hand on the desk; cleared his throat; and began.
He wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so
large and bold a hand, and with such wide spaces
between the lines, that he reached the bottom of
the slip in not more than two minutes certainly
from the time when he started at the top. Each
slip as he finished it, was paged, and tossed over
his shoulder, out of his way, on the floor. When
his first pen was worn out, that went over his
shoulder too; and he pounced on a second from
the supply scattered about the table. Slip after
slip, by dozens, by fifties, by hundreds, flew over
his shoulders on either side of him, till he had
snowed himself up in paper all round his
chair. Hour after hour passed—and there I
sat, watching; there he sat, writing. He never
stopped, except to sip his coffee; and when
that was exhausted, to smack his forehead,
from time to time. One o'clock struck, two,
three, four—and still the slips flew about all
round him; still the untiring pen scraped its
way ceaselessly from top to bottom of the page;
still the white chaos of paper rose higher and
higher all round his chair. At four o'clock,
I heard a sudden splutter of the pen, indicative
of the flourish with which he signed his
name. " Bravo!" he cried—springing to his
feet with the activity of a young man, and looking
me straight in the face with a smile of
superb triumph.

"Done, Mr. Hartright!" he announced, with
a self-renovating thump of his list on his broad
breast. "Done, to my own profound satisfaction
—to your profound astonishment, when you
read what I have written. The subject is
exhausted: the Man—Fosco—is not. I proceed
to the arrangement of my slips, to the revision
of my slips, to the reading of my slips—
addressed, emphatically, to your private ear.
Four o'clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,
revision, reading, from four to five.
Short snooze of restoration for myself, from
five to six. Final preparations, from six to
seven. Affair of agent and sealed letter from
seven to eight. At eight, en route. Behold the
programme!"

He sