The Woman in White

Chapter 2

June 15th.--The confusion of their arrival has had time to

subside. Two days have elapsed since the return of the

travellers, and that interval has sufficed to put the new

machinery of our lives at Blackwater Park in fair working order.

I may now return to my journal, with some little chance of being

able to continue the entries in it as collectedly as usual.

I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark which has

suggested itself to me since Laura came back.

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are

separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return

of the relative or friend who has been travelling always seems to

place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a

painful disadvantage when the two first meet. The sudden

encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the

one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved

in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most

loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden

strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both,

between them on either side. After the first happiness of my

meeting with Laura was over, after we had sat down together hand

in hand to recover breath enough and calmness enough to talk, I

felt this strangeness instantly, and I could see that she felt it

too. It has partially worn away, now that we have fallen back

into most of our old habits, and it will probably disappear before

long. But it has certainly had an influence over the first

impressions that I have formed of her, now that we are living

together again--for which reason only I have thought fit to

mention it here.

She has found me unaltered, but I have found her changed.

Changed in person, and in one respect changed in character. I

cannot absolutely say that she is less beautiful than she used to

be--I can only say that she is less beautiful to me.

Others, who do not look at her with my eyes and my recollections,

would probably think her improved. There is more colour and more

decision and roundness of outline in her face than there used to

be, and her figure seems more firmly set and more sure and easy in

all its movements than it was in her maiden days. But I miss

something when I look at her--something that once belonged to the

happy, innocent life of Laura Fairlie, and that I cannot find in

Lady Glyde. There was in the old times a freshness, a softness,

an ever-varying and yet ever-remaining tenderness of beauty in her

face, the charm of which it is not possible to express in words,

or, as poor Hartright used often to say, in painting either. This

is gone. I thought I saw the faint reflection of it for a moment

when she turned pale under the agitation of our sudden meeting on

the evening of her return, but it has never reappeared since.

None of her letters had prepared me for a personal change in her.

On the contrary, they had led me to expect that her marriage had

left her, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps I read

her letters wrongly in the past, and am now reading her face

wrongly in the present? No matter! Whether her beauty has gained

or whether it has lost in the last six months, the separation

either way has made her own dear self more precious to me than

ever, and that is one good result of her marriage, at any rate!

The second change, the change that I have observed in her

character, has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in

this case by the tone of her letters. Now that she is at home

again, I find her just as unwilling to enter into any details on

the subject of her married life as I had previously found her all

through the time of our separation, when we could only communicate

with each other by writing. At the first approach I made to the

forbidden topic she put her hand on my lips with a look and

gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my memory

the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone time when there were

no secrets between us.

"Whenever you and I are together, Marian," she said, "we shall

both be happier and easier with one another, if we accept my

married life for what it is, and say and think as little about it

as possible. I would tell you everything, darling, about myself,"

she went on, nervously buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my

waist, "if my confidences could only end there. But they could

not--they would lead me into confidences about my husband too; and

now I am married, I think I had better avoid them, for his sake,

and for your sake, and for mine. I don't say that they would

distress you, or distress me--I wouldn't have you think that for

the world. But--I want to be so happy, now I have got you back

again, and I want you to be so happy too----" She broke off

abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sitting-room, in which

we were talking. "Ah!" she cried, clapping her hands with a

bright smile of recognition, "another old friend found already!

Your bookcase, Marian--your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood

bookcase--how glad I am you brought it with you from Limmeridge!

And the horrid heavy man's umbrella, that you always would walk

out with when it rained! And first and foremost of all, your own

dear, dark, clever, gipsy-face, looking at me just as usual! It is

so like home again to be here. How can we make it more like home

still? I will put my father's portrait in your room instead of in

mine--and I will keep all my little treasures from Limmeridge

here--and we will pass hours and hours every day with these four

friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian!" she said, suddenly seating

herself on a footstool at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my

face, "promise you will never marry, and leave me. It is selfish

to say so, but you are so much better off as a single woman--

unless--unless you are very fond of your husband--but you won't be

very fond of anybody but me, will you?" She stopped again, crossed

my hands on my lap, and laid her face on them. "Have you been

writing many letters, and receiving many letters lately?" she

asked, in low, suddenly-altered tones. I understood what the

question meant, but I thought it my duty not to encourage her by

meeting her half way. "Have you heard from him?" she went on,

coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on which she now

ventured, by kissing my hands, upon which her face still rested.

