend anybody,' he said, `but my wife's obstinacy is
enough to try the patience of a saint. I have told her this is merely a
ferinal document –; and what more can she want? You may say what you
please, but it is no part of a woman's duty to set her husband at
defiance. Once more, Lady Glyde. and for the last time, will you sign or
will you not?'

Laura returned to his side of the table, and took up the pen again.

`I will sign with pleasure,' she said, `if you will only treat me as a
responsible being. I care little what sacrifice is required of me, if it
will affect no one else, and lead to no ill results –;'

`Who talked of a sacrifice being required of you?' he broke in, with a
half-suppressed return of his former violence.

`I only meant,' she resumed, `that I would refuse no concession which I
could honourably make. If I have a scruple about signing my name to an
engagement of which I know nothing, why should you visit it on me so
severely? It is rather hard, I think, to treat Count Fosco's scruples so
much more indulgently than you have treated mine.'

This unfortunate, yet most natural, reference to the Count's
extraordinary power over her husband, indirect as it was, set Sii
Percival's smouldering temper on fire again in an instant.

`Scruples !' he repeated. `Your scruples! It is rather late in the day
for you to be scrupulous. I should have thought you had got over all
weakness of that sort, when you made a virtue of necessity by marrying
me.'

The instant he spoke those words, Laura threw down the pen –; looked at
him with an expression in her eyes which, throughout all my experience
of her, I had never seen in them before, and turned her back on him in
dead silence.

This strong expression of the most open and the most bitter contempt was
so entirely unlike herself, so utterly out of her character, that it
silenced us all. There was something hidden, beyond a doubt, under the
mere surface-brutality of the words which her husband had just addressed
to her. There was some lurking insult beneath them, of which I was
wholly ignorant, but which had left the mark of its profanation so
plainly on her face that even a stranger might have seen it.

The Count, who was no stranger, saw it as distinctly as I did. When I
left my chair to join Laura, I heard him whisper under his breath to Sir
Percival, `You idiot!'

Laura walked before me to the door as I advanced, and at the saine time
her husband spoke to her once more.

`You positively refuse, then, to give me your signature?' he said, in
the altered tone of a man who was conscious that he had let his own
licence of language seriously injure him.

`After what you have just said to me,' she replied firmly, `I refuse my
signature until I have read every line in that parchment from the first
word to the last. Come away, Marian, we have remained here long enough.'

` One moment!' interposed the Count before Sir Percival could speak
again –; ` one moment, Lady Glyde, I implore you !'

Laura would have left the room without noticing him, but I stopped her.

`Don't make an enemy of the Count!' I whispered. `Whatever you do, don't
make an enemy of the Count !'

She yielded to me. I closed the door again, and we stood near it
waiting. Sir Percival sat down at the table, with his elbow on the
folded parchment, and his head resting on his clenched fist. The Count
stood between us –; master of the dreadful position in which we were
placed, as he was master of everything else.

`Lady Glyde,' he said, with a gentleness which seemed to address itself
to our forlorn situation instead of to ourselves, `pray pardon me if I
venture to offer one suggestion, and pray believe that I speak out of my
profound respect and my friendly regard for the mistress of this house.'
He turned sharply towards Sir Percival. `Is it absolutely necessary,' he
asked, `that this thing here, under your elbow, should be signed today
?'

`It is necessary to my plans and wishes,' returned the other sulkily.
`But that consideration, as you may have noticed, has no influence with
Lady Glyde.'

`Answer my plain question plainly. Can the business of the signature be
put off till tomorrow –; Yes or No?'

`Yes, if you will have it so.'

`Then what are you wasting your time for here? Let the signature wait
till tomorrow –; let it wait till you come back.'

Sir Percival looked up with a frown and an oath.

`You are taking a tone with me that I don't like,' he said. `A tone I
won't bear from any man.'

`I am advising you for your good,' returned the Count, with a smile of
quiet contempt. `Give yourself time –; give Lady Glyde time. Have you
forgotten that your dog-cart is waiting at the door? My tone surprises
you –; ha? I dare say it does –; it is the tone of a man who can keep
his temper. How many doses of good advice have I given you in my time?
More than you can count. Have I ever been wrong? I defy you to quote me
an instance of it. Go! take your drive. The matter of the signature can
wait till tomorrow. Let it wait –; and renew it when you come back.'

Sir Percival hesitated and looked at his watch. His anxiety about the
secret journey which he was to take that day, revived bv the Count's
words, was now evidently disputing possession of his mind with his
anxiety to obtain Laura's signature. He considered for a little while,
and then got up from his chair.

`It is easy to argue me down,' he said, `when I have no time to answer
you. I will take your advice, Fosco –; not because I want it, or believe
in it, but because I can't stop here any longer.' He paused, and looked
round darkly at his wife. `If you don't give me your signature when I
come back tomorrow –;!' The rest was lost in the noise of his opening
the book-case cupboard again, and locking up the parchment once more. He
took his hat and gloves off the table, and made for the door. Laura and
I drew back to let him pass. `Remember tomorrow !' he said to his wife,
and went out.

We waited to give him time to cross the hall and drive away. The Count
approached us while we were standing near the door.

`You have just seen Percival at his worst, Miss Halcombe,' he said. `As
his old friend, I am sorry for him and ashamed of him. As his old
friend, I promise you that he shall not break out tomorrow in the same
disgraceful manner in which he has broken out today.'

Laura had taken my arm while he was speaking, and she pressed it
significantly when he had done. It would have been a hard trial to any
woman to stand by and see the office of apologist for her husband's
misconduct quietly assumed by his male friend in her own house –; and it
was a trial to her. I thanked the Count civilly, and led her out. Yes !
I thanked him: for I felt already, with a sense of inexpressible
helplessness and humiliation, that it was either his interest or his
caprice to make sure of my continuing to reside at Blackwater Park, and
I knew after Sir Percival's conduct to me, that without the support of
the Count's influence, I could not hope to remain there. His influence,
the influence of all others that I dreaded most, was actually the one
tie which now held me to Laura in the hour of her utmost need!

We heard the wheels of the dog-cart crashing on the gravel of the drive
as we came into the hall. Sir Percival had started on his journey.

`Where is he going to, Marian?' Laura whispered. `Every fresh thing he
does seeins to terrify me about the future. Have you any suspicions ?'

After what she had undergone that morning, I was unwilling to tell her
my suspicions.

` How should I know his secrets ?' I said evasively.

`I wonder if the housekeeper knows ?' she persisted.

`Certainly not,' I replied. `She must be quite as ignorant as we are.'

Laura shook her head doubtfully.

`Did you not hear from the housekeeper that there was a report of Anne
Catherick having been seen in this neighbourhood? Don't you think he may
have gone away to look for her?'

`I would rather compose myself, Laura, by not thinking about it at all,
and after what has happened, you had better follow my example. Come into
my room, and rest and quiet yourself a little.'

We sat down together close to the window, and let the fragrant sunmer
air breathe over our faces.

`I am ashamed to look at you, Marian,' she said, `after what you
submitted to downstairs, for my sake. Oh, my own love, I am almost
heartbroken when I think of it! But I will try to make it up to you –; I
will indeed !'

`Hush! hush !' I replied; `don't talk so. What is the trifling
mortification of my pride compared to the dreadful sacrifice of your
happiness ?'

`You heard what he said to me?' she went on quickly and vehemently. `You
heard the words –; but you don't know what they meant –; you don't know
why I threw down the pen and turned my back on him.' She rose in sudden
agitation, and walked about the room. `I have kept many things from your
knowledge, Marian, for fear of distressing you, and making you unhappy
at the outset of our new lives. You don't know how he has used me. And
yet you ought to know, for you saw how he used me today. You heard him
sneer at my presuming to be scrupulous –; you heard him say I had made a
virtue of necessity in marrying him.' She sat down again, her face
flushed deeply, and her hands twisted and twined together in her lap. `I
can't tell you about it now,' she said; `I shall burst out crying if I
tell you now –; later, Marian, when I am more sure of myself. My poor
head aches, darling –; aches, aches, aches. Where is your
smellingbottle? Let me talk to you about yourself. I wish I had given
him my signature, for your sake. Shall I give it to him tomorrow? I
would rather compromise myself than compromise you. After your taking my
part against him, he will lay all the blame on you if I refuse again.
What shall we do? Oh, for a friend to help us and advise us! –; a friend
we could really trust !'

She sighed bitterly. I saw in her face that she was thinking of
Hartright –; saw it the more plainly because her last words set me
thinking of him too. In six months only from her marriage we wanted the
faithful service he had offered to us in his farewell words. How little
I once thought that we should ever want it at all !

`We must do what we can to help ourselves,' I said. `Let us try to talk
it over calmly, Laura –; let us do all in our power to decide for the
best.'

Putting what she knew of her husband's embarrassments and what I had
heard of his conversation with the lawyer together, we arrived
necessarily at the conclusion that the parchment in the library had been
drawn up for the purpose of borrowing money, and that Laura's signature
was absolutely necessary to fit it for the attainment of Sir Percival's
object.

The second question, concerning the nature of the legal contract by
which the money was to be obtained, and the degree of personal
responsibility to which Laura might subject herself if she signed it in
the dark, involved considerations which lay far beyond any knowledge and
experience that either of us possessed. My own convictions led me to
believe that the hidden contents of the parchment concealed a
transaction of the meanest and the most fraudulent kind.

I had not formed this conclusion in consequence of Sir Percival's
refusal to show the writing or to explain it, for that refusal might
well have proceeded from his obstinate disposition and his domineering
temper alone. My sole motive for distrusting his honesty sprang from the
change which I had observed in his language and his manners at
Blackwater park, a change which convinced me that he had been acting a
part throughout the whole period of his probation at Limmeridge House.
His elaborate delicacy, his ceremonious politeness, which harmonised so
agreeably with Mr Gilmore's old-fashioned notions, his modesty with
Laura, his candour with me, his moderation with Mr Fairlie –; all these
were the artifices of a mean, cunning, and brutal man, who had dropped
his disguise when his practised duplicity had gained its end, and had
openly shown himself in the library on that very day. I say nothing of
the grief which this discovery caused me on Laura's account, for it is
not to be expressed by any words of mine. I only refer to it at all,
because it decided me to oppose her signing the parchment, whatever the
consequences might be, unless she was first made acquainted with the
contents.

Under these circumstances, the one chance for us when tomorrow came was
to be provided with an objection to giving the signature, which might
rest on sufficiently firm commercial or legal grounds to shake Sir
Percival's resolution, and to make him suspect that we two women
understood the laws and obligations of business as well as himself.

After some pondering, I determined to write to the only honest man
within reach whom we could trust to help us discreetly in our forlorn
situation. That man was Mr Gilmore's partner, Mr Kyrle, who conducted
the business now that our old friend had been obliged to withdraw from
it, and to leave London on account of his health. I explained to Laura
that I had Mr Gilmore's own authority for placing implicit confidence in
his partner's integrity, discretion, and accurate knowledge of all her
affairs, and with her full approval I sat down at once to write the
letter.

I began by stating our position to Mr Kyrle exactly as it was, and then
asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain, downright terms
which we could comprehend without any danger of misinterpretations and
mistakes. My letter was as short as I could possibly make it, and was, I
hope, unencumbered by needless apologies and needless details.

Just as I was about to put the address on the envelope an obstacle was
discovered by Laura, which in the effort and preoccupation of writing
had escaped my mind altogether.

`How are we to get the answer in time?' she asked. `Your letter will not
be delivered in London before tomorrow morning and the post will not
bring the reply here till the morning after.'

The only way of overcoming this difficulty was to have the answer
brought to us from the lawyer's office by a special messenger. I wrote a
postscript to that effect, begging that the messenger might be
despatched with the reply by the eleven o'clock morning train, which
would bring him to our station at twenty minutes past one, and so enable
him to reach Blackwater Park by two o'clock at the latest. He was to be
directed to ask for me, to answer no questions addressed to him by any
one else, and to deliver his letter into no hands but mine.

`In case Sir Percival should come back tomorrow before two o'clock,' I
said to Laura, `the wisest plan for you to adopt is to be out in the
grounds all the morning with your book or your work, and not to appear
at the house till the messenger has had time to arrive with the letter.
I will wait here for him all the morning, to guard against any
misadventures or mistakes. By following this arrangement I hope and
believe we shall avoid being taken by surprise. Let us go down to the
drawing-room now. We may excite suspicion if we remain shut up together
too long.'

`Suspicion?' she repeated. `Whose suspicion can we excite, now that Sir
Percival has left the house? Do you mean Count Fosco ? '

`Perhaps I do, Laura.'

`You are beginning to dislike him as much as I do, Marian.'

`No, not to dislike him. Dislike is always more or less associated with
contempt –; I can see nothing im the Count to despise.'

`You are not afraid of him, are you?'

`Perhaps I am –; a little.'

`Afraid of him, after his interference in our favour today !'

`Yes. I am more afraid of his interference than I am of Sir Percival's
violence. Remember what I said to you in the library. Whatever you do,
Laura, don't make an enemy of the Count !'

We went downstairs. Laura entered the drawing-room, while I proceeded
across the hall, with my letter in my hand, to put it into the
post-bag,17 which hung against the wall opposite to me.

The house door was open, and as I crossed past it, I saw Count Fosco and
his wife standing talking together on the steps outside, with their
faces turned towards me.

The Countess came into the hall rather hastily, and asked if I had
leisure enough for five minutes' private conversation. Feeling a little
surprised by such an appeal from such a person, I put my letter into the
bag, and replied that I was quite at her disposal. She took my arm with
unaccustomed friendliness and familiarity, and instead of leading me
into an empty room, drew me out with her to the belt of turf which
surrounded the large fish-pond.

As we passed the Count on the steps he bowed and smiled, and then went
at once into the house, pushing the hall door to after him, but not
actually closing it.

The Countess walked me gently round the fish-pond. I expected to be made
the depositary of some extraordinary confidence, and I was astonished to
find that Madame Fosco's communication for my private ear was nothing
more than a polite assurance of her sympathy for me, after what had
happened in the library. Her husband had told her of all that had
passed, and of the insolent manner in which Sir Percival had spoken to
me. This information had so shocked and distressed her, on my account
and on Laura's, that she had made up her mind, if anything of the sort
happened again, to mark her sense of Sir Percival's outrageous conduct
by leaving the house. The Count had approved of her idea, and she now
hoped that I approved of it too.

I thought this a very strange proceeding on the part of such a
remarkably reserved woman as Madame Fosco, especially after the
interchange of sharp speeches which had passed between us during the
conversation in the boat-house on that very morning. However, it was my
plain duty to meet a polite and friendly advance on the part of one of
my elders with a polite and friendly reply. I answered the Countess
accordingly in her own tone, and then, thinking we had said all that was
necessary on either side, made an attempt to get back to the house.

But Madame Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, and to my
unspeakable amazement, resolved also to talk. Hitherto the most silent
of women, she now persecuted me with fluent conventionalities on the
subject of married life, on the subject of Sir Percival and Laura, on
the subject of her own happiness, on the subject of the late Mr
Fairlie's conduct to her in the matter of her legacy, and on half a
dozen other subjects besides, until she had detained me walking round
and round the fishpond for more than half an hour, and had quite wearied
me out. Whether she discovered this or not, I cannot say, but she
stopped as abruptly as she had begun –; looked towards the house door,
resumed her icy manner in a moment, and dropped my arm of her own accord
before I could think of an excuse for accomplishing my own release from
her.

