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 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 fife 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 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 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.

"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?"