The Woman in White

Chapter 3

About two hours after Sir Percival rose from the luncheon-table 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

had 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.

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 s*x, 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. "If

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 circumstance 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 I 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 I

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.

"Some person who has heavy claims on Sir Percival," she answered,

"and who has been the cause of Mr. Merriman's visit here to-day."

"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?"

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 violet-coloured

ribbon round it. A blue blouse, with profuse white fancy-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 years of age.

"Take my word 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.

"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 my part, that something had happened. Depend upon it,

he knows more than we do."

"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 first two games 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.

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 morning-room, where

his wife and I were waiting, with our hats on, for Madame Fosco to

join us, and inquired for the Count.

"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 readiness 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

referred. 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, carried

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 poor-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 chirruped 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 boat-house he joined us again. I will put down the

conversation that ensued 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 exercised 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 pocket-axe.

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 nerves, 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 made 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 i***t) 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 lifted

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."

"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 copy-book

morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What

infernal humbug!"

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 gaily,

"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. "I 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.

"It 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,

saying 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 police

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."

"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 pret-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."

"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 bon-bon?" He

took out of his pocket a pretty little inlaid box, and placed it

open on the table. "Chocolat a la Vanille," cried the

impenetrable man, cheerfully rattling the sweetmeats in the box,

and bowing 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 goes. Yes! I agree with her. John Bull

does abhor the crimes of John c******n. 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

this 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 friends than the rigidly honest man who only borrows of

them once, under pressure of the direst want. In the one case the

friends will not be at all surprised, and they will give. 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 lives 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 a 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 good-humoured, 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 bare 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 Sheridan said, I go--and

leave my character behind me."

He got up, put the cage on the table, and paused for a moment to

count the mice 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 favorable 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 boat-house

empty, so that her husband might search it to its remotest

corners, we rose also to follow her out.

Before we had taken three steps, the Count's quick eye discovered

the lost mouse 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.

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.

"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.

"Not dirt," whispered the Count, fastening the other hand suddenly

on Sir Percival's collar, and shaking it in his agitation.

"Blood."

"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."

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 back,

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.

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.

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.

"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?"

"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 Percival'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, which

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 Cartright met with her to this

day.

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 house-

keeper 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 stable-

jacket, 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

to-day?"

"I don't know, sir," answered 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."

"Logical inference, Miss Halcombe," continued the Count, wheeling

round briskly, and addressing me. "Sir Percival is going a long

distance to-day."

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 library 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 time to-morrow--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."

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.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.