As I pushed open the door and entered the hall, I found myself suddenly
face to face with the Count again. He was just putting a letter into the
post-bag.

After he had dropped it in and had closed the bag, he asked where I had
left Madame Fosco. I told him, and he went out at the hall door
immediately to join his wife. His manner when he spoke to me was so
unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked after him,
wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.

Why my next proceeding was to go straight up to the post-bag and take
out my own letter and look at it again, with a vague distrust on me, and
why the looking at it for the second time instantly suggested the idea
to my mind of sealing the envelope for its greater security –; are
mysteries which are either too deep or too shallow for me to fathom.
Women, as everybody knows, constantly act on impulses which they cannot
explain even to themselves, and I can only suppose that one of those
impulses was the hidden cause of my unaccountable conduct on this
occasion.

Whatever influence animated me, I found cause to congratulate myself on
having obeyed it as soon as I prepared to seal the letter in my own
room. I had originally closed the envelope in the usual way by
moistening the adhesive point and pressing it on the paper beneath, and
when I now tried it with my finger, after a lapse of full three-quarters
of an hour, the envelope opened on the instant, without sticking or
tearing. Perhaps I had fastened it insufficiently? Perhaps there might
have been some defect in the adhesive gum ?

Or, perhaps –; No ! it is quite revolting enough to feel that third
conjecture stirring in my mind. I would rather not see it confronting me
in plain black and white.

I almost dread tomorrow –; so much depends on my discretion and
self-control. There are two precautions, at all events, which l ain sure
not to forget. I must be careful to keep up friendly appearances with
the Count, and I must be well on my guard when the messenger from the
office comes here with the answer to my letter.




June 17th. –; When the dinner hour brought us together again, Count
Fosco was in his usual excellent spirits. He exerted himself to interest
and amuse us, as if he was determined to efface from our memories all
recollection of what had passed in the library that afternoon. Lively
descriptions of his adventures in travelling, amusing anecdotes of
remarkable people whom he had met with abroad, quaint comparisons
between the social customs of various nations, illustrated by examples
drawn from men and women indiscriminately all over Europe, humorous
confessions of the innocent follies of his own early life, when he ruled
the fashions of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote preposterous
romances on the French model for a second-rate Italian newspaper –; all
flowed in succession so easily and so gaily from his lips, and all
addressed our various curiosities and various interests so directly and
so delicately, that Laura and I listened to him with as much attention
and, inconsistent as it may seem, with, as much admiration also, as
Madame Fosco herself. Women can resist a man's love, a inan's fame, a
man s personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a
man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.

After dinner, while the favourable impression which he had produced on
us was still vivid in our minds, the Count modestly withdrew to read in
the library.

Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the long
evening. It was necessary ir. common politeness to ask Madame Fosco to
join us, but this time she had apparently received her orders
beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her. `The Count will
probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes,' she remarked by way of
apology, `and nobody can make them to his satisfaction but myself.' Her
cold blue eyes almost warmed as she spoke the words –; she looked
actually proud of being the officiating medium through which her lord
and master composed himself with tobacco-smoke !

Laura and I went out together alone.

It was a misty, heavy evening. There was a sense of blight in the air;
the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was parched and
dewless. The western heaven, as we saw it over the quiet trees, was of a
pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting faintly in a haze. Coming rain
seemed near –; it would fall probably with the fall of night.

`Which way shall we go ?' I asked.

`Towards the lake, Marian, if you like,' she answered.

`You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake.'

`No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it. The sand and heath and
the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in all this large
place, to remind me of Limmeridge. But we will walk in some other
direction if you prefer it.'

`I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love. One is the same
as another to me. Let us go to the lake –; we may find it cooler in the
open space than we find it here.'

We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence. The heaviness in
the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boat-house we
were glad to sit down and rest inside.

A white fog hung low over the lake. The dense brown line of the trees on
the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest floating in the
sky. The sandy ground, shelving downward from where we sat, was lost
mysteriously in the outward layers of the fog. The silence was horrible.
No rusthng of the leaves –; no bird's note in the wood –; no cry of
water-fowl irom the pools of the hidden lake. Even the croaking of the
frogs had ceased tonight

`It is very desolate and gloomy,' said Laura. `But we can be more alone
here than anywhere else.'

She spoke quietly and looked at the wilderness of sand and mist with
steady, thoughtful eyes. I could see that her mind was too much occupied
to feel the dreary impressions from without which had fastened
themselves already on mine.

`I promised, Marian, to tell you the truth about my married life,
instead of leaving you any longer to guess it for yourself,' she began.
`That secret is the first I have ever had from you, love, and I am
determined it shall be the last. I was silent, as you know, for your
sake –; and perhaps a little for my own sake as well. It is very hard
for a woman to confess that the man to whom she has given her whole life
is the man of all others who cares least for the gift. If you were
married yourself, Marian –; and especially if you were happily married
–; you would feel for me as no single woman call feel, however kind and
tme she may be.'

What answer could I make? I could only take her hand and look at her
with my whole heart as well as my eyes would let me.

`How often,' she went on, `I have heard you laughing over what you used
to call your ``poverty!'' how often you have made me mock-speeches of
congratulation on my wealth! Oh, Marian, never laugh again. Thank God
for your poverty –; it has made you your own mistress, and has saved you
from the lot that has fallen on me.'

A sad beginning on the lips of a young wife! –; sad in its quiet,
plain-spoken truth. The few days we had all passed together at
Blackwater Park had been many enough to show me –; to show any one –;
what her husband had married her for.

`You shall not be distressed,' she said, `by hearing how soon my
disappointments and my trials began –; or even by knowing what they
were. It is bad enough to have them on my memory. If I tell you how he
received the first and last attempt at remonstrance that I ever made,
you will know how he has always treated me, as well as if I had
described it in so many words. It was one day at Rome when we had ridden
out together to the tomb of Cecilia Metella. The sky was calm and
lovely, and the grand old ruin looked beautiful, and the remembrance
that a husband's love had raised it in the old time to a wife's memory,
made me feel more tenderly and more anxiously towards my husband than I
had ever felt yet. ``Would you build such a tomb for me, Percival?'' I
asked him. ``You said you loved me dearly before we were married, and
yet, since that time –;'' I could get no farther. Marian! he was not
even looking at me! I pulled down my veil, thinking it best not to let
him see that the tears were in my eyes. I fancied he had not paid any
attention to me, but he had. He said, ``Come away,'' and laughed to
himself as he helped me on to my horse. He mounted his own horse and
laughed again as we rode away. ``If I do build you a tomb,'' he said,
``it will be done with your own money. I wonder whether Cecilia Metella
had a fortune and paid for hers.'' I made no rePly –; how could I, when
I was crying behind my veil? ``Ah, you light-complexioned women are all
sulky,'' he said. ``What do you want? compliments and soft speeches?
Well! I'm in a good humour this morning. Consider the compliments paid
and the speeches said.'' Men little know when they say hard things to us
how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us. It would have
been better for me if I had gone on crying, but his contempt dried up my
tears and hardened my heart- From that time, Marian, I never checked
myself again in thinking of Walter Hartright. I let the memory of those
happy days, when we were so fond of each other in secret, come back and
comfort me. What else had I to look to for consolation? If we had been
together you would have helped me to better things. I know it was wrong,
darling, but tell me if I was wrong without any excuse.'

I was obliged to turn my face from her. `Don't ask me!' I said. `Have I
suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to decide?'

`I used to think of him,' she pursued, dropping her voice and moving
closer to me, `I used to think of him when Percival left me alone at
night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what I might have
been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty, and if I had been
his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap gown, sitting at home
and waiting for him while he was earning our bread –; sitting at home
and working for him and loving him all the better because I had to work
for him –; seeing him come in tired and taking off his hat and coat for
him, and, Marian, pleasing him with little dishes at dinner that l had
learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and
sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of him and see
him !'

As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned to
her voice. and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her eyes
rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view before us,
as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim and
threatening sky.

`Don't speak of Walter any more,' I said, as soon as I could control
myself. `Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him now
!'

She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.

`I would rather be silent about him for ever,' she answered, `than cause
you a moment's pain.'

`It is in your interests,' I pleaded; `it is for your sake that I speak.
If your husband heard you –;'

`It would not surprise him if he did hear me.'

She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness- The
change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as
much as the answer itself.

`Not surprise him !' I repeated. `Laura! remember what you are saying –;
you frighten me !'

`lt is true,' she said; `it is what I wanted to tell you today, when we
were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to him
at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian –; you said so yourself. The
name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it.'

I heard her, but I could say nothing. Her last words had killed the
little hope that still lived in me.

`It happened at Rome,' she went on, as wearily calm and cold as ever.
`We were at a little party given to the English by some friends of Sir
Percival's –; Mr and Mrs Markland. Mrs Markland had the reputation of
sketching very beautifully, and some of the guests prevailed on her to
show us her drawings. We all admired them, but something I said
attracted her attention particularly to me. ``Surely you draw yourself
?'' she asked. ``I used to draw a little once,'' I answered, ``but I
have given it up.'' ``If you have once drawn,'' she said, ``you may take
to it again one of these days, and if you do, I wish you would let me
recommend you a master.'' I said nothing –; you know why, Marian –; and
tried to change the conversation. But Mrs Markland persisted. ``l have
had all sorts of teachers,'' she went on, ``but the best of all, the
most intelligent and the most attentive, w a Mr Hartright. If you ever
take up your drawing again, do y him as a master. He is a young man –;
modest and gentlemanlike –; I am sure you will like him.'' Think of
those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence of strangers –;
strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and bridegroom! I did
all I could to control myself –; I said nothing, and looked down close
at the drawings. When I ventured to raise my head again, my eyes and my
husband's eyes met, and I knew, by his look, that my face had betrayed
me. ``We will see about Mr Hartright,'' he said, looking at me all the
time, ``when we get back to England. I agree with you, Mrs Markland –; I
think Lady Glyde is sure to like him.'' He laid an emphasis on the last
words which made my cheeks burn, and set my heart beating as if it would
stifle me. Nothing more was said. We came away eaily. He was silent in
the carriage driving back to the hotel. He helped me out, and followed
me upstairs as usual. But the moment we were in the drawing-room, he
locked the door, pushed me down into a chair, and stood over me with his
hands on my shoulders. ``Ever since that morning when you made your
audacious confession to me at Limmeridge,'' he said, ``I have wanted to
find out the man, and I found him in your face tonight. Your
drawing-master was the man, and his name is Hartright. You shall repent
it, and he shall repent it, to the last hour of your lives. Now go to
bed and dream of him if you like, with the marks of my horsewhip on his
shoulders.'' Whenever he is angry with me now he refers to what I
acknowledged to him in your presence with a sneer or a threat. I have no
power to prevent him from putting his own horrible construction on the
confidence I placed in him. I have no influence to make him believe me,
or to keep him silent. You looked surprised today when you heard him
tell me that I had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him. You will
not be surprised again when you hear him repeat it, the next time he is
out of temper –; Ch Marian ! don't! don't! you hurt me!'

I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my remorse had
closed them round her like a vice. Yes! my remorse. The white despair of
Walter's face, when my cruel words struck him to the heart in the
summer-house at Limmeridge, rose before me in mute, unendurable
reproach. My hand had pointed the way which led the man my sister loved,
step by step, far from his country and his friends. Between those two
young hearts l had stood, to sunder them for ever, the one from the
other, and his life and her life lay wasted before me alike in witness
of the deed. I had done this, and done it for Sir Percival Glyde.

For Sir Percival Glyde.

I heard her speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was
comforting me –; I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her
silence! How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my
own thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she was kissing
me, and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to their sense of
outward things, and I knew that I was looking mechanically straight
before me at the prospect of the lake.

`It is late,' I heard her whisper. `lt will be dark in the plantation.'
She shook my arm and repeated, `Marian! it will be dark in the
plantation.'

`Give me a minute longer,' I said –; `a minute, to get better in.'

I was afraid to trust myself to look at her yet, and I kept my eyes
fixed on the view.

It was late. The dense brown line of trees in the sky had faded in the
gathering darkness to the faint resemblance of a long wreath of smoke.
The mist over the lake below had stealthily enlarged, and advanced on
us. The silence was as breathless as ever, but the horror of it had
gone, and the solemn mystery of its stillness was all that remained.

`We are far from the house,' she whispered.  `Let us go hack.'

She stopped suddenly, and turned her face from me towards the entrance
of the boat-house.

`Marian !' she said, trembling violently. `Do you see nothing? took !'

`Where?'

`Down there, below us.'

She pointed. My eyes followed her hand, and I saw it too.

A living figure was moving over the waste of heath in the distance. It
crossed our range of view from the boat-house, and passed darkly along
the outer edge of the mist. It stopped far off, in front of us –; waited
–; and passed on; moving slowly, with the white cloud of mist behind it
and above it –; slowly, slowly, till it glided by the edge of the
boat-house, and we saw it no more.

We were both unnerved by what had passed between us that evening. Some
minutes elapsed before Laura would venture into the plantation, and
before I could make up my mind to lead her back to the house.

`Was it a man or a woman?' she asked in a whisper, as we moved at last
into the dark dampness of the outer air.

`I am not certain.'

`Which do you think?'

`It looked like a woman.'

`I was afraid it was a man in a long cloak.'

`It may be a man. In this dim light it is not possible to be certain.'

`Wait, Marian ! I'm frightened –; I don't see the path. Suppose the
figure should follow us?'

`Not at all likely, Laura. There is really nothing to be alarmed about.
The shores of the lake are not far from the village, and they are free
to any one to walk on by day or night. It is only wonderful we have seen
no living creature there before.'

We were now in the plantation. It was very dark –; so dark, that we
found some difficulty in keeping the path. I gave Laura my arm, and we
walked as fast as we could on our way back.

Before we were half-way through she stopped, and forced me to stop with
her. She was listening.

`Hush,' she whispered. `I hear something behind us.'

`Dead leaves,' I said to cheer her, `or a twig blown off the trees.'

`It is summer time, Marian, and there is not a breath of wind. Listen !'

I heard the sound too –; a sound like a light footstep following us.

`No matter who it is, or what it is,' I said, `let us walk on. In
another minute, if there is anything to alarm us, we shall be near
enough to the house to be heard.'

We went on quickly –; so quickly, that Laura was breathless by the time
we were nearly though the plantation, and within sight of the lighted
windows.

I waited a moment to give her breathing-time. Just as we were about to
proceed she stopped nie again, and signed to me with her hand to listen
once more. We both heard distinctly a long, heavy sigh behind us, in the
black depths of the trees.

`Who's there?' I called out.

There was no answer.

`Who's there ?' I repeated.

An instant of silence followed, and then we heard the light fall of the
footsteps again, fainter and fainter –; sinking away into the darkness
–; sinking, sinking, sinking –; till they were lost in the silence.

We hurried out from the trees to the open lawn beyond, crossed it
rapidly, and without another word passing between us, reached the house.

In the light of the hall-lamp Laura looked at me, with white cheeks and
startled eyes.