"Is he well and happy, and getting on in his profession? Has he

recovered himself--and forgotten me?"

She should not have asked those questions. She should have

remembered her own resolution, on the morning when Sir Percival

held her to her marriage engagement, and when she resigned the

book of Hartright's drawings into my hands for ever. But, ah me!

where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good

resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back? Where is

the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that

has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such

unearthly creatures have existed--but what does our own experience

say in answer to books?

I made no attempt to remonstrate with her: perhaps, because I

sincerely appreciated the fearless candour which let me see, what

other women in her position might have had reasons for concealing

even from their dearest friends--perhaps, because I felt, in my

own heart and conscience, that in her place I should have asked

the same questions and had the same thoughts. All I could

honestly do was to reply that I had not written to him or heard

from him lately, and then to turn the conversation to less

dangerous topics.

There has been much to sadden me in our interview--my first

confidential interview with her since her return. The change

which her marriage has produced in our relations towards each

other, by placing a forbidden subject between us, for the first

time in our lives; the melancholy conviction of the dearth of all

warmth of feeling, of all close sympathy, between her husband and

herself, which her own unwilling words now force on my mind; the

distressing discovery that the influence of that ill-fated

attachment still remains (no matter how innocently, how

harmlessly) rooted as deeply as ever in her heart--all these are

disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly, and feels

for her as acutely, as I do.

There is only one consolation to set against them--a consolation

that ought to comfort me, and that does comfort me. All the

graces and gentleness of her character--all the frank affection of

her nature--all the sweet, simple, womanly charms which used to

make her the darling and delight of every one who approached her,

have come back to me with herself. Of my other impressions I am

sometimes a little inclined to doubt. Of this last, best,

happiest of all impressions, I grow more and more certain every

hour in the day.

Let me turn, now, from her to her travelling companions. Her

husband must engage my attention first. What have I observed in

Sir Percival, since his return, to improve my opinion of him?

I can hardly say. Small vexations and annoyances seem to have

beset him since he came back, and no man, under those

circumstances, is ever presented at his best. He looks, as I

think, thinner than he was when he left England. His wearisome

cough and his comfortless restlessness have certainly increased.

His manner--at least his manner towards me--is much more abrupt

than it used to be. He greeted me, on the evening of his return,

with little or nothing of the ceremony and civility of former

times--no polite speeches of welcome--no appearance of

extraordinary gratification at seeing me--nothing but a short

shake of the hand, and a sharp "How-d'ye-do, Miss Halcombe--glad

to see you again." He seemed to accept me as one of the necessary

fixtures of Blackwater Park, to be satisfied at finding me

established in my proper place, and then to pass me over

altogether.

Most men show something of their disposition in their own houses,

which they have concealed elsewhere, and Sir Percival has already

displayed a mania for order and regularity, which is quite a new

revelation of him, so far as my previous knowledge of his

character is concerned. If I take a book from the library and

leave it on the table, he follows me and puts it back again. If I

rise from a chair, and let it remain where I have been sitting, he

carefully restores it to its proper place against the wall. He

picks up stray flower-blossoms from the carpet, and mutters to

himself as discontentedly as if they were hot cinders burning

holes in it, and he storms at the servants if there is a crease in

the tablecloth, or a knife missing from its place at the dinner-

table, as fiercely as if they had personally insulted him.

I have already referred to the small annoyances which appear to

have troubled him since his return. Much of the alteration for

the worse which I have noticed in him may be due to these. I try

to persuade myself that it is so, because I am anxious not to be

disheartened already about the future. It is certainly trying to

any man's temper to be met by a vexation the moment he sets foot

in his own house again, after a long absence, and this annoying

circumstance did really happen to Sir Percival in my presence.

On the evening of their arrival the housekeeper followed me into

the hall to receive her master and mistress and their guests. The

instant he saw her, Sir Percival asked if any one had called

lately. The housekeeper mentioned to him, in reply, what she had

previously mentioned to me, the visit of the strange gentleman to

make inquiries about the time of her master's return. He asked

immediately for the gentleman's name. No name had been left. The

gentleman's business? No business had been mentioned. What was

the gentleman like? The housekeeper tried to describe him, but

failed to distinguish the nameless visitor by any personal

peculiarity which her master could recognise. Sir Percival

frowned, stamped angrily on the floor, and walked on into the

house, taking no notice of anybody. Why he should have been so

discomposed by a trifle I cannot say--but he was seriously

discomposed, beyond all doubt.

