he went on, "she did me an injustice, which
I lament—and forgive. Let us never return
to the subject, Miss Halcombe; let us all
comfortably combine to forget it, from this
moment."

"You are very kind," I said; "you relieve
me inexpressibly—-"

I tried to continue—but his eyes were on me;
his deadly smile, that hides everything, was set,
hard and unwavering, on his broad, smooth face.
My distrust of his unfathomable falseness, my
sense of my own degradation in stooping to
conciliate his wife and himself, so disturbed and
confused me, that the next words failed on my lips,
and I stood there in silence.

"I beg you on my knees to say no more, Miss
Halcombe—I am truly shocked that you should
have thought it necessary to say so much."
With that polite speech, he took my hand—oh,
how I despise myself! oh, how little comfort
there is, even in knowing that I submitted to it
for Laura's sake!—he took my hand, and put it
to his poisonous lips. Never did I know all my
horror of him till then. That innocent familiarity
turned my blood, as if it had been the
vilest insult that a man could offer me. Yet I
hid my disgust from him—I tried to smile—
I, who once mercilessly despised deceit in other
women, was as false as the worst of them, as
false as the Judas whose lips had touched my
hand.

I could not have maintained my degrading
self-control—it is all that redeems me in my own
estimation to know that I could not—if he had
still continued to keep his eyes on my face. His
wife's tigerish jealousy came to my rescue, and
forced his attention away from me, the moment
he possessed himself of my hand. Her cold
blue eyes caught light; her dull white cheeks
flushed into bright colour; she looked years
younger than her age, in an instant.

"Count!" she said. "Your foreign forms of
politeness are not understood by
Englishwomen."

"Pardon me, my angel! The best and
dearest Englishwoman in the world understands
them." With those words, he dropped my
hand, and quietly raised his wife's hand to his
lips, in place of it.

I ran back up the stairs, to take refuge in
my own room. If there had been time to think,
my thoughts, when I was alone again, would
have caused me bitter suffering. But there was
no time to think. Happily for the preservation
of my calmness and my courage, there was time
for nothing but action.

The letters to the lawyer and to Mr. Fairlie,
were still to be written; and I sat down at
once, without a moment's hesitation, to devote
myself to them. There was no multitude of
resources to perplex me—there was absolutely
no one to depend on, in the first instance, but
myself. Sir Percival had neither friends nor
relatives in the neighbourhood whose
intercession I could attempt to employ. He was on
the coldest terms—in some cases, on the worst
terms—with the families of his own rank and
station who lived near him. We two women
had neither father, nor brother, to come to the
house, and take our parts. There was no choice,
but to write those two doubtful letters—or to
put Laura in the wrong and myself in the
wrong, and to make all peaceable negotiation in
the future impossible, by secretly escaping from
Blackwater Park. Nothing but the most
imminent personal peril could justify our taking
that second course. The letters must be tried
first; and I wrote them.

I said nothing to the lawyer about Anne
Catherick; because (as I had already hinted to
Laura) that topic was connected with a
mystery which we could not yet explain, and
which it would therefore be useless to write
about to a professional man. I left my correspondent
to attribute Sir Percival's disgraceful
conduct, if he pleased, to fresh disputes
about money matters; and simply consulted him
on the possibility of taking legal proceedings
for Laura's protection, in the event of her
husband's refusal to allow her to leave Blackwater
Park for a time, and return with me to
Limmeridge. I referred him to Mr. Fairlie for the
details of this last arrangement-- I assured him
that I wrote with Laura's authority—and I
ended by entreating him to act in her name,
to the utmost extent of his power, and with the
least possible loss of time.

The letter to Mr. Fairlie occupied me next.
I appealed to him on the terms which I had
mentioned to Laura as the most likely to make him
bestir himself; I enclosed a copy of my letter
to the lawyer, to show him how serious the
case was; and I represented our removal to
Limmeridge as the only compromise which
would prevent the danger and distress of
Laura's present position from inevitably affecting
her uncle as well as herself, at no very distant
time.

When I had done, and had sealed and directed
the two envelopes, I went back with the letters
to Laura's room, to show her that they were
written.

"Has anybody disturbed you?" I asked,
when she opened the door to me.

"Nobody has knocked," she replied. "But
I heard some one in the outer room."

"Was it a man or a woman?"

"A woman. I heard the rustling of her
gown."

"A rustling like silk?"

"Yes; like silk."

Madame Fosco had evidently been watching
outside. The mischief she might do by herself,
was little to be feared. But the mischief she
might do, as a willing instrument in her
husband's hands, was too formidable to be
overlooked.

"What became of the rustling of the gown
when you no longer heard it in the ante-room?"
I inquired. "Did you hear it go past your wall,
along the passage?"

"Yes. I kept still, and listened; and just
heard it."

"Which way did it go?"