`I am half dead with fear,' she said. `Who could it have been ?'

`We will try to guess tomorrow,' I replied. `In the meantime say nothing
to any one of what we have heard and seen.'

`Why not?'

`Because silence is safe, and we have need of safety in this house.'

I sent Laura upstairs immediately, waited a minute to take off my hat
and put my hair smooth, and then went at once to make my first
investigations in the library, on pretence of searching for a book.

There sat the Count, filling out the largest easy-chair in the house,
smoking and reading calmly, with his feet on an ottoman, his cravat
across his knees, and his shirt collar wide open. And there sat Madame
Fosco, like a quiet child, on a stool by his side, making cigarettes.
Neither husband nor wife could, by any possibility, have been out late
that evening, and have just got back to the house in a hurry. I felt
that my object in visiting the library was answered the moment I set
eyes on them.

Count Fosco rose in polite confusion and tied his cravat on when I
entered the room.

`Pray don't let me disturb you,' I said. `I have only come here to get a
book.'

`All unfortunate men of my size suffer from the heat,' said the Count,
refreshing himself gravely with a large green fan. `I wish I could
change places with my excellent wife. She is as cool at this moment as a
fish in the pond outside.'

The Countess allowed herself to thaw under the influence of her
husband's quaint comparison.  I am never warm, Miss Halcombe,' she
remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to one of
her owm merits.

`Have you and Lady Glyde been out this evening?' asked the Count, while
I was taking a book from the shelves to preserve appearances.

`Yes, we went out to get a little air.'

`May I ask in what direction?'

`In the direction of the lake –; as far as the boat-house.'

`Aha? As far as the boat-house?'

Under other circunstances I might have resented his curiosity. But
tonight I hailed it as another proof that neither he nor his wife were
connected with the mysterious appearance at the lake.

`No more adventures, I supPose, this evening?' he went on. `No more
discoveries, like your discovery of the wounded dog?'

He fixed his unfathomable grey eyes on me, with that cold, clear,
irresistible glitter in them which always forces me to look at him, and
always makes me uneasy while I do look. An unutterable suspicion that
his mind is prying into mine overcomes me at these times, and it
overcame me now.

`No,' I said shortly; `no adventures –; no discoveries.'

I tried to look away from him and leave the room. Strange as it seems, I
hardly think I should have succeeded in the attempt if Madame Fosco had
not helped me by causing him to move and look away first.

` Coumt, you are keeping Miss Halcombe standing,' she said.

The moment he turned round to get me a chair, I seized my opportunity –;
thanked him –; made my excuses –; and slipped out.

An hour later, when Laura's niaid happened to be in her mistress's room,
I took occasion to refer to the closeness of the night, with a view to
ascertaining next how the servants had been passing their time.

`Have you been suffering much from the heat downstairs?' I asked.

`No, miss,' said the girl, `we have not felt it to speak of.'

`You have been out in the woods then, I suppose ?'

`Some of us thought of going, miss. But cook said she should take her
chair into the cool court-yard, outside the kitchen door, and on second
thoughts, all the rest of us took our chairs out there too.'

The housekeeper was now the only person who remained to be accounted
for.

`Is Mrs Michelson gone to bed yet?' I inquired.

`I should this not, miss,' said the girl, smiling. `Mrs Michelson is
more likely to be getting up just now than going to bed.'

`Why? What do you mean? Has Mrs Michelson been taking to her bed in the
daytime?'

`No, miss, not exactly, but the next thing to it. She's been asleep all
the evening on the sofa in her own room.'

Putting together what I observed for myself in the library, and what I
have just heard from Laura's maid, one conclusion seems inevitable. The
figure we saw at the lake was not the figure of Madame Fosco, of her
husband, or of any of the servants. The footsteps we heard behind us
were not the footsteps of any one belonging to the house.

Who could it have been?

It seems useless to inquire. I cannot even decide whether the figure was
a man's or a woman's. I can only say that I think it was a woman's.




June 18th. –; The misery of self-reproach which I suffered yesterday
evening, on hearing what Laura told me in the boat-house, returned in
the loneliness of the night, and kept me waking and wretched for hours.

I lighted my candle at last, and searched through my old journals to see
what my share in the fatal error of her marriage had really been, and
what I might have once done to save her from it. The result soothed me a
little –; for it showed that, however blindly and ignorantly I acted, I
acted for the best. Crying generally does me harm; but it was not so
last night –; I think it relieved me. I rose this morning with a settled
resolution and a quiet mind. Nothing Sir Percival can say or do shall
ever irritate me again, or make me forget for one moment that I am
staying here in defiance of mortifications, insults, and threats, for
Laura's service and for Laura's sake.

The speculations in which we might have indulged this morning, on the
subject of the figure at the lake and the footsteps in the plantation,
have been all suspended by a trifling accident which has caused Laura
great regret. She has lost the little brooch I gave her for a keepsake
on the day before her marriage. As she wore it when we went out
yesterday evening we can only suppose that it must have dropped from her
dress, either im the boat-house or on our way back. The servants have
been sent to search, and have returned unsuccessful. And now Laura
herself has gone to look for it. Whether she finds it or not the loss
will help to excuse her absence from the house, if Sir Percival returns
before the letter from Mr Gilmore's partner is Placed in my hands.

One o'clock has just struck. I am considering whether I had better wait
here for the arrival of the messenger from London, or slip away quietly,
and watch for him outside the lodge gate.

My suspicion of everybody and everything in this house inclines me to
think that the second plan may be the best. The Count is safe in the
breakfast-room. I heard him, through the door, as I ran upstairs ten
minutes since, exercising his canarybirds at their tricks:  –; `Come out
on my little finger, my pret-pret-pretties I Come out, and hop upstairs
I One, two, three –; and up ! Three, two, one –; and down ! One, two,
three –; twittwit-twit-tweet !' The birds burst into their usual ecstasy
of singing, and the Count chirruped and whistled at them in return, as
if he was a bird himself. My room door is open, and I can hear the
shrill singing and whistling at thts very moment If I am really to slip
out without being observed, now is my time.

Four o'clock. The three hours that have passed since I made my last
entry have turned the whole march of events at Blackwater Park in a new
direction. Whether for good or for evil, I cannot and dare not decide.

Let me get back first to the place at which I left off, or I shall lose
myself in the confusion of my own thoughts.

I went out, as I had proposed, to meet the messenger with my letter from
London at the lodge gate. On the stairs I saw no one. In the hall I
heard the Count still exercising his birds. But on crossing the
quadrangle outside, I Passed Madame Fosco, walking by herself in her
favourite circle, round and round the great fish-pond. I at once
slackened my pace, so as to avoid all appearance of being in a hurry,
and even went the length, for caution's sake, of inquiring if she
thought of going out before lunch. She smiled at me in the friendliest
manner –; said she preferred remaining near the house, nodded
pleasantiy, and reentered the hall. I looked back, and saw that she had
closed the door before I had opened the wicket by the side of the
carriage gates.

In less than a quarter of an hour I reached the lodge.

The lane outside took a sudden turn to the left, ran on straight for a
hundred yards or so, and then took another sharp turn to the right to
join the high-road. Between these two turns, hidden from the lodge on
one side, and from the way to the station on the other, I waited,
walking backwards and forwards. High hedges were on either side of me,
and for twenty minutes, by my watch, I neither saw nor heard anything.
At the end of that time the sound of a carriage caught my ear, and I was
met, as I advanced towards the second turning, by a fly from the
railway. I made a sign to the driver to stop. As he obeyed me a
respectable-looking man put his head out of the window to see what was
the matter.

`I beg your pardon,' I said, `but am I right in supposing that you are
going to Blackwater Park?'

`Yes, ma'am.'

`With a letter for any one?'

`With a letter for Miss Halcombe, ma'am.'

`You may give me the letter. I am Miss Halcombe.

The man touched his hat, got out of the fly immediately, and gave me the
letter.

I opened it at once and read these lines. I copy them here, thinking it
best to destroy the original for caution's sake.

`DEAR MADAM, –; Your letter received this morning has caused me very
great anxiety. I will reply to it as briefly and plainly as possible.

`My careful consideration of the statement made by yourself, and my
knowledge of Lady Glyde's position, as defined in the settlement, lead
me, I regret to say, to the conclusion that a loan of the trust money to
Sir Percival (or, in other words, a loan of some portion of the twenty
thousand pounds of Lady Glyde's fortune) is in contemplation, and that
she is made a party to the deed, in order to secure her approval of a
flagrant breach of trust, and to have her signature produced against her
if she should complain hereafter. It is impossible, on any other
supposition, to account, situated as she is, for her execution to a deed
of any kind being wanted at all.

`In the event of Lady Glyde's signing such a document, as I am compelled
to suppose the deed in question to be, her trustees would be at liberty
to advance money to Sir Percival out of her twenty thousand pounds. If
the amount so lent should not be paid back, and if Lady Glyde should
have children, their fortune will then be diminished by the sum, large
or small, so advanced. ln plainer terms still, the transaction, for
anything that Lady Glyde knows to the contrary, may be a fraud upon her
unborn children.

`Under these serious circumstances, I would recommend Lady Glyde to
assign as a reason for withholding her signature, that she wishes the
deed to be first submitted to myself, as her family solicitor (in the
absence of my partner, S Gilmore). No reasonable objection can be made
to taking this course –; for, if the transaction is an honourable one,
there will necessarily be no difficulty in my giving my approval.

`Sincerely assuring you of my readiness to afford any additional help or
advice that may be wanted, I beg to remain, Madam, your faithful
serwant, WILLIAM KYRSE.

I read this kind and sensible letter very thankfully. It supplied Laura
with a reason for objecting to the signature which was umanswerable, and
which we could both of us understand. The messenger waited near me while
I was reading to receive his directions when I had done.

`Will you be good enough to say that I understand the letter, and that I
am very much obliged?' I said. `There is no other reply necessary at
present.'

Exactly at the moment when I was speaking those words, holding the
letter open in my hand, Count Fosco turned the corner of the lane from
the high-road, and stood before me as if he had sPrung up out of the
earth.

The suddenness of his appearance, in the very last place under heaven in
which I should have expected to see him, took me completely by surprise.
The messenger wished me good morning, and got into the fly again. I
could not say a word to him –; I was not even able to return his bow.
The conviction that I was discovered –; and by that man, of all others
–; absolutely petrified me.

`Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?' he inquired, without
showing the least surprise on his side, and without even looking after
the fly, which drove off while he was speaking to me.

I collected myself sufficiently to make a sign in the affirmative.

`I am going back too,' he said. `Pray allow me the pleasure of
accompanying you. Will you take my arm? You look surprised at seeing me
!'

I took his arm. The first of my scattered senses that came back was the
sense that warned me to sacrifice anything rather than make an enemy of
him.

`You look surprised at seeing me!' he repeated in his quietly
pertinacious way.

`I thought, Count, I heard you with your birds in the breakfast-room,' I
answered, as quietly and firmly as I could.

`Surely. But my little feathered children, dear lady, are only too like
other children. They have their days of perversity, and this morning was
one of them. My wife came in as I was putting them back in their cage,
and said she had left you going out alone for a walk. You told her so,
did you not?'

` Certainly.'

`Well, Miss Halcombe, the pleasure of accompanying you was too great a
temptation for me to resist. At my age there is no harm in confessing so
much as that, is there? I seized my hat, and set off to offer myself as
your escort. Even so fat an old man as Fosco is surely better than no
escort at all? I took the wrong path –; I came back in despair, and here
I am, arrived (may I say it?) at the height of my wishes.'

He talked on in this complimentary strain with a fluency which left me
no exertion to make beyond the effort of maintaining my composure. He
never referred in the most distant manner to what he had seen in the
lane, or to the letter which l still had in my hand. This ominous
discretion helped to convince me that he must have surprised, by the
most dishonourable means, the secret of my application in Laura's
interest to the lawyer; and that, having now assured himself of the
private manner in which I had received the answer, he had discovered
enough to suit his purposes, and was only bent on trying to quiet the
suspicions which he knew he must have aroused in my mind. I was wise
enough, under these circumstances, not to attempt to deceive hin by
plausible explanations, and woman enough, notwithstanding my dread of
him, to feel as if my hand was tainted by resting on his arm.

On the drive in front of the house we met the dog-cart being taken round
to the stables. Sir Percival had just returned. He came out to meet us
at the house-door. Whatever other results his journey might have had, it
had not ended in softening his savage temper.

`Oh I here are two of yon come back,' he said, with a lowering face.
`What is the meaning of the house being deserted in this way? Where is
Lady Glyde?'

I told him of the loss of the brooch, and said that Laura had gone into
the plantation to look for it.

`Brooch or no brooch,' he growled sulkily, `I recommend her not to
forget her appointment in the library this afternoon. I shall expect to
see her in half an hour.'

I took my hand from the Count's arm, and slowly ascended the steps. He
honoured me with one of his magnificent bows, and then addressed himself
gaily to the scowling master of the house.

`Tell me, Percival,' he said, `have you had a pleasant drive? And has
your pretty shining Brown Molly come back at all tired ?'

`Brown Molly be hanged –; and the drive too! I want my lunch.'

`And I want five minutes' talk with you, Percival, first,' returned the
Count. `Five minutes' talk, my friend, here on the grass.'

`What about?'

`About business that very much concerns you.'

I lingered long enough in passing through the hall-door to hear this
question and answer, and to see Sir Percival thrust his hands into his
pockets in sullen hesitation.

`If you want to badger me with any more of your infernal scruples,' he
said, ` I for one won't hear them. I want my lunch.'

`Come out here and speak to me,' repeated the Count, still perfectly
uninfluenced by the rudest speech that his friend could make to him.

Sir Percival descended the steps. The Count took him by the arm, and
walked him away gently. The `business,' I was sure, referred to the
question of the signature. They were speaking of Laura and of me beyond
a doubt. I felt heart-sick and faint with anxiety. It might be of the
last importance to both of us to know what they were saying to each
other at that moment, and not one word of it could by any possibility
reach my ears.

I walked about the house, from room to room, with the lawyer's letter in
my bosom (I was afraid by this time even to trust it under lock and
key), till the oppression of my suspense half maddened me. There were no
signs of Laura's return, and I thought of going out to look for her. But
my strength was so exhausted by the trials and anxieties of the morning
that the heat of the day quite overpowered me, and after an attempt to
get to the door I was obliged to return to the drawimg-room and lie down
on the nearest sofa to recover.

I was just composing myself when the door opened softly and the Count
looked in.

`A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe,' he said: `I only venture to disturb
you because I am the bearer of good news. Percival –; who is capricious
in everything, as you know –; has seen fit to alter his mind at the last
moment, and the business of the signature is put off for the present. A
great relief to all of us, Miss Halcombe, as I see with pleasure in your
face. Pray present my best respects and felicitations, when you mention
this pleasant change of circumstances to Lady Glyde.'

He left me before I had recovered my astonishment. There could be no
doubt that this extraordinary alteration of purpose in the matter of the
signature was due to his influence, and that his discovery of my
application to London yesterday, and of my having received an answer to
it today, had offered him the means of interfering with certain success.