Upon the whole, it will be best, perhaps, if I abstain from

forming a decisive opinion of his manners, language, and conduct

in his own house, until time has enabled him to shake off the

anxieties, whatever they may be, which now evidently troubled his

mind in secret. I will turn over to a new page, and my pen shall

let Laura's husband alone for the present.

The two guests--the Count and Countess Fosco--come next in my

catalogue. I will dispose of the Countess first, so as to have

done with the woman as soon as possible.

Laura was certainly not chargeable with any exaggeration, in

writing me word that I should hardly recognise her aunt again when

we met. Never before have I beheld such a change produced in a

woman by her marriage as has been produced in Madame Fosco.

As Eleanor Fairlie (aged seven-and-thirty), she was always talking

pretentious nonsense, and always worrying the unfortunate men with

every small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on

long-suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-

forty), she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen

up in the strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous

love-locks which used to hang on either side of her face are now

replaced by stiff little rows of very short curls, of the sort one

sees in old-fashioned wigs. A plain, matronly cap covers her

head, and makes her look, for the first time in her life since I

remember her, like a decent woman. Nobody (putting her husband

out of the question, of course) now sees in her, what everybody

once saw--I mean the structure of the female skeleton, in the

upper regions of the collar-bones and the shoulder-blades. Clad

in quiet black or grey gowns, made high round the throat--dresses

that she would have laughed at, or screamed at, as the whim of the

moment inclined her, in her maiden days--she sits speechless in

corners; her dry white hands (so dry that the pores of her skin

look chalky) incessantly engaged, either in monotonous embroidery

work or in rolling up endless cigarettes for the Count's own

particular smoking. On the few occasions when her cold blue eyes

are off her work, they are generally turned on her husband, with

the look of mute submissive inquiry which we are all familiar with

in the eyes of a faithful dog. The only approach to an inward

thaw which I have yet detected under her outer covering of icy

constraint, has betrayed itself, once or twice, in the form of a

suppressed tigerish jealousy of any woman in the house (the maids

included) to whom the Count speaks, or on whom he looks with

anything approaching to special interest or attention. Except in

this one particular, she is always, morning, noon, and night,

indoors and out, fair weather or foul, as cold as a statue, and as

impenetrable as the stone out of which it is cut. For the common

purposes of society the extraordinary change thus produced in her

is, beyond all doubt, a change for the better, seeing that it has

transformed her into a civil, silent, unobtrusive woman, who is

never in the way. How far she is really reformed or deteriorated

in her secret self, is another question. I have once or twice

seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips, and heard

sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice, which have led me to

suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up

something dangerous in her nature, which used to evaporate

harmlessly in the freedom of her former life. It is quite

possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own

impression, however, is, that I am right. Time will show.

And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation--

the foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward English woman

till her own relations hardly know her again--the Count himself?

What of the Count?

This in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything.

If he had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have

tamed the tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his

cigarettes, as his wife does--I should have held my tongue when he

looked at me, as she holds hers.

I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The

man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like

him. In two short days he has made his way straight into my

favourable estimation, and how he has worked the miracle is more

than I can tell.

It absolutely startles me, now he is in my mind, to find how

plainly I see him!--how much more plainly than I see Sir Percival,

or Mr. Fairlie, or Walter Hartright, or any other absent person of

whom I think, with the one exception of Laura herself! I can hear

his voice, as if he was speaking at this moment. I know what his

conversation was yesterday, as well as if I was hearing it now.

How am I to describe him? There are peculiarities in his personal

appearance, his habits, and his amusements, which I should blame

in the boldest terms, or ridicule in the most merciless manner, if

I had seen them in another man. What is it that makes me unable

to blame them, or to ridicule them in HIM?

