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 house-
maid 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 come
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 to-day?"

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 worst-tempered 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
happened 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. But 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 own 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."