I felt these impressions, but my mind seemed to share the exhaustion of
my body, and I was in no condition to dwell on them with any useful
reference to the doubtful present or the threatening future. I tried a
second time to run out and find Laura, but my head was giddy and my
knees trembled under me. There was no choice but to give it up again and
retum to the sofa, sorely against my will.

The quiet in the house, and the low murmuring hum of summer insects
outside the open window, soothed me. My eyes closed of themselves, and I
passed gradually into a strange condition, which was not waking –; for I
knew nothing of what was going on about me, and not sleeping –; for I
was conscious of my own repose. In this state my fevered mind broke
loose from me, while my weary body was at rest, and in a trance, or
day-dream of my fancy –; I know not what to call it –; I saw Walter
Hartright. I had not thought of him since I rose that morning –; Laura
had not said one word to me either directly or indirectly referring to
him –; and yet I saw him now as plainly as if the past time had
returned, and we were both together again at Limmeridge House.

He appeared to me as one among many other men, none of whose faces I
could plainly discern. They were all lying on the steps of an immense
ruined temple. Colossal tropical trees –; with rank creepers twiming
endlessly about their trunks, and hideous stone idols glimmering and
grinning at intervals behind leaves and stalks and branches –;
surrounded the temple and shut out the sky, and threw a dismal shadow
over the forlorn band of men on the steps. White exhalations twisted and
curled up stealthily from the ground, approached the men in wreaths like
smoke, touched them, and stretched them out dead, one by one, in the
Places where they lay. An agony of pity and fear for Walter loosened my
tongue, and I implored him to escape. `Come back, come back !' I said.
`Remember your promise to her and to me. Come back to us before the
Pestilence reaches you and lays you dead like the rest!'

He looked at me with an unearthly quiet in his face. `Wait,' he said, `I
shall come back. The night when I met the lost Woman on the highway was
the night which set my life apart to be the instrument of a Design that
is yet unseen. Here, lost in the wilderness, oi there, welcomed back in
the land of my birth, I am still walking on the dark road which leads
me, and you, and the sister of your love and mine, to the unknown
Retribution and the inevitable End. Wait and look. The Pestilence which
touches the rest will pass me.'

I saw him again. He was still in the forest, and the numbers of his lost
companions had dwindled to very few. The temple was gone, and the idols
were gone –; and in their place the figures of dark, dwarfish men lurked
murderously among the trees, with bows in their hands, and arrows fitted
to the string. Once more I feared for Walter, and cried out to warn him.
Once more he turned to me, with the immovable quiet in his face.

`Another step,' he said, `on the dark road. Wait and look. The arrows
that strike the rest will spare me.'

I saw him for the third time in a wrecked ship, stranded on a wild,
sandy shore. The overloaded boats were making away from him for the
land, and he alone was left to sink with the ship. I cried to him to
hail the hindmost boat, and to make a last effort for his life. The
quiet face looked at me in return, and the unmoved voice gave me back
the changeless reply `Another step on the journey. Wait and look. The
Sea which drowns the rest will spare me.'

I saw him for the last time. He was kneeling by a tomb of white marble,
and the shadow of a veiled woman rose out of the grave beneath and
waited by his side. The unearthly quiet of his face had changed to an
unearthly sorrow. But the terrible certainty of his words remained the
same. `Darker and darker,' he said; `farther and farther yet. Death
takes the good, the beautiful, and the young –; and spares me. The
Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the
Grave that closes over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take
me nearer and nearer to the End.'

My heart sank under a dread beyond words, under a grief beyond tears.
The darkness closed round the pilgrim at the marble tomb –; closed round
the veiled woman from the grave –; closed round the dreamer who looked
on them. I saw and heard no more.

I was aroused by a hand laid on my shoulder. It was Laura's.

She had dropped on her knees by the side of the sofa. Her face was
flushed and agitated, and her eyes met mine in a wild be wildered
manner. I started the instant I saw her.

` What has happened ?' I asked. `What has frightened you?'

She looked round at the half-open door, put her lips close to my ear,
and answered in a whisper –;

`Marian ! –; the figure at the lake –; the footsteps last night –; I've
just seen her ! I've just spoken to her !'

`Who, for Heaven's sake?'

`Anne Catherick.'

I was so startled by the disturbance in Laura's face and manner, and so
dismayed by the first waking impressions of my dream, that I was not fit
to bear the revelation which burst upon me when that name passed her
lips. I could only stand rooted to the floor, looking at her in
breathless silence.

She was too much absorbed by what had happened to notice the effect
which her reply had produced on me. `I have seen Anne Catherick! I have
spoken to Anne Catherick!' she repeated as if I had not heard her. `Oh,
Marian, I have such things to tell you I Come away –; we may be
interrupted here –; come at once into my room.'

With those eager words she caught me by the hand, and led me through the
library, to the end room on the ground floor, which had been fitted up
for her own especial use. No third person, except her maid, could have
any excuse for surprising us here. She pushed me in before her, locked
the door, and drew the chintz curtaims that hung over the inside.

The strange, stunned feeling which had taken possession of me still
remained. But a growing conviction that the complications which had long
threatened to gather about her, and to gather about me, had suddenly
closed fast round us both, was now beginning to penetrate my mind. I
could not express it in words –; I could hardly even realise it dimly in
my own thoughts. `Anne Catherick ! ' I whispered to myself, with
useless, helpless reiteration –; `Anne Catherick !'

Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the room.
`Look !' she said, `look here !' –; and pointed to the bosom of her
dress.

I saw, for the first time. that the lost brooch was pinned in its place
again. There was something real in the sight of it, something real in
the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to steady the whirl and
confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to compose myself.

`Where did you find your brooch?' The first words I could say to her
were the words which put that trivial question at that important moment.

` She found it, Marian.'

`Where ?'

`On the floor of the boat-house. Oh, how shall I begin –; how shall I
tell you about it! She talked to me so strangely –; she loked so
fearfully ill –; she left me so suddenly –; !'

Her voice rose as the tumult of her recollections pressed upon her mind.
The inveterate distrust which weighs, night and day, on my spirits in
this house, instantly roused me to warn her –; just as the sight of the
brooch had roused me to question her, the moment before.

`Speak low,' I said. `The window is open, and the garden path runs
beneath it. Begin at the beginning, Laura. Tell me, word for word, what
passed between that woman and you.'

`Shall I close the window?'

`No, only speak low –; only remember that Anne Catherick is a dangerous
subject under your husband's roof. Where did you first see her?'

`At the boat-house, Marian. I went out, as you know, to find my brooch,
and I walked along the path through the plantation, looking down on the
ground carefully at every step. In that way l got on, after a long time,
to the boat-house, and as soon as I was inside it, I went on my knees to
hunt over the floor. I was still searching with my back to the doorway,
when I heard a soft, strange voice behind me say, `` Miss Fairlie.'''

`Miss Fairlie !'

`Yes, my old name –; the dear, familiar name that I thought I had parted
from for ever. I started up –; not frightened, the voice was too kind
and gentle to frighten anybody –; but very much surprised. There,
looking at me from the doorway, stood a woman, whose face I never
remembered to have seen before –;'

`How was she dressed?'

`She had a neat, pretty white gown on, and over it a poor worn thin dark
shawl. Her bonnet was of brown straw, as poor and worn as the shawl. I
was struck by the difference between her gown and the rest of her dress,
and she saw that I noticed it. ``Don't look at my bonnet and shawl,''
she said, speaking in a quick, breathless, sudden way; ``if I mustn't
wear white, I don't care what I wear. Look at my gown as much as you
please –; I'm not ashamed of that.'' Very strange, was it not? Before I
could say anything to soothe her, she held out one of her hands, and I
saw my brooch in it. I was so pleased and so grateful that I went quite
close to her to say what I really felt. ``Are you thankful enough to do
me one little kindness?'' she asked. ``Yes, indeed,'' I answered, ``any
kindness in my power I shall be glad to show you.'' ``Then let me pin
your brooch on for you, now I have found it.'' Her request was so
unexpected, Marian, and she made it with such extraordinary eagerness,
that I drew back a step or two, not well knowing what to do. ``Ah!'' she
said, ``your mother would have let me pin on the brooch.'' There was
something in her voice and her look, as well as in her mentioning my
mother in that reproachful manner, which made me ashamed of my distrust.
I took her hand with the brooch in it, and put it up gently on the bosom
of my dress. ``You knew my mother?'' I said. ``Was it very long ago?
have I ever seen you before?'' Her hands were busy fastening the brooch:
she stopped and pressed them against my breast. ``You don't remember a
fine spring day at Limmeridge,'' she said, ``and your mother walking
down the path that led to the school, with a little girl on each side of
her? l have had nothing else to think of since, and I remember it. You
were one of the little girls, and I was the other. Pretty, clever Miss
Fairlie, and poor dazed Anne Catherick were nearer to each other then
than they are now!'

` Did you remember her, Laura, when she told you her name ?'

`Yes, I remembered your asking me about Anne Catherick at Limmeridge,
and your saying that she had once been considered like me.'

` What reminded you of that, Laura ?'

`She reminded me. While I was looking at her, while she was very close
to me, it came over my mind suddenly that we were like each other! Her
face was pale and thin and weary –; but the sight of it startled me, as
if it had been the sight of my own face in the glass after a long
illness. The discovery –; I don't know why –; gave ine such a shock,
that I was perfectly incapable of speaking to her for the moment.'

`Did she seem hurt by your silence?'

`I am afraid she was hurt by it. ``You have not got your mother's
face,'' she said, ``or your mother's heart. Your mother's face was dark,
and your mother's heart, Miss Fairlie, was the heart of an angel.'' ``I
am sure I feel kindly towards you,'' I said, ``though I may not be able
to express it as I ought. Why do you call me Miss Fairlie –;?''
``Because I love the name of Fairlie and hate the name of Glyde,–;' she
broke out violently. I had seen nothing like madness in her before this,
but I fancied I saw it now in her eyes. ``l only thought you might not
know I was married,'' I said, remembering the wild letter she wrote to
me at Limmeridge, and trying to quiet her. She sighed bitterly, and
turned away from me. ``Not know you were married?'' she repeated. ``I am
here because you are married. I am here to make atonement to you, before
I meet your mother in the world beyond the grave.'' She drew farther and
farther away from me, till she was out of the boat-house, and then she
watched and listened for a little while. When she turned round to speak
again, instead of coming back, she stopped where she was, looking in at
me, with a hand on each side of the entrance. ``Did you see me at the
lake last night?'' she said. ``Did you hear me following you in the
wood? I have been waiting for days together to speak to you alone –; I
have left the only friend I have in the world, anxious and frightened
about me –; I have risked being shut up again in the mad-house –; and
all for your sake, Miss Fairlie, all for your sake.'' Her words alarmed
me, Marian, and yet there was something in the way she spoke that made
me pity her with all my heart. I am sure my pity must have been sincere,
for it made me bold enough to ask the poor creature to come in, and sit
dowm in the boat-house, by my side.'

`Did she do so?'

`No. She shook her head, and told me she must stop where she was, to
watch and listen, and see that no third person surprised us. And from
first to last, there she waited at the entrance, with a hand on each
side of it, sometimes bending im suddenly to speak to me, sometimes
drawing back suddenly to look about her. `I was here yesterday,'' she
said, ``before it came dark, and I heard you, and the lady with you,
talking together. I heard you tell her about your husband. I heard you
say you had no influence to make him believe you, and no influence to
keep him silent. Ah ! I knew what those words meant –; my conscience
told me while I was listening. Why did I ever let you marry him! Oh, my
fear –; my mad, miserable, wicked fear ! –;'' She covered up her face in
her poor worn shawl, and moaned and murmured to herself behind it. I
began to be afraid she might break out into some terrible despair which
neither she nor I could master. ``Try to quiet yourself,'' I said; ``try
to tell me how you might have prevented my marriage.'' She took the
shawl from her face, and looked at me vacantly. ``I ought to have had
heart enough to stop at Limmeridge,'' she answered. ``I ought never to
have let the news of his coming there frighten me away. I ought to have
warned you and saved you before it was too late. Why did I only have
courage enough to write you that letter? Why did I only do harm, when I
wanted and meant to do good? Oh, my fear –; my mad, miserable, wicked
fear !'' She repeated those words again, and hid her face again in the
end of her poor worn shawl. It was dreadful to see her, and dreadful to
hear her.'

`Surely, Laura, you asked what the fear was which she dwelt on so
earnestly?'

`Yes, I asked that.'

`And what did she say?'

`She asked me in return, if I should not be afraid of a man who had shut
me up in a mad-house, and who would shut me up again, if he could? I
said, ``Are you afraid still? Surely you would not be here if you were
afraid now?'' ``No,'' she said, ``I am not afraid now.'' I asked why not
She suddenly bent forward into the boat-house, and said, `` Can't you
guess why?'' I shook my head. ``Look at me,'' she went on. I told her I
was grieved to see that she looked very sorrowful and very ill. She
smiled for the first time. ``Ill?'' she repeated; ``I'm dying. You know
why I'm not afraid of him now. Do you think I shall meet your mother in
heaven? Will she forgive me if I do?'' I was so shocked and so startled,
that I could make no reply. ``I have been thinking of it,'' she went on,
``all the time I have been in hiding from your husband, all the time I
lay ill. My thoughts have driven me here –; I want to make atonement –;
I want to undo all I can of the harm I once did.'' I begged her as
earnestly as I could to tell me what she meant. She still looked at me
with fixed vacant eyes. ``Shall I undo the harm?'' she said to herself
doubtfully. ``You have friends to take your part. If you know his
Secret, he will be afraid of you, he won't dare use you as he used me.
He must treat you mercifully far his own sake, if he is afraid of you
and your friends. And if he treats you mercifully, and if I can say it
was my doing –;'' I listened eagerly for more, but she stopped at those
words.'

`You tried to make her go on?'

`I tried, but she only drew herself away from me again, and leaned her
face and arms against the side of the boat-house. ``Oh!'' I heard her
say, with a dreadful, distracted tenderness in her voice, ``oh! if I
could only be buried with your mother ! If I could only wake at her
side, when the angel's trumpet sounds, and the graves give up their dead
at the resurrection !'' –; Marian! I trembled from head to foot –; it
was horrible to hear her. ``But there is no hope of that,'' she said,
moving a little, so as to look at me again, ``no hope for a poor
stranger like me. I shall not rest under the marble cross that I washed
with my own hands, and made so white and pure for her sake. Oh no ! oh
no ! God's mercy, not man's, will take me to her, where the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest.'' She spoke those words
quietly and sorrowfully, with a heavy, hopeless sigh, and then waited a
little. Her face was confused and troubled, she seemed to be thinking,
or trying to think. ``What was it I said just now?'' she asked after a
while. ``When your mother is in my mind, everything else goes out of it.
What was I saying? what was I saying?'' I reminded the poor creature, as
kindly and delicately as I could. ``Ah, yes, yes,'' she said, still in a
vacant, perplexed manner. ``You are helpless with your wicked husband.
Yes. And I must do what I have come to do here –; I must make it up to
you for having been afraid to speak out at a better time.'' ``What is it
you have to tell me ?'' I asked. ``The Secret that your cruel husband is
afraid of,'' she amswered. ``I once threatened him with the Secret, and
frightened him. You shall threaten him with the Secret, and frighten him
too.'' Her face darkened, and a hard, angry stare fixed itself in her
eyes. She began waving her hand at me in a vacant, unmeaning manner.
``My mother knows the Secret,'' she said. ``My mother has wasted under
the Secret half her lifetime. One day, when I was grown up, she said
something to me. And the next day your husband –;'''

`Yes! yes! Go on. What did she tell you about your husband?'