For example, he is immensely fat. Before this time I have always

especially disliked corpulent humanity. I have always maintained

that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size

and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies was equivalent to

declaring, either that no people but amiable people ever get fat,

or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a

directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person

on whose body they accumulate. I have invariably combated both

these absurd assertions by quoting examples of fat people who were

as mean, vicious, and cruel as the leanest and the worst of their

neighbours. I have asked whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable

character? Whether Pope Alexander the Sixth was a good man?

Whether Mr. Murderer and Mrs. Murderess Manning were not both

unusually stout people? Whether hired nurses, proverbially as

cruel a set of women as are to be found in all England, were not,

for the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found

in all England?--and so on, through dozens of other examples,

modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Holding

these strong opinions on the subject with might and main as I do

at this moment, here, nevertheless, is Count Fosco, as fat as

Henry the Eighth himself, established in my favour, at one day's

notice, without let or hindrance from his own odious corpulence.

Marvellous indeed!

Is it his face that has recommended him?

It may be his face. He is a most remarkable likeness, on a large

scale, of the great Napoleon. His features have Napoleon's

magnificent regularity--his expression recalls the grandly calm,

immovable power of the Great Soldier's face. This striking

resemblance certainly impressed me, to begin with; but there is

something in him besides the resemblance, which has impressed me

more. I think the influence I am now trying to find is in his

eyes. They are the most unfathomable grey eyes I ever saw, and

they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irresistible glitter

in them which forces me to look at him, and yet causes me

sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not feel. Other

parts of his face and head have their strange peculiarities. His

complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow-fairness, so much

at variance with the dark-brown colour of his hair, that I suspect

the hair of being a wig, and his face, closely shaven all over, is

smoother and freer from all marks and wrinkles than mine, though

(according to Sir Percival's account of him) he is close on sixty

years of age. But these are not the prominent personal

characteristics which distinguish him, to my mind, from all the

other men I have ever seen. The marked peculiarity which singles

him out from the rank and file of humanity lies entirely, so far

as I can tell at present, in the extraordinary expression and

extraordinary power of his eyes.

His manner and his command of our language may also have assisted

him, in some degree, to establish himself in my good opinion. He

has that quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest

in listening to a woman, and that secret gentleness in his voice

in speaking to a woman, which, say what we may, we can none of us

resist. Here, too, his unusual command of the English language

necessarily helps him. I had often heard of the extraordinary

aptitude which many Italians show in mastering our strong, hard,

Northern speech; but, until I saw Count Fosco, I had never

supposed it possible that any foreigner could have spoken English

as he speaks it. There are times when it is almost impossible to

detect, by his accent that he is not a countryman of our own, and

as for fluency, there are very few born Englishmen who can talk

with as few stoppages and repetitions as the Count. He may

construct his sentences more or less in the foreign way, but I

have never yet heard him use a wrong expression, or hesitate for a

moment in his choice of a word.

All the smallest characteristics of this strange man have

something strikingly original and perplexingly contradictory in

them. Fat as he is and old as he is, his movements are

astonishingly light and easy. He is as noiseless in a room as any

of us women, and more than that, with all his look of unmistakable

mental firmness and power, he is as nervously sensitive as the

weakest of us. He starts at chance noises as inveterately as

Laura herself. He winced and shuddered yesterday, when Sir

Percival beat one of the spaniels, so that I felt ashamed of my

own want of tenderness and sensibility by comparison with the

Count.

The relation of this last incident reminds me of one of his most

curious peculiarities, which I have not yet mentioned--his

extraordinary fondness for pet animals.

Some of these he has left on the Continent, but he has brought

with him to this house a cockatoo, two canary-birds, and a whole

family of white mice. He attends to all the necessities of these

strange favourites himself, and he has taught the creatures to be

surprisingly fond of him and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a

