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 down
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 formal 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?"

Lanra 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 Sir 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 same 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 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 to-day?"

"It is necessary to my plans and wishes,"
replied 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 to-
morrow—Yes, or No?"

"Yes—if you will have it so."

"Then, what are you wasting your time for,
here? Let the signature wait till to-morrow—
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 Couut, 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 to-morrow. Let it wait—and
renew it when you come back."

Sir Percival hesitated, and looked at his watch.