`She stopped again, Marian, at that point –;'

`And said no more?'

`And listened eagerly. ``Hush !'' she whispered, still waving her hand
at me.  `Hush!'' She moved aside out of the doorway, moved slowly and
stealthily, step by step, till I lost her past the edge of the
boat-house.'

`Surely you followed her?'

`Yes, my anxiety made me bold enough to rise and follow her. rust as I
reached the entrance, she appeared again suddenly, round the side of the
boat-house. ``The Secret,'' I whispered to her –; ``wait and tell me the
Secret!'' She caught hold of my arm, and looked at me with wild
frightened eyes. ``Not now,'' she said, ``we are not alone –; we are
watched. Come here tomorrow at this time –; by yourself –; mind –; by
yourself.'' She Pushed me roughly into the boat-house again, and I saw
her no more.'

`Oh, Laura, Laura, another chance lost! If I had only been near you she
should not have escaped us. On which side did you lose sight of her?'

`On the left side, where the ground sinks and the wood is thickest.'

`Did you run out again? did you call after her?'

`How could I? I was too terrified to move or speak.'

`But when you did move –; when you came out –;?'

`I ran back here, to tell you what had happened.'

`Did you see any one, or hear any one, in the plantation?'

`No, it seemed to be all still and quiet when I passed through it.'

I waited for a moment to consider. Was this person, supposed to have
been secretly present at the interview, a reality, or the creature of
Anne Catherick's excited fancy? It was impossible to determine. The one
thing certain was, that we had failed again on the very brink of
discovery –; failed utterly and irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick
kept her appointment at the boat-house for the next day.

`Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed? Every word
that was said ?' I inquired.

`I think so,' she answered. `My powers of memory, Marian, are not like
yours. But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply interested, that
nothing of any importance can possibly have escaped me.'

`My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne
Catherick is concerned. Think again. Did no chance reference escape her
as to the place in which she is living at the present time?'

`None that I can remember.'

`Did she not mention a companion and friend –; a woman named Mrs
Clements?'

`Oh yes! yes ! I forgot that. She told me Mrs Clements wanted sadly to
go with her to the lake and take care of her, and begged and prayed that
she would not venture into this neighbourhood alone.'

`Was that all she said about Mrs Clements?'

`Yes, that was all.'

`She told you nothing about the place in which she took refuge after
leaving Todd's Corner?'

`Nothing –; I am quite sure.'

`Nor where she has lived since? Nor what her illness had been?'

`No, Marian, not a word. Tell me, pray tell me, what you think about it.
I don't know what to think, or what to do next.'

`You must do this, my love: You must carefully keep the appointment at
the boat-house tomorrow. It is impossible to say what interests may not
depend on your seeing that woman again. You shall not be left to
yourself a second time. I will follow you at a safe distance. Nobody
shall see me, but I will keep within hearing of your voice, if anything
happens. Anne Catherick has escaped Walter Hartright, and has escaped
you. Whatever happens, she shall not escape me.'

Laura's eyes read mine attentively.

`You believe,' she said, `in this secret that my husband is afraid of ?
Suppose, Marian, it should only exist after all in Anne Catherick's
fancy? Suppose she only wanted to see me and to speak to me, for the
sake of old remembrances? Her manner was so strange –; I almost doubted
her. Would you trust her in other things ?'

`I trust nothing, Laura, but my own observation of your husband's
conduct. I judge Anne Catherick's words by his actions, and I believe
there is a secret.'

I said no more, and got up to leave the room. Thoughts were troubling me
which I might have told her if we had spoken together longer, and which
it might have been dangerous for her to know. The influence of the
terrible dream from which she had awakened me hung darkly and heavily
over every fresh impression which the progress of her narrative produced
on my mind. I felt the ominous future coming close, chilling me with an
unutterable awe, forcing on me the conviction of an unseen design in the
long series of complications which had now fastened round us. I thought
of Hartright –; as I saw him in the body when he said farewell; as I saw
him in the spirit in my dream –; and I too began to doubt now whether we
were not advancing blindfold to an appointed and an inevitable end.

Leaving Laura to go upstairs alone, I went out to look about me in the
walks near the house. The circumstances under which Anne Catherick had
parted from her had made nie secretly anxious to know how Count Fosco
was passing the afternoon, and had rendered me secretly distrustful of
the results of that solitary journey from which Sir Percival had
returned but a few hours since.

After looking for them in every direction and discovering nothing, I
returned to the house, and entered the different rooms on the ground
floor one after another. They were all empty. I cane out again into the
hall, and went upstairs to return to Laura. Madame Fosco opened her door
as I passed it on my way along the passage, and I stopped to see if she
could inform me of the whereabouts of her husband and Sir Percival. Yes,
she had seen them both from her window more than an hour since. The
Count had looked up with his customary kindness, and had mentioned with
his habitual attention to her in the smallest trifles, that he and his
friend were going out together for a long walk.

For a long walk! They had never yet been in each other's company with
that object in my experience of them. Sir Percival cared for no exercise
but riding, and the Count (except when he was polite enough to be my
escort) cared for no exercise at all.

When I joined Laura again, I found that she had called to mind in my
absence the impending question of the signature to the deed, which, in
the interest of discussing her interview with Anne Catherick, we had
hitherto overlooked. Her first words when I saw her expressed her
surprise at the absence of the expected summons to attend Sir Percival
in the library.

`You may make your mind easy on that subject,' I said. `For the present,
at least, neither your resolution nor mine will be exposed to any
further trial. Sir Percival has altered his plans –; the business of the
signature is put off.'

`Put off?' Laura repeated amazedly. `Who told you so ?'

`My authority is Count Fosco. I believe it is to his interference that
we are indebted for your husband's sudden change of purpose.'

`It seems impossible, Marian. If the object of my signing was, as we
suppose, to obtain money for Sir percival that he urgently wanted, how
can the matter be put off?'

`I think, Laura, we have the means at hand of setting that doubt at
rest. Have you forgotten the conversation that I heard between Sir
Percival and the lawyer as they were crossing the hall ?'

` No, but I don't remember –;'

`I do. There were two alternatives proposed. One was to obtain your
signature to the parchment. The other was to gain time by giving bills
at three months. The last resource is evidently the resource now
adopted, and we may fairly hope to be relieved from our share in Sir
Percival's embarrassments for some time to come.'

`Oh, Marian, it sounds too good to be true!'

`Does it, my love? You complimented me on my ready memory not long
since, but you seem to doubt it now. I will get my journal, and you
shall see if I am right or wrong.'

I went away and got the book at once.

On looking back to the entry referring to the lawyer's visit, we found
that my recollection of the two altermatives presented was accurately
correct. It was almost as great a relief to my mind as to Laura's, to
find that my memory had served me, on this occasion, as faithfully as
usual. In the perilous uncertainty of our present situation, it is hard
to say what future interests may not depend upon the regularity of the
entries in my journal, and upon the reliability of my recollection at
the time when I make them.

Laura's face and manner suggested to me that this last consideration had
occurred to her as well as to myself. Anyway, it is only a trifling
matter, and I am almost ashamed to put it down here in writing –; it
seems to set the forlornness of our situation in such a miserably vivid
light. We must have little indeed to depend on, when the discovery that
my memory can still be trusted to serve us is hailed as if it was the
discovery of a new friend !

The first bell for dinner separated us. rust as it had done ringing, Sir
Percival and the Count returned from their walk. We heard the master of
the house storming at the servants for being five minutes late, and the
master's guest interposing, as usual, in the interests of propriety,
patience, and peace.

The evening has come and gone. No extraordinary event has happened. But
I have noticed certain peculiarities in the conduct of Sir Percival and
the Count, which have sent me to my bed feeling very anxious and uneasy
about Anne Catherick, and about the results which tomorrow may produce.

I know enough by this time, to be sure that the aspect of Sir Percival
which is the most false, and which, therefore, means the worst, is his
polite aspect. That long walk with his friend had ended in improving his
manners, especially towards his wife. To Laura's secret surprise and to
my secret alarm, he called her by her Christian name, asked if she had
heard lately from her uncle, inquired when Mrs Vesey was to receive her
invitation to Blackwater, and showed her so many other little attentions
that he almost recalled the days of his hateful courtship at Limmeridge
House. This was a bad sign to begin with, and I thought it more ominous
still that he should pretend after dinner to fall asleep in the
drawing-room, and that his eyes should cunningly follow Laura and me
when he thought we neither of us suspected him. I have never had any
doubt that his sudden journey by himself took him to Welmingham to
question Mrs Catherick –; but the experience of tonight has made me fear
that the expedition was not undertaken in vain, and that he has got the
information which he unquestionably left us to collect. If I knew where
Anne Catherick was to be found, I would be up tomorrow with sunrise and
warn her.

While the aspect under which Sir Percival presented himself tonight was
unhappily but too familiar to me, the aspect under which the Count
appeared was, on the other hand, entirely new in my experience of him.
He permitted me, this evening, to make his acquaintance, for the first
time, in the character of a Man of Sentiment –; of sentiment, as I
believe, really felt, not assumed for the occasion.

For imstance, he was quiet and subdued –; his eyes and his voice
expressed a restrained sensibility. He wore (as if there was some hidden
connection between his showiest finery and his deepest feeling) the most
magnificent waistcoat he has yet appeared in –; it was made of pale
sea-green silk, and delicately trimmed with fine silver braid. His voice
sank into the tenderest inflections, his smile expressed a thoughtful,
fatherly admiration, whenever he spoke to Laura or to me. He pressed his
wife's hand under the table when she thanked him for trifling little
attentions at dinner. He took wine with her. `Your health and happiness,
my angel !' he said, with fond glistening eyes. He ate little or
nothing, and sighed, and said `Good Percival !' when his friend laughed
at him. After dinner, he took Laura by the hand, and asked her if she
would be `so sweet as to play to him.' She complied, through sheer
astonishment. He sat by the piano, with his watch-chain resting in
folds, like a golden serpent, on the sea-green protuberance of his
waistcoat. His immense head lay languidly on one side, and he gently
beat time with two of his yellow-white fingers. He highly approved of
the music, and tenderly admired Laura's manner of playing –; not as poor
Hartright used to praise it, with an innocent enjoyment of the sweet
sounds, but with a clear, cultivated, practical knowledge of the merits
of the composition, in the first place, and of the merits of the
player's touch in the second. As the evening closed in, he begged that
the lovely dying light might not be profaned, just yet, by the
appearance of the lamps. He came, with his horribly silent tread, to the
distant window at which I was standing, to be out of his way and to
avoid the very sight of him –; he came to ask me to support his protest
against the lamps. If any one of them could only have burnt him up at
that moment, I would have gone down to the kitchen, and fetched it
myself.

`Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight?' he said
softly. `Ah ! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that is
noble, and great, and good, purified by the breath of heaven on an
evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such
inextinguishable tenderness for me! –; I am an old, fat man –; talk
which would become your lips, Miss Halcombe, sounds like a derision and
a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my moment of
sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and overgrown. Observe,
dear lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does it penetrate your
heart, as it penetrates mine?'

He paused, looked at me, and repeated the famous lines of Dante on the
Evening-time, with a melody and tenderness which added a charm of their
own to the matchless beauty of the poetry itself.

`Bah!' he cried suddenly, as the last cadence of those noble Italian
words died away on his lips; `I make an old fool of myself, and only
weary you all! Let us shut up the window in our bosons and get back to
the matter-of-fact world. Perciva! I sanction the admission of the
lamps. Lady Glyde –; Miss Halcombe –; Eleanor, my good wife –; which of
you will imdulge me with a game at dominoes?'

He addressed us all, but he looked especially at Laura.

She had learnt to feel my dread of offending him, and she accepted his
proposal. It was more than I could have done at that moment. I could not
have sat down at the same table with him for any consideration. His eyes
seemed to reach my inmost soul through the thickening obscurity of the
twilight. His voice trembled along every nerve in my body, and turned me
hot and cold alternately. The mystery and terror of my dream, which had
haunted me at imtervals all through the evening, now oppressed my mind
with an unendurable foreboding and an unutterable awe. I saw the white
tomb again, and the veiled woman rising out of it by Hartright's side.
The thought of Laura welled up like a spring in the depths of my heart,
and filled it with waters of bitterness, never, never known to it
before. I caught her by the hand as she passed me on her way to the
table, and kissed her as if that night was to part us for ever. While
they were all gazing at me in astonishment, I ran out through the low
window which was open before me to the ground –; ran out to hide from
them in the darkness, to hide even from myself.

We separated that evening later than usual. Towards midnight the summer
silence was broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy wind among the
trees. We all felt the sudden chill in the atmosphere, but the Count was
the first to notice the stealthy rising of the wind. He stopped while he
was lighting my candle for me, and held up his hand warningly –;

`Listen !' he said. `There will be a change tomorrow.'




June 19th. –; The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner or
later, to meet the worst. Today is not yet at an end, and the worst has
come.

Judging by the closest calculation of time that Laura and I could make,
we arrived at the conclusion that Anne Catherick must have appeared at
the boat-house at half-past two o'clock on the afternoon of yesterday. I
accordingly arranged that Laura should just show herself at the
luncheon-cable today, and should then slip out at the first opportunity,
leaving me behind to preserve appearances, and to follow her as soon as
I could safely do so. This mode of proceeding, if no obstacles occurred
to thwart us, would enable her to be at the boat-house before half-past
two, and (when I left the table, in my turn) would take me to a safe
position in the plantation before three.

The change in the weather, which last night-s wind warned us to expect,
came with the morning. It was raining heavily when I got up, and it
continued to rain until twelve o'clock –; when the clouds dispersed, the
blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the bright promise of a
fine afternoon.

My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the early
part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir Percival was
concerned, by his leaving us immediately after breakfast, and going out
by himself, in spite of the rain. He neither told us where he was going
nor when we might expect him back. We saw him pass the breakfast-room
window hastily, with his high boots and his waterproof coat on –; and
that was all.

The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in the
library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends of music
on the piano, and humming to himself. Judging by appearances, the
sentimental side of his character was persistently inclined to betray
itself still. He was silent and sensitive, and ready to sigh and
languish ponderously (as only fat men Fan sigh and languish) on the
smallest provocation.

Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return. The Count took his
friend's place at the table, plaintively devoured the greater part of a
fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of cream, and explained the
full merit of the achievement to us as soon as he had done. `A taste for
sweets,' he said in his softest tones and his tenderest manner, `is the
innocent taste of women and children. I love to share it with them –; it
is another bond, dear ladies, between you and me.'

Laura left the table in ten minutes' time. I was sorely tempted to
accompany her. But if we had both gone out together we must have excited
suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne Catherick to see Laura,
accompanied by a second person who was a stranger to her, we should in
all probability forfeit her confidence from that moment, never to regain
it again.