most vicious and treacherous bird towards every one else,

absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of its cage, it

hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great big body, and

rubs its top-knot against his sallow double chin in the most

caressing manner imaginable. He has only to set the doors of the

canaries' cages open, and to call them, and the pretty little

cleverly trained creatures perch fearlessly on his hand, mount his

fat outstretched fingers one by one, when he tells them to "go

upstairs," and sing together as if they would burst their throats

with delight when they get to the top finger. His white mice live

in a little pagoda of gaily-painted wirework, designed and made by

himself. They are almost as tame as the canaries, and they are

perpetually let out like the canaries. They crawl all over him,

popping in and out of his waistcoat, and sitting in couples, white

as snow, on his capacious shoulders. He seems to be even fonder

of his mice than of his other pets, smiles at them, and kisses

them, and calls them by all sorts of endearing names. If it be

possible to suppose an Englishman with any taste for such childish

interests and amusements as these, that Englishman would certainly

feel rather ashamed of them, and would be anxious to apologise for

them, in the company of grown-up people. But the Count,

apparently, sees nothing ridiculous in the amazing contrast

between his colossal self and his frail little pets. He would

blandly kiss his white mice and twitter to his canary-birds amid

an assembly of English fox-hunters, and would only pity them as

barbarians when they were all laughing their loudest at him.

It seems hardly credible while I am writing it down, but it is

certainly true, that this same man, who has all the fondness of an

old maid for his cockatoo, and all the small dexterities of an

organ-boy in managing his white mice, can talk, when anything

happens to rouse him, with a daring independence of thought, a

knowledge of books in every language, and an experience of society

in half the capitals of Europe, which would make him the prominent

personage of any assembly in the civilised world. This trainer of

canary-birds, this architect of a pagoda for white mice, is (as

Sir Percival himself has told me) one of the first experimental

chemists living, and has discovered, among other wonderful

inventions, a means of petrifying the body after death, so as to

preserve it, as hard as marble, to the end of time. This fat,

indolent, elderly man, whose nerves are so finely strung that he

starts at chance noises, and winces when he sees a house-spaniel

get a whipping, went into the stable-yard on the morning after his

arrival, and put his hand on the head of a chained bloodhound--a

beast so savage that the very groom who feeds him keeps out of his

reach. His wife and I were present, and I shall not forget the

scene that followed, short as it was.

"Mind that dog, sir," said the groom; "he flies at everybody!" "He

does that, my friend," replied the Count quietly, "because

everybody is afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me." And he

laid his plump, yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds

had been perching ten minutes before, upon the formidable brute's

head, and looked him straight in the eyes. "You big dogs are all

cowards," he said, addressing the animal contemptuously, with his

face and the dog's within an inch of each other. "You would kill

a poor cat, you infernal coward. You would fly at a starving

beggar, you infernal coward. Anything that you can surprise

unawares--anything that is afraid of your big body, and your

wicked white teeth, and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth, is

the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle me at this

moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren't so much as look

me in the face, because I'm not afraid of you. Will you think

better of it, and try your teeth in my fat neck? Bah! not you!" He

turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the yard,

and the dog crept back meekly to his kennel. "Ah! my nice

waistcoat!" he said pathetically. "I am sorry I came here. Some

of that brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat."

Those words express another of his incomprehensible oddities. He

is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and

has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already--all of light

garish colours, and all immensely large even for him--in the two

days of his residence at Blackwater Park.

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as

the singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish

triviality of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with

all of us during the period of his sojourn in this place. He has

evidently discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she

confessed as much to me when I pressed her on the subject)--but he

has also found out that she is extravagantly fond of flowers.

Whenever she wants a nosegay he has got one to give her, gathered

and arranged by himself, and greatly to my amusement, he is always

cunningly provided with a duplicate, composed of exactly the same

flowers, grouped in exactly the same way, to appease his icily

jealous wife before she can so much as think herself aggrieved.

His management of the Countess (in public) is a sight to see. He

bows to her, he habitually addresses her as "my angel," he carries

his canaries to pay her little visits on his fingers and to sing

to her, he kisses her hand when she gives him his cigarettes; he

presents her with sugar-plums in return, which he puts into her

mouth playfully, from a box in his pocket. The rod of iron with

which he rules her never appears in company--it is a private rod,

and is always kept upstairs.

His method of recommending himself to me is entirely different.

He flatters my vanity by talking to me as seriously and sensibly

as if I was a man. Yes! I can find him out when I am away from

him--I know he flatters my vanity, when I think of him up here in

my own room--and yet, when I go downstairs, and get into his

company again, he will blind me again, and I shall be flattered

again, just as if I had never found him out at all! He can manage

me as he manages his wife and Laura, as he managed the bloodhound

in the stable-yard, as he manages Sir Percival himself, every hour

in the day. "My good Percival! how I like your rough English

humour!"--"My good Percival! how I enjoy your solid English

sense!" He puts the rudest remarks Sir Percival can make on his

effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that

manner--always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling

at him with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder,

and bearing with him benignantly, as a good-humoured father bears

with a wayward son.

