in that way still)— ' dear lady, one word, I implore
you, on a matter serious to us both.' If
one can think at all, in serious difficulties, one
thinks quick. I felt directly that it might be
a fatal mistake to leave myself and to leave you
in the dark, where such a man as the Count was
concerned. I felt that the doubt of what he
might do, in your absence, would be ten times
more trying to me if I declined to see him than
if I consented. ' Ask the gentleman to wait in
the shop,' I said.  'l will be with him in a
moment.' I ran up-stairs for my bonnet,
being determined not to let him speak to
me in-doors. I knew his deep ringing voice;
and I was afraid Laura might hear it, even in
the shop. In less than a minute I was down
again in the passage, and had opened the door
into the street. He came round to meet me
from the shop. There he was, in deep mourning,
with his smooth bow and his deadly smile, and
some idle boys and women near him, staring at
his great size, his fine black clothes, and his
large cane with the gold knob to it. All the
horrible time at Blackwater came back to me
the moment I set eyes on him. All the old
loathing crept and crawled through me, when
he took off his hat with a flourish, and spoke to
me, as if we had parted on the friendliest terms
hardly a day since."

"You remember what he said?"

"I can't repeat it, Walter. You shall know
directly what he said about you — but I can't
repeat what he said to me. It was worse than
the polite insolence of his letter. My hands
tingled to strike him, as if I had been a man! I
only kept them quiet by tearing his card to pieces
under my shawl. Without saying a word on
my side, I walked away from the house (for fear
of Laura seeing us); and he followed, protesting
softly all the way. In the first by-street, I
turned, and asked him what he wanted with me.
He wanted two things. First, if I had no objection,
to express his sentiments. I declined to
hear them. Secondly, to repeat the warning in
his letter. I asked, what occasion there was for
repeating it. He bowed and smiled, and said
he would explain. The explanation exactly confirmed
the fears I expressed before you left us.
I told you, if you remember, that Sir Percival
would be too headstrong to take his
friend's advice where you were concerned; and
that there was no danger to be dreaded
from the Count till his own interests were
threatened, and he was roused into acting for
himself?"

"I recollect, Marian."

"Well; so it has really turned out. The Count
offered his advice; but it was refused. Sir Percival
would only take counsel of his own violence,
his own obstinacy, and his own hatred of
you. The Count let him have his way; first
privately ascertaining, in case of his own interests
being threatened next, where we lived.
You were followed, Walter, on returning here,
after your first journey to Hampshire — by the
lawyer's men for some distance from the railway,
and by the Count himself to the door of
the house. How he contrived to escape being
seen by you, he did not tell me; but he found
us out on that occasion, and in that way. Having
made the discovery, he took no advantage of it
till the news reached him of Sir Percival's death
— and then, as I told you, he acted for himself,
because he believed you would next proceed
against the dead man's partner in the conspiracy.
He at once made his arrangements to meet the
owner of the Asylum in London, and to take him
to the place where his runaway patient was
hidden; believing that the results, whichever
way they ended, would be to involve you in
interminable legal disputes and difficulties, and to
tie your hands for all purposes of offence, so far
as he was concerned. That was his purpose,
on his own confession to me. The only
consideration which made him hesitate, at the last
moment—"

"Yes?"

"It is hard to acknowledge it, Walter — and
yet I must!  I was the only consideration. No
words can say how degraded I feel in my own
estimation when I think of it — but the one weak
point in that man's iron character is the horrible
admiration he feels for me. I have tried, for the
sake of my own self-respect, to disbelieve it as
long as I could; but his looks, his actions, force
on me the shameful conviction of the truth. The
eyes of that monster of wickedness moistened
while he was speaking to me — they did, Walter!
He declared, that at the moment of pointing
out the house to the doctor, he thought of
my misery if I was separated from Laura, of my
responsibility if I was called on to answer for
effecting her escape and he risked the worst
that you could do to him, the second time, for
my sake. All he asked was that I would remember
the sacrifice, and restrain your rashness,
in my own interests — interests which he might
never be able to consult again. I made no such
bargain with him; I would have died first. But
believe him, or not — whether it is true or false
that he sent the doctor away with an excuse—
one thing is certain, I saw the man leave him,
without so much as a glance at our window, or
even at our side of the way."

"I believe it, Marian. The best men are not
consistent in good — why should the worst men
be consistent in evil? At the same time, I suspect
him of merely attempting to frighten you,
by threatening what he cannot really do. I
doubt his power of annoying us, by means of the
owner of the Asylum, now that Sir Percival is
dead, and Mrs. Catherick is free from all control.
But let me hear more. What did the Count say
of me?"

"He spoke last of you. His eyes brightened
and hardened, and his manner changed to what
I remember it, in past times — to that mixture
of pitiless resolution and mountebank mockery
which makes it so impossible to fathom him.
' Warn Mr. Hartright!' he said, in his loftiest
manner. 'He has a man of brains to deal
with, a man who snaps his big fingers at the
laws and conventions of society, when he measures
himself with ME. If my lamented friend