I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant came in
to clear the table. When I quitted the room, there were no signs, in the
house or out of it, of Sir Percival's return. I left the Count with a
piece of sugar between his lips, and the vicious cockatoo scrambling up
his waistcoat to get at it, while Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her
husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively
as if she had never seen anything of the sort before in her life. On my
way to the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of view from the
luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me and nobody followed me. It was then
a quarter to three o'clock by my watch.

Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more than
half-way through the plantation. At that point I slackened my pace and
proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no voices. By little
and little I came within view of the back of the boat-house –; stopped
and listened –; then went on, till I was close behind it, and must have
heard any persons who were talking inside. Still the silence was
unbroken –; still far and near no sign of a living creature appeared
anywhere.

After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one side and
then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured in front of it,
and fairly looked in. The place was empty.

I called, `Laura !' –; at first softly, then louder and louder. No one
answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and hear, the
only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and the plantation
was myself.

My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and
searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it, for
any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached the place
or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the building, but I
found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on the sand.

I detected the footsteps of two persons –; large footsteps like a man's,
and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into them and testing
their size in that manner, I felt certain were Laura's. The ground was
confusedly marked in this way just before the boat-house. Close against
one side of it, under shelter of the projecting roof, I discovered a
little hole in the sand –; a hole artificially made, beyond a doubt. I
just noticed it, and then turned away immediately to trace the footsteps
as far as I could, and to follow the direction in which they might lead
me.

They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boat-house, along
the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of between two and
three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground showed no further trace
of them. Feeling that the persons whose course I was tracking must
necessarily have entered the Plantation at this point, I entered it too.
At first I could find no path, but I discovered one afterwards, just
faintly traced among the trees, and followed it. It took me, for some
distance, in the direction of the village, until I stopped at a point
where another foot-track crossed it. The brambles grew thickly on either
side of this second path. I stood looking down it, uncertain which way
to take next, and while I looked I saw on one thorny branch some
fragments of fringe from a woman's shawl. A closer examination of the
fringe satisfied me that it had been torn from a shawl of Laura's, and I
instantly followed the second path. It brought me out at last, to my
great relief, at the back of the house. I say to my great relief,
because I inferred that Laura must, for some unknown reason, have
returned before me by this roundabout way. I went in by the court-yard
and the offices. The first person whom I met in crossing the servants'
hall was Mrs Michelson, the housekeeper.

`Do you know,' I asked, `whether Lady Glyde has come in from her walk or
not?'

`My lady came in a little while ago with Sir Percival,' answered the
housekeeper. `I am afraid, Miss Halcombe, something very distressing has
happened.'

My heart sank within me. `You don't mean an accident?' I said faintly.

`No, no –; thank God, no accident. But my lady ran upstairs to her own
room in tears, and Sir Percival has ordered me to give Fanny warning to
leave in an hour's time.'

Fanny was Laura's maid –; a good affectionate girl who had been with her
for years –; the only person in the house whose fidelity and devotion we
could both depend upon.

`Where is Fanny?' I inquired.

`In my room, Miss Halcombe. The young woman is quite overcome, and I
told her to sit down and try to recover herself.'

I went to Mrs Michelson's room, and found Fanny in a corner, with her
box by her side, crying bitterly.

She could give me no explanation whatever of her sudden dismissal. Sir
Percival had ordered that she should have a month's wages, in place of a
month's warning, and go. No reason had been assigned –; no objection had
been made to her conduct. She had been forbidden to appeal to her
mistress, forbidden even to see her for a moment to say good-bye. She
was to go without explanations or farewells, and to go at once.

After soothing the poor girl by a few friendly words, I asked where she
proposed to sleep that night. She replied that she thought of going to
the little inn in the village, the landlady of which was a respectable
woman, known to the servants at Blackwater Park. The next morning, by
leaving early, she might get back to her friends in Cumberland without
stopping in London, where she was a total stranger.

I felt directly that Fanny's departure offered us a safe means of
communication with London and with Limmeridge House, of which it might
be very important to avail ourselves. Accordingly, I told her that she
might expect to hear from her mistress or from me in the course of the
evening, and that she might depend on our both doing all that lay in our
power to help her, under the trial of leaving us for the present. Those
words said, I shook hands with her and went upstairs.

The door which led to Laura's room was the door of an antechamber
opening on to the passage. When I tried it, it was bolted on the inside.

I knocked, and the door was opened by the same heavy, overgrown
housemaid whose lumpish insensibility had tried my patience so severely
on the day when I found the wounded dog. I had, since that time,
discovered that her name was Margaret Porcher, and that she was the most
awkward, slatternly, and obstinate servant in the house.

On opening the door she instantly stepped out to the threshold, and
stood grinming at me in stolid silence.

`Why do you stand there?' I said `Don't you see that I want to come in?'

`Ah, but you mustn't come in,' was the answer, with another and a
broader grin still.

`How dare you talk to me in that way? Stand back instantly!'

She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so as to
bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.

`Master's orders,' she said, and nodded again.

I had need of all my self-control to warn me against contesting the
matter with her, and to remind me that the next words I had to say must
be addressed to her master. I turned my back on her, and instantly went
downstairs to find him. My resolution to keep my temper under all the
irritations that Sir Percival could offer was, by this time, as
completely forgotten –; I say so to my shame –; as if I had never made
it. It did me good, after all I had suffered and suppressed in that
house –; it actually did me good to feel how angry I was.

The drawing-room and the breakfast-room were both empty. I went on to
the library, and there I found Sir Percival, the Count, and Madame
Fosco. They were all three standing up, close together, and Sir Percival
had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I opened the door I heard the
Count say to him, `No –; a thousand times over, no.'

I walked straight up to him, and looked him full in the face.

`Am I to understand, Sir Percival, that your wife's room is a prison,
and that your housemaid is the gaoler who keeps it?' I asked.

`Yes, that is what you are to understand,' he answered. `Take care my
gaoler hasn't got double duty to do –; take care your room is not a
prison too.'

`Take you care how you treat your wife, and how you threaten me,' I
broke out in the heat of my anger. `There are laws in England to protect
women from cruelty and outrage. If you hurt a hair of Laura's head, if
you dare to interfere with my freedom, come what may, to those laws I
will appeal.'

Instead of answering me he turned round to the Count.

`What did I tell you?' he asked. `What do you say now?'

`What I said before,' replied the Count –; `No.'

Even in the vehemence of my anger I felt his calm, cold, grey eyes on my
face. They turned away from me as soon as he had spoken, and looked
significantly at his wife.  Madame Fosco immediately moved close to my
side, and in that position addressed Sir Percival before either of us
could speak again.

`Favour me with your attention for one moment,' she said, in her clear
icily-suppressed tones. `I have to thank you, Sir Percival, for your
hospitality, and to decline taking advantage of it any longer. I remain
in no house in which ladies are treated as your wife and Miss Halcombe
have been treated here today !'

Sir Percival drew back a step. and stared at her in dead silence. The
declaration he had just heard –; a declaration which he well knew, as I
well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make without her
husband's permission –; seemed to petrify him with surprise. The Count
stood by, and looked at his wife with the most enthusiastic admiration.

`She is sublime !' he said to himself. He approached her while he spoke,
and drew her hand through his arm. `I am at your service, Eleanor,' he
went on, with a quiet dignity that I had never noticed in him before.
`And at Miss Halcombe's service, if she will honour me by accepting all
the assistance I can offer her.'

`Damn it! what do you mean?' cried Sir Percival, as the Count quietly
moved away with his wife to the door.

`At other times I mean what I say, but at this time I mean what my wife
says,' replied the impenetrable Italian. `We have changed places,
Percival, for once, and Madame Fosco's opinion is –; mine.'

Sir Percival crumpled up the paper in his hand, and pushing past the
Count, with another oath, stood between him and the door.

`Have your own way,' he said, with baffled rage in his low,
half-whispering tones. `Have your own way –; and see what comes of it.'
With those words he left the room.

Madame Fosco glanced inquiringly at her husband. `He has

gone away very suddenly,' she said. `What does it mean?'

`It means that you and I together have brought the worsttempered man in
all England to his senses,' answered the Count. `It means, Miss
Halcombe, that Lady Glyde is relieved from a gross indignity, and you
from the repetition of an unpardonable insult. Suffer me to express my
admiration of your conduct and your courage at a very trying moment.'

`Sincere admiration,' suggested Madame Fosco.

` Sincere admiration,' echoed the Count.

I had no longer the strength of my first angry resistance to outrage and
injury to support me. My heart-sick anxiety to see Laura, my sense of my
own helpless ignorance of what had hap pened at the boat-house, pressed
on me with an intolerable weight. I tried to keep up appearances by
speaking to the Count and his wife in the tone which they had chosen to
adopt in speaking to me, hut the words failed on my lips –; my breath
came short and thick –; my eyes looked longingly, in silence, at the
door. The Count, understanding my anxiety, opened it, went out, and
pulled it to after him. At the same time Sir Percival's heavy step
descended the stairs. I heard them whispering together outside, while
Madame Fosco was assuring me, in her calmest and most conventional
manner, that she rejoiced, for all our sakes, that Sir Percival's
conduct had not obliged her husband and herself to leave Blackwater
Park. Before she had done speaking the whispering ceased, the door
opened, and the Count looked in.

`Miss Halcombe,' he said, `I am happy to inform you that Lady Glyde is
mistress again in her own house. I thought it might be more agreeable to
you to hear of this change for the better from me than from Sir
Percival, and I have therefore expressly returned to mention it.'

`Admirable delicacy!' said Madame Fosco, paying back her husband's
tribute of admiration with the Count's owm coin, in the Count's own
manner. He smiled and bowed as if he had received a formal compliment
from a polite stranger, and drew back to let me pass out first.

Sir Percival was standing in the hall. As I hurried to the stairs I
heard him call impatiently to the Count to come out of the library.

`What are you waiting there for?' he said. `I want to speak to you.'

`And I want to think a little by myself,' replied the other. `Wait till
later, Percival, wait till later.'

Neither he nor his friend said any more. I gained the top of the stairs
and ran along the passage. In my haste and my agitation I left the door
of the ante-chamber open, but I closed the door of the bedroom the
moment I was inside it.

Laura was sitting alone at the far end of the room, her arms resting
wearily on a table, and her face hidden in her hands. She started up
with a cry of delight when she saw me.

`How did you get here?' she asked. `Who gave you leave? Not Sir Percival
?'

In my overpowering anxiety to hear what she had to tell me, I could not
answer her –; I could only put questions on my side. Laura's eagerness
to know what had passed downstairs proved, however, too strong to be
resisted. She persistently repeated her inquiries.

`The Count, of course,' I answered impatiently. `Whose influence in the
house –;'

She stopped me with a gesture of disgust.

`Don't speak of him,' she cried. `The Count is the vilest creature
breathing ! The Count is a miserable Spy !'

Before we could either of us say another word we were alarmed by a soft
knocking at the door of the bedroom.

I had not yet sat down, and I went first to see who it was. When I
opened the door Madame Fosco confronted me with my handkerchief in her
hand.

`You dropped this dowmstairs, Miss Halcombe,' she said, `and I thought I
could bring it to you, as I was passing by to my own room.

Her face, naturally pale, had turned to such a ghastly whiteness that I
started at the sight of it. Her hands, so sure and steady at all other
times, trembled violently, and her eyes looked wolfishly past me through
the open door, and fixed on Laura.

She had been listening before she knocked ! I saw it in her white face,
I saw it in her trembling hands, I saw it in her look at Laura.

After waiting an instant she turned from me in silence, and slowly
walked away.

I closed the door again. `Oh, Laura I Laura ! We shall both rue the day
when you called the Count a Spy !'

`You would have called him so yourself, Marian, if you had known what I
know. Anne Catherick was right. There was a third person watching us in
the plantation yesterday, and that third person –;

`Are you sure it was the Count?'

`I am absolutely certain. He was Sir Percival's spy –; he was Sir
Percival's informer –; he set Sir Percival watching and waiting, all the
morning through, for Anne Catherick and for me.'

`Is Anne found? Did you see her at the lake?'

`No. She has saved herself by keeping away from the place. When I got to
the boat-house no one was there.'

`Yes? Yes?'

`I went in and sat waiting for a few minutes. But my restlessness made
me get up again, to walk about a little. As I passed out I saw some
marks on the sand, close under the front of the boat-house. I stooped
down to examine them, and discovered a word written in large letters on
the sand. The word was –; LOOK.'

`And you scraped away the sand, and dug a hollow place in it?'

`How do you know that, Marian?'

`I saw the hollow place myself when I followed you to the boat-house. Go
on –; go on!'

`Yes, I scraped away the sand on the surface, and in a little while I
came to a strip of paper hidden beneath, which had writing on it. The
writing was signed with Anne Catherick's initials.'

`Where is it?'

` Sir Percival has taken it from me.'

`Can you remember what the writing was? Do you think you can repeat it
to me?'

`In substance I can, Marian. It was very short. You would have
remembered it. word for word.'

`Try to tell me what the substance was before we go any further.'

She complied. I write the lines down here exactly as she repeated them
to me. They ran thus –; and had to run to save myself. He was not quick
enough on his feet to follow me, and he lost me among the trees. I dare
not risk coming back here today at the same time. I write this, and hide
it in the sand, at six in the morning, to tell you so. When we speak
next of your wicked husband's Secret we must speak safely, or not at
all. Try to have patience. I promise you shall see me again and that
soon. –; A. C.'

The reference to the `tall, stout old man' (the terms of which Laura was
certain that she had repeated to me correctly) left no doubt as to who
the intruder had been. I called to mind that I had told Sir Percival, in
the Count's presence the day before, that Laura had gone to the
boat-house to look for her brooch. In all probability he had followed
her there, in his officious way, to relieve her mind about the matter of
the signature, immediately after he had mentioned the change in Sir
Percival's plans to me in the drawing-room. In this case he could only
have got to the neighbourhood of the boat-house at the very moment when
Anne Catherick discovered him. The suspiciously hurried manner in which
she parted from Laura had no doubt prompted his useless attempt to
follow her. Of the conversation which had previously taken place between
them he could have heard nothingThe distance between the house and the
lake, and the tiine at which he left me in the drawing-room, as compared
with the time at which Laura and Anne Catherick had been speaking
together, proved that fact to us at any rate, beyond a doubt.

Having arrived at something like a conclusion so far, my next great
interest was to know what discoveries Sir Percival had made after Count
Fosco had given him his information.

`How came you to lose possession of the letter?' I asked. `What did you
do with it when you found it in the sand?'

`After reading it once through,' she replied, `I took it into the
boat-house with me to sit down and look over it a second time. While I
was reading a shadow fell across the paper. I looked up, and saw Sir
Percival standing in the doorway watching me.'

`Did you try to hide the letter?'

`I tried, but he stopped me. ``You needn't trouble to hide that,'' he
said. ``I happen to have read it.'' I could only look at him helplessly
–; I could say nothing. ``You understand?'' he went on; ``I have read
it. I dug it up out of the sand two hours since, and buried it again,
and wrote the word above it again, and left it ready to your hands. You
can't lie yourself out of the scrape now. You saw Anne Catherick in
secret yesterday, and you have got her letter in your hand at this
moment. I have not caught her yet, but I have caught you. Give me the
letter.'' He stepped close up to me –; I was alone with him, Marian –;
what could I do? –; I gave him the letter.'