The interest which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely

original man has led me to question Sir Percival about his past

life.

Sir Percival either knows little, or will tell me little, about

it. He and the Count first met many years ago, at Rome, under the

dangerous circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere. Since

that time they have been perpetually together in London, in Paris,

and in Vienna--but never in Italy again; the Count having, oddly

enough, not crossed the frontiers of his native country for years

past. Perhaps he has been made the victim of some political

persecution? At all events, he seems to be patriotically anxious

not to lose sight of any of his own countrymen who may happen to

be in England. On the evening of his arrival he asked how far we

were from the nearest town, and whether we knew of any Italian

gentlemen who might happen to be settled there. He is certainly

in correspondence with people on the Continent, for his letters

have all sorts of odd stamps on them, and I saw one for him this

morning, waiting in his place at the breakfast-table, with a huge,

official-looking seal on it. Perhaps he is in correspondence with

his government? And yet, that is hardly to be reconciled either

with my other idea that he may be a political exile.

How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco! And what does

it all amount to?--as poor, dear Mr. Gilmore would ask, in his

impenetrable business-like way I can only repeat that I do

assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a strange, half-

willing, half-unwilling liking for the Count. He seems to have

established over me the same sort of ascendency which he has

evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free, and even rude, as he

may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat friend, Sir

Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly see, of giving

any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether I am afraid

too? I certainly never saw a man, in all my experience, whom I

should be so sorry to have for an enemy. Is this because I like

him, or because I am afraid of him? Chi sa?--as Count Fosco might

say in his own language. Who knows?

June 16th.--Something to chronicle to-day besides my own ideas and

impressions. A visitor has arrived--quite unknown to Laura and to

me, and apparently quite unexpected by Sir Percival.

We were all at lunch, in the room with the new French windows that

open into the verandah, and the Count (who devours pastry as I

have never yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at

boarding-schools) had just amused us by asking gravely for his

fourth tart--when the servant entered to announce the visitor.

"Mr. Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you

immediately."

Sir Percival started, and looked at the man with an expression of

angry alarm.

"Mr. Merriman!" he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must

have deceived him.

"Yes, Sir Percival--Mr. Merriman, from London."

"Where is he?"

"In the library, Sir Percival."

He left the table the instant the last answer was given, and

hurried out of the room without saying a word to any of us.

"Who is Mr. Merriman?" asked Laura, appealing to me.

"I have not the least idea," was all I could say in reply.

The Count had finished his fourth tart, and had gone to a side-

table to look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us

with the bird perched on his shoulder.

"Mr. Merriman is Sir Percival's solicitor," he said quietly.

Sir Percival's solicitor. It was a perfectly straightforward

answer to Laura's question, and yet, under the circumstances, it

was not satisfactory. If Mr. Merriman had been specially sent for

by his client, there would have been nothing very wonderful in his

leaving town to obey the summons. But when a lawyer travels from

London to Hampshire without being sent for, and when his arrival

at a gentleman's house seriously startles the gentleman himself,

it may be safely taken for granted that the legal visitor is the

bearer of some very important and very unexpected news--news which

may be either very good or very bad, but which cannot, in either

case, be of the common everyday kind.

Laura and I sat silent at the table for a quarter of an hour or

more, wondering uneasily what had happened, and waiting for the

chance of Sir Percival's speedy return. There were no signs of

his return, and we rose to leave the room.

The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which

he had been feeding his cockatoo, with the bird still perched on

his shoulder, and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco

went out first. Just as I was on the point of following them he

made a sign with his hand, and spoke to me, before I passed him,

in the oddest manner.

"Yes," he said, quietly answering the unexpressed idea at that

moment in my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so

many words--"yes, Miss Halcombe, something HAS happened."

I was on the point of answering, "I never said so," but the

vicious cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings and gave a screech that

set all my nerves on edge in an instant, and made me only too glad

to get out of the room.

I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind

was the same as the thought in mine, which Count Fosco had

surprised, and when she spoke her words were almost the echo of

his. She, too, said to me secretly that she was afraid something

had happened.