`What did he say when you gave it to him?'

`At first he said nothing. He took me by the arm, and led me out of the
boat-house, and looked about him on all sides, as if he was afraid of
our being seen or heard. Then he clasped his hand fast round my arm, and
whispered to me, ``What did Anne Catherick say to you yesterday? I
insist on hearing every word, from first to last.'''

`Did you tell him?'

`I was alone with him, Marian –; his cruel hand was bruising my arm –;
what could I do?'

`Is the mark on your arm still? Let me see it.'

`Why do you want to see it?'

`I want to see it, Laura, because our endurance must end, and our
resistance must begin today. That mark is a weapon to strike him with.
Let me see it now –; I may have to swear to it at some future time.'

` Oh, Marian, don't look so –; don't talk so I It doesn't hurt me now !'

`Let me see it!'

She showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past crying over
them, past shuddering over them. They say we are either better than men,
or worse. lf the temptation that has fallen in some women's way, and
made them worse, had fallen in mine at that moment –; Thank God ! my
face betrayed nothing that his wife could read. The gentle, innocent,
affectionate creature thought I was frightened for her and sorry for
her, and thought no more.

`Don't think too seriously of it, Marian,' she said simply, as she
pulled her sleeve down again. ` It doesn't hurt me now.'

`I will try to think quietly of it, my love, for your sake. –; Well!
well! And you told him all that Anne Catherick had said to you –; all
that you told me ? `Yes, all. He insisted on it –; I was alone with him
–; I could conceal nothing.'

`Did he say anything when you had done?'

`He looked at me, and laughed to himself in mocking, bitter way. ``I
mean to have the rest out of you,'' he said, ``do you hear? –; the
rest.'' I declared to him solemnly that I had told him everything I
knew. ``Not you,` he answered, ``you know more than you choose to tell.
Won't you tell it? You shall ! I'll wring it out of you at honie if I
can't wring it out of you here.–; He led me away by a strange path
through the plantation –; a path where there was no hope of our meeting
you –; and he spoke no more till we came within sight of the house. Then
he stopped again, and said, ``Will you take a second chance, if I give
it to you? Will you think better of it. and tell me the rest?'' I could
only repeat the same words I had spoken before. He cursed my obstinacy,
and went on, and took me with him to the house. ``You can't deceive
me,'' he said, ``you know more than you choose to tell. I'll have your
secret out of you, and I'll have it out of that sister of yours as well.
There shall be no more plotting and whispering between you. Neither you
nor she shall see each other again till you have confessed the truth.
I'll have you watched morning, noon, and night, till you confess the
truth.'' He was deaf to everything I could say. He took me straight
upstairs into my own room. Fanny was sitting there, doing some work for
me, and he instantly ordered her out. ``I'll take good care you're not
mixed up in the conspiracy,` he said. ``You shall leave this house
today. If your mistress wants a maid. she shall have one of my
choosing.'' He pushed me into the room, and locked the door on me. He
set that senseless woman to watch me outside, Marian! He looked and
spoke like a madman. You may hardly understand it –; he did indeed.'

`I do understand it, Laura. He is mad –; mad with the terrors of a
guilty conscience. Every word you have said makes me positively certain
that when Anne Catherick left you yesterday you were on the eve of
discovering a secret which might have been your vile husband's ruin, and
he thinks you have discovered it. Nothing you can say or do will quiet
that guilty distrust, and convince his false nature of your truth. I
don't say this, my love, to alarm you. I say it to open your eyes to
your position, and to convince you of the urgent necessity of letting me
act, as I best can, for your protection while the chance is our own.
Count Fosco's interference has secured me access to you today, but he
may withdraw that interference tomorrow. Sir Percival has already
dismissed Fanny because she is a quick-witted girl, and devotedly
attached to you, and has chosen a woman to take her place who cares
nothimg for your interests, and whose dull intelligence lowers her to
the level of the watch-dog in the yard. It is impossible to say what
violent measures he may take next, unless we make the most of our
opportunities while we have them.'

`What can we do, Marian? Oh, if we could only leave this house, never to
see it again!'

`Listen to me, my love, and try to think that you are not quite helpless
so long as I am here with you.'

`I will think so –; I do think so. Don't altogether forget poor Fanny in
thinking of me. She wants help and comfort too.'

`I will not forget her. I saw her before I came up here, and I have
arranged to communicate with her tonight. Letters are not safe in the
post-bag at Blackwater Park, and I shall have two to write today, in
your interests, which must pass through no hands but Fanny's.'

`What letters?'

`I mean to write first, Laura, to Mr Gilmore's partner, who has offered
to help us in any fresh emergency. Little as I know of the law, I am
certain that it can protect a woman from such treatment as that ruffian
has inflicted on you today. I will go into no details about Anne
Catherick, because I have no certain information to give. But the lawyer
shall know of those bruises on your arm, and of the violence offered to
you in this room –; he shall, before I rest tonight !'

` But think of the exposure, Marian !'

`I am calculating on the exposure. Sir Percival has more to dread from
it than you have. The prospect of an exposure may bring him to terms
when nothing else will.'

I rose as I spoke, but Laura entreated me not to leave her. `You will
drive him to desperation,` she said, `and increase our dangers tenfold.'

I felt the truth –; the disheartening truth –; of those words. But I
could not bring myself plainly to acknowledge it to her. In our dreadful
position there was no help and no hope for us but in risking the worst.
I said so in guarded terms. She sighed bitterly, but did not contest the
matter. She only asked about the second letter that I had proposed
writing. To whom was it to be addressed ?

`To Mr Fairlie,' I said. `Your uncle is your nearest male relative, and
the head of the family. He must and shall interfere.'

Laura shook her head sorrowfully.

`Yes, yes,' I went on, `your uncle is a weak, selfish, worldly man, I
know, but he is not Sir Percival Glyde, and he has no such friend about
him as Count Fosco. I expect nothing from his kindness or his tenderness
of feeling towards you or towards me, but he will do anything to pamper
his owm indolence, and to secure his own quiet. Let me only persuade him
that his interference at this moment will save him inevitable trouble
and wretchedness and responsibility hereafter, and he will bestir
himself for his own sake. I know how to deal with him, Laura –; I have
had some practice.'

`If you could only prevail on him to let me go back to Limmeridge for a
little while and stay there quietly with you, Marian, I could be ahnost
as happy again as I was before I was married !'

Those words set me thinking in a new direction. Would it be possible to
place Sir Percival between the two alternatives of either exposing
himself to the scandal of legal interference on his wife's behalf, or of
allowing her to be quietly separated from him for a time under pretext
of a visit to her uncle's house? And could he, in that case, be reckoned
on as likely to accept the last resource? It was doubtful –; more than
doubtful. And yet, hopeless as the experiment seemed, surely it was
worth trying. I resolved to try it in sheer despair of knowing what
better to do.

`Your uncle shall know the wish you have just expressed,' I said, `and I
will ask the lawyer's advice on the subject as well. Good may come of it
–; and will come of it, I hope.'

Saying that I rose again, and again Laura tried to make me resume my
seat.

`Don't leave me,' she said uneasily. `My desk is on that table. You can
write here.'

It tried me to the quick to refuse her, even in her own interests. But
we had been too long shut up alone together already. Our chance of
seeing each other again might entirely depend on our not exciting any
fresh suspicions. It was full time to show myself, quietly and
unconcernedly, among the wretches who were at that very moment, perhaps,
thinking of us and talking of us downstairs. I explained the miserable
necessity to Laura, and prevailed on her to recognise it as I did.

`l will come back again, love, in an hour or less,' I said. `The worst
is over for today. Keep yourself quiet and fear nothing.'

`ls the key in the door, Marian? Can I lock it on the inside?'

`Yes, here is the key. Lock the door, and open it to nobody until I come
upstairs again.'

I kissed her and left her. It was a relief to me as I walked away to
hear the key turned in the lock, and to know that the door was at her
own command.




June 19th. –; I had only got as far as the top of the stairs when the
locking of Laura's door suggested to me the precaution of also locking
my own door, and keeping the key safely about me while I was out of the
room. My journal was already secured with other papers in the table
drawer, but my writing materials were left out. These included a seal,
bearing the common device of two doves drinking out of the same cup, and
some sheets of blotting-paper, which had the impression on them of the
closing lines of my writing in these pages traced during the past night.
Distorted by the suspicion which had now become a part of myself, even
such trifles as these looked too dangerous to be trusted without a guard
–; even the locked table drawer seemed to be not sufficiently protected
in my absence until the means of access to it had been carefully secured
as well.

I found no appearance of any one having entered the room while I had
been talking with Laura. My writing materials (which I had given the
servant instructions never to meddle with) were scattered over the table
much as usual. The only circumstance in connection with them that at all
struck me was that the seal lay tidily in the tray with the Pencils and
the wax. It was not in my careless habits (l am sorry to say) to put it
there, neither did I remember putting it there. But as I could not call
to mind, on the other hand, where else I had thrown it down, and as I
was also doubtful whether I might not for once have laid it mechanically
in the right place, I abstained from adding to the perplexity with which
the day's events had filled my mind by troubling it afresh about a
trifle. I locked the door, put the key in my Pocket, and went
downstairs.

Madame Fosco was alone in the hall looking at the weatherglass.

` Still falling,' she said. `I am afraid we must expect more rain.'

Her face was composed again to its customary expression and its
customary colour. But the hand with which she pointed to the dial of the
weather-glass still trembled.

Could she have told her husband already that she had overheard Laura
reviling him, in my company, as a `spy?' My strong suspicion that she
must have told him, my irresistible dread (all the more overpowering
from its very vagueness) of the consequences which might follow, my
fixed conviction, derived from various little self-betrayals which women
notice in each other, that Madame Fosco, in spite of her well-assumed
external civility, had not forgiven her niece for innocently standing
between her and the legacy of ten thousand pounds –; all rushed upon my
mind together, all impelled me to speak in the vain hope of using my own
influence and my own powers of persuasion for the atonement of Laura's
offence.

`May I trust to your kindness to excuse me, Madame Fosco, if I venture
to speak to you on an exceedingly painful subject?'

She crossed her hands in front of her and bowed her head solemnly,
without uttering a word, and without taking her eyes off mine for a
moment.

`When you were so good as to bring me back my handkerchief,' I went on,
`l am very, very much afraid you must have accidentally heard Laura say
something which I am unwilling to repeat, and which I will not attempt
to defend. I will only venture to hope that you have not thought it of
sufficient importance to be mentioned to the Count?'

`I think it of no importance whatever,' said Madame Fosco sharply and
suddenly. `But,' she added, resuming her icy manner in a moment, `I have
no secrets from my husband even in trifles. When he noticed just now
that I looked distressed, it was my painful duty to tell him why I was
distressed, and I frankly acknowledge to you, Miss Halcombe, that I have
told him.'

I was prepared to hear it, and yet she turned me cold all over when she
said those words.

`Let me earnestly entreat you, Madame Fosco –; let me earnestly entreat
the Count –; to make some allowances for the sad position in which my
sister is placed. She spoke while she was smarting under the insult and
injustice inflicted on her by her husband, and she was not herself when
she said those rash words. May I hope that they wlll be considerately
and generously forgiven ? '

`Most assuredly,' said the Count's quiet voice behind me. He had stolen
on us with his noiseless tread and his book in his hand from the
library.

`When Lady Glyde said those hasty words,' he went on, `she did me an
injustice which I lament –; and forgive. Let us never return to the
subject, Miss Halcombe; let us all comfortably combine to forget it from
this moment'

`You are very kind,' I said, ` you relieve me inexpressibly ''

I tried to continue, but his eyes were on me; his deadly smile that
hides everything was set, hard, and unwavering on his broad, smooth
face. My distrust of his unfathomable falseness, my sense of my own
degradation in stooping to conciliate his wife and himself, so disturbed
and confused me, that the next words failed on my lips, and I stood
there in silence.

`I beg you on my knees to say no more, Miss Halcombe –; I am truly
shocked that you should have thought it necessary to say so much.' With
that polite speech he took my hand –; oh, how I despise myself ! oh, how
little comfort there is even in knowing that I submitted to it for
Laura's sake! –; he took my hand and put it to his poisonous lips. Never
did I know all my horror of him till then. That innocent familiarity
turned my blood as if it had been the vilest insult that a man could
offer me. Yet I hid my disgust from him –; I tried to smile –; I, who
once mercilessly despised deceit in other women, was as false as the
worst of them, as false as the Judas whose lips had touched my hand.

I could not have maintained my degrading self-control –; it is all that
redeems me in my own estimation to know that I could not –; if he had
still continued to keep his eyes on my face. His wife's tigerish
jealousy came to my rescue and forced his attention away from me the
moment he possessed himself of my hand. Her cold blue eyes caught light,
her dull white cheeks flushed into bright colour, she looked years
younger than her age in an imstant.

`Count!' she said. `Your foreign forms of politeness are not understood
by Englishwomen.'

`Pardon me, my angel! The best and dearest Englishwoman in the world
understands them.' With those words he dropped my hand and quietly
raised his wife's hand to his lips in place of it.

I ran back up the stairs to take refuge in my own room. If there had
been time to think, my thoughts, when I was alone again, would have
caused me bitter suffering. But there was no time to think. Happily for
the preservation of my calmness and my courage there was time for
nothing but action.

The letters to the lawyer and to Mr Fairlie were still to be written,
and I sat dowm at once without a moment's hesitation to devote myself to
them.

There was no multitude of resources to perplex me –; there was
absolutely no one to depend on, in the first instance, but myself. Sir
Percival had neither friends nor relatives in the neighbourhood whose
intercession I could attempt to employ. He was on the coldest terms –;
in some cases on the worst terms with the families of his own rank and
station who lived near him. We two women had neither father nor brother
to come to the house and take our parts. There was no choice but to
write those two doubtful letters, or to put Laura in the wrong and
myself in the wrong, and to make all peaceable negotiation in the future
impossible by secretly escaping from Blackwater Park. Nothing but the
most imminent personal peril could justify our taking that second
course. The letters must be tried first, and I wrote them.

I said nothing to the lawyer about Anne Catherick, because (as I had
already hinted to Laura) that topic was connected with a mystery which
we could not yet explain, and which it would therefore be useless to
write about to a professional man. I left my correspondent to attribute
Sir Percival's disgraceful conduct, if he pleased, to fresh disputes
about money matters, and sun ply consulted him on the possibility of
taking legal proceedings for Laura's protection in the event of her
husband's refusal to allow her to leave Blackwater Park for a time and
return with me to Limmeridge. I referred him to Mr Fairlie for the
details of this last arrangement –; I assured him that I wrote with
Laura's authority –; and I ended by entreating him to act in her name to
the utmost extent of his power and with the least possible loss of time.

The letter to Mr Fairlie occupied me next. I appealed to him on the
terms which I had mentioned to Laura as the most likely to make him
bestir himself; I enclosed a copy of my letter to the lawyer to show him
how serious the case was, and I represented our removal to Limmeridge as
the only compromise which would prevent the danger and distress of
Laura's present position from inevitably affecting her uncle as well as
herself at no very distant time.

When I had done, and had sealed and directed the two envelopes, I went
back with the letters to Laura's room, to show her that they were
written.

`Has anybody disturbed you?' I asked, when she opened the door to me.

`Nobody has knocked,' she replied. `But I heard some one in the outer
room.'

`Was it a man or a woman?'

`A woman. I heard the rustling of her gown.'

`A rustling like silk?'

`Yes, like silk.'

Madame Fosco had evidently been watching outside. The mischief she might
do by herself was little to be feared. But the mischief she might do, as
a willing instrument in her husband's hands, was too formidable to be
overlooked.

`What became of the rustling of the gown when you no longer heard it in
the ante-room?' I inquired. `Did you hear it go past your wall, along
the passage?'

` Yes. I kept still and listened, and just heard it.'

`Which way did it go?'

`Towards your room.'

I considered again. The sound had not caught my ears. But I was then
deeply absorbed in my letters, and I write with a heawy hand and a quill
pen, scraping and scratching noisily over the paper. It was more likely
that Madame Fosco would hear the scraping of my pen than that I should
hear the rustling of her dress. Another reason (if I had wanted one) for
not trusting my letters to the post-bag in the hall.

Laura saw me thinking. `More difficulties !' she said wearily; `more
difficulties and more dangers !'

`No dangers,' I replied. `Some little difficulty, perhaps. I am thinking
of the safest way of putting my two letters into Fanny's hands.'

`You have really written them, then? Oh, Marian, run no risks –; pray,
pray, run no risks !'

`No, no –; no fear. Let me see –; what o'clock is it now?'

It was a quarter to six. There would be time for me to get to the
village inn, and to come back again before dinner. If I waited till the
evening I might find no second opportunity of safely leaving the house.

`Keep the key turmed in the lock, Laura,' I said, `and don't be afraid
about me. If you hear any inquiries made, call through the door, and say
that I am gone out for a walk.'

`When shall you be back?'

`Before dinner, without fail. Courage, my love. By this time tomorrow
you will have a clear-headed, trustworthy man acting for your good. Mr
Gilmore's partner is our next best friend to Mr Gilmore himself.'

A moment's reflection, as soon as I was alone, convinced me that I had
better not appear in my walking-dress until I had first discovered what
was going on in the lower part of the house. I had not ascertained yet
whether Sir Percival was indoors or out.

The singing of the canaries in the library, and the smell of
tobacco-smoke that came through the door, which was not closed, told me
at once where the Count was. I looked over my shoulder as I passed the
doorway, and saw to my surprise that he was exhibiting the docility of
the birds in his most engagingly polite manner to the housekeeper. He
must have specially invited her to see them –; for she would never have
thought of going into the library of her own accord. The man's slightest
actions had a purpose of some kind at the bottom of every one of them.
What could be his purpose here?

It was no time then to inquire into his motives. I looked about for
Madame Fosco next, and found her following her favourite circle round
and round the fish-pond.

I was a little doubtful how she would meet me, after the outbreak of
jealousy of which I had been the cause so short a time since. But her
husband had tamed her in the interval, and she now spoke to me with the
same civility as usual. My only object in addressing myself to her was
to ascertain if she knew what had become of Sir Percival. I contrived to
refer to him indirectly, and after a little fencing on either side she
at last mentioned that he had gone out.

`Which of the horses has he taken ?' I asked carelessly.

`None of them,' she replied. `He went away two hours since on foot. As I
understood it, his object was to make fresh inquiries about the woman
named Anne Catherick. He appears to be unreasonably anxious about
tracing her. Do you happen to know if she is dangerously mad, Miss
Halcombe ?'

`I do not, Countess.'

`Are you going in?'

`Yes, I think so. I suppose it will soon be time to dress for dinner.'

We entered the house together. Madame Fosco strolled into the library,
and dosed the door. I went at once to fetch my hat and shawl. Every
moment was of importance, if I was to get to Fanny at the inn and he
back before dinner.

When I crossed the hall again no one was there, and the singing of the
birds in the library had ceased. I could not stop to make any fresh
investigations. I could only assure myself that the way was clear, and
then leave the house with the two letters safe in my pocket.

On my way to the village I prepared myself for the possibility of
meeting Sir Percival. As long as I had him to deal with alone I felt
certain of not losing my presence of mind. Any woman who is sure of her
own wits is a match at any time for a man who is not sure of his own
temper. I had no such fear of Sir Percival as I had of the Count.
Instead of fluttering, it had composed me, to hear of the errand on
which he had gone out. While the tracing of Anne Catherick was the great
anxiety that occupied him, Laura and I might hope for some cessation of
any active persecution at his hands. For our sakes now, as well as for
Anne's, I hoped and prayed fervently that she might still escape him.

I walked on as briskly as the heat would let me till I reached the
cross-road which led to the village, looking back from time to time to
make sure that I was not followed by any one.

Nothing was behind me all the way but an empty country waggon. The noise
made by the lumbering wheels annoyed me, and when I found that the
waggon took the road to the village, as well as myself, I stopped to let
it go by and pass out of hearing. As I looked toward it, more
attentively than before, I thought l detected at intervals the feet of a
man walking close behind it, the carter being in front, by the side of
his horses. The part of the cross-road which I had just passed over was
so narrow that the waggon coming after me brushed the trees and thickets
on either side, and I had to wait until it went by before I could test
the correctness of my impression. Apparently that impression was wrong,
for when the waggon had passed me the road behind it was quite clear.

I reached the inn without meeting Sir Percival, and without noticing
anything more, and was glad to find that the landlady had received Fanny
with all possible kindness. The girl had a little parlour to sit in,
away from the noise of the taproom, and a clean bedchamber at the top of
the house. She began crying again at the sight of me, and said, poor
soul, truly enough, that it was dreadful to feel herself turned out into
the world as if she had committed some unpardonable fault, when no blame
could be laid at her door by anybody –; not even by her master, who had
sent her away.

`Try to make the best of it, Fanny,' I said. `Your mistress and I will
stand your friends, and will take care that your character shall not
suffer. Now, listen to me. I have very little time to spare, and I am
going to put a great trust in your hands. I wish you to take care of
these two letters. The one with the stamp on it you are to put into the
post when you reach London tomorrow. The other, directed to Mr Fairlie,
you are to deliver to him yourself as soon as you get home. Keep both
the letters about you and give them up to no one. They are of the last
importance to your mistress's interests.'

Fanny put the letters into the bosom of her dress.  `There they shall
stop, miss,' she said, `till I have done what you tell me.'

`Mind you are at the station in good time tomorrow morning,' I
continued. `And when you see the housekeeper at Limmeridge give her my
compliments, and say that you are in my service until Lady Glyde is able
to take you back. We may meet again sooner than you think. So keep a
good heart, and don't miss the seven o'clock train.'

`Thank you, miss –; thank you kindly. It gives one courage to hear your
voice again. Please to offer my duty to my lady, and say I left all the
things as tidy as I could in the time. Oh, dear ! dear! who will dress
her for dinner today? It really breaks my heart, miss, to think of it.'

When I got back to the house I had only a quarter of an hour to spare to
put myself in order for dinner, and to say two words to Laura before I
went downstairs.

`The letters are in Fanny's hands,' I whispered to her at the door. `Do
you mean to join us at dinner?'

`Oh, no, no –; not for the world.'

`Has anything happened? Has any one disturbed you?'

`Yes –; just now –; Sir Percival –;'

`Did he come in?'

`No, he frightened me by a thump on the door outside. I said, ``Who's
there?'' ``You know,'' he answered. ``Will you alter your mind, and tell
me the rest? You shall!  Sooner or later I'll wring it out of you. You
know where Anne Catherick is at this moment.'' ``Indeed, indeed,'' I
said, ``I don't.'' ``You do !'' he called back. ``l'll crush your
obstinacy –; mind that! –; I'll wring it out of you!'' He went away with
those words –; went away, Marian, hardly five minutes ago.' had not
found her yet.

`You are going downstairs, Marian? Come up again in the evening.'

`Yes, yes. Don't be uneasy if I am a little late –; I must be careful
not to give offence by leaving them too soon.'

The dinner-bell rang and I hastened away.

Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room, and the Count gave
me his ann. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his
customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner,
and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a
little more severely than usual ?

However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret
annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he was
not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner he was almost
as silent as Sir Percival himself, and he, every now and then, looked at
his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness which was quite new in
my experience of him. The one social obligation which he seemed to be
selfpossessed enough to perform as carefully as ever was the obligation
of being persistently civil and attentive to me. What vile object he has
in view I cannot still discover, but be the design what it may,
invariable politeness towards myself, invariable humility towards Laura,
and invariable suppression (at any cost) of Sir Percival's clumsy
violence, have been the means he has resolutely and impenetrably used to
get to his end ever since he set foot in this house. I suspected it when
he first interfered in our favour, on the day when the deed was produced
in the library, and I feel certain of it now.

When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to
accompany us back to the drawing-room.

`What are you going away for?' asked Sir Percival –; `I mean you,
Fosco.'

`I am going away because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,'
answered the Count. `Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for my
foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in with
them.'

`Nonsense !  Another glass of claret won't hurt you.  Sit down again
like an Englishman. I want half an hour's quiet talk with you over our
wine.'

`A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now, and not over
the wine. Later in the evening, if you please –; later in the evening.'

`Civil !' said Sir Percival savagely. `Civil behaviour, upon my soul, to
a man in his own house !'

I had more than once seen him look at the Count uneasily during
dinner-time, and had observed that the Count carefully abstained from
looking at him in return. This circumstance, coupled with the host's
anxiety for a little quiet talk over the wine, and the guest's obstinate
resolution not to sit down again at the table, revived in my memory the
request which Sir Percival had vainly addressed to his friend earlier in
the day, to come out of the library and speak to him. The Count had
deferred granting that private interview, when it was first asked for in
the afternoon, and had again deferred granting it, when it was a second
time asked for at the dinner-table. Whatever the coming subject of
discussion between them might be, it was clearly an important subject in
Sir Percival's estimation –; and perhaps (judging from his evident
reluctance to approach it) a dangerous subject as well, in the
estimation of the Count.

These considerations occurred to me while we were passing from the
dining-room to the drawing-room. Sir Percival's angry commentary on his
friend's desertion of him had not produced the slightest effect. The
Count obstinately accompanied us to the tea-table –; waited a minute or
two in the room –; went out into the hall –; and returned with the
post-bag in his hands. It was then eight o'clock –; the hour at which
the letters were always despatched from Blackwater Park.

`Have you any letter for the post, Miss Halconbe?' he asked, approaching
me with the bag.

I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-tongs
in her hand, to listen for my answer.

`No, Count, thank you. No letters today.'

He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down at
the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-song, `La
mia Carolina,' twice over. His wife, who was usually the most deliberate
of women in all her movements, made tea as quickly as I could have made
it myself –; finished her own cup in two minutes, and quietly glided out
of the room.

I rose to follow her example –; partly because I suspected her of
attempting some treachery upstairs with Laura, partly because I was
resolved not to remain alone in the same room with her husband.

Before I could get to the door the Count stopped me, by a request for a
cup of tea. I gave him the cup of tea, and tried a second time to get
away. He stopped me again –; this time by going back to the piano, and
suddenly appealing to me on a musical question in which he declared that
the honour of his country was concerned.

I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want of
taste in that direction. He only appealed to me again with a vehemence
which set all further protest on my part at defiance.  `The English and
the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians
for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. We were
perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking
of their Symphonies. Did we forget and did they forget his immortal
friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime
oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a
concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony
under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this,
and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand
had ever been composed by mortal man?' –; And without waiting for a word
of assent or dissent on my part, looking me hard in the face all the
time, he began thundering on the piano, and singing to it with loud and
lofty enthusiasm –; only interrupting himself, at intervals, to announce
to me fiercely the titles of the different pieces of music: `Chorus of
Egyptians in the Plague of Darkness, Miss Halcombe !' –; `Recitativo of
Moses with the tables of the Law.' –; `Prayer of Israelites, at the
passage of the Red Sea. Aha ! Aha ! ls that sacred? is that sublime?'
The piano trembled under his powerful hands, and the teacups on the
table rattled, as his big bass voice thundered out the notes, and his
heavy foot beat time on the floor.

There was something horrible –; something fierce and devilish –; in the
outburst of his delight at his own singing and playing, and in the
triumph with which he watched its effect upon me as I shrank nearer and
nearer to the door. I was released at last, not by my own efforts, but
by Sir Percival's interposition. He opened the dining-room door, and
called out angrily to know what `that infernal noise' meant. The Count
instantly got up from the piano. `Ah I if Percival is coming,' he said,
`harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss
Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the
rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!' He stalked out into the
verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of
Moses, sotto voce, in the garden.

I heard Sir Percival call after him from the dining-room window. But he
took no notice –; he seemed determined not to hear. That long-deferred
quiet talk between them was still to be put off, was still to wait for
the Count's absolute will and pleasure.

He had detained me in the drawing-room nearly half an hour from the time
when his wife left us. Where had she been, and what had she been doing
in that interval?

I went upstairs to ascertain, but I made no discoveries, and when I
questioned Laura, I found that she had not heard anything. Nobody had
disturbed her, no faint rustling of the silk dress had been audible,
either in the ante-room or in the passage.

It was then twenty minutes to nine. After going to my room to get my
journal, I returned, and sat with Laura, sometimes writing, sometimes
stopping to talk with her. Nobody came near us, and nothing happened. We
remained together till ten o'clock. I then rose, said my last cheering
words, and wished her goodnight. She locked her door again after we had
arranged that I should come in and see her the first thing in the
morm-ng.

I had a few sentences more to add to my diary before going to bed
myself, and as I went down again to the drawing-room after leaving Laura
for the last time that weary day, I resolved merely to show myself
there, to make my excuses, and then to retire an hour earlier than usual
for the night.

Sir Percival, and the Count and his wife, were sitting together. Sir
Percival was yawning in an easy-chair, the Count was reading, Madame
Fosco was fanning herself. Strange to say, her face was flushed now.
She. who had never suffered from the heat, was most undoubtedly
suffering from it tonight.

`I am afraid, Countess, you are not quite so well as usual?' I said.

`The very remark I was about to make to you,' she replied. `You are
looking pale, my dear.'

My dear! It was the first time she had ever addressed me with that
familiarity! There was an insolent smile too on her face when she said
the words.

`I am suffering from one of my bad headaches,' I answered coldly.

`Ah, indeed? Want of exercise, I suppose? A walk before dinner would
have been just the thing for you.' She referred to the `walk' with a
strange emphasis. Had she seen me go out? No matter if she had. The
letters were safe now in Fanny's hands.

`Come and have a smoke, Fosco,' said Sir Percival, rising, with another
uneasy look at his friend.

`With pleasure, Percival, when the ladies have gone to bed,' replied the
Count.

`Excuse me, Countess, if I set you the example of retiring,' I said.
`The only remedy for such a headache as mine is going to bed.'

I took my leave. There was the same insolent smile on the woman's face
when I shook hands with her. Sir Percival paid no attention to me. He
was looking impatiently at Madame Fosco, who showed no signs of leaving
the room with me. The Count smiled to himself behind his book. There was
yet another delay to that quiet talk with Sir Percival –; and the
Countess was the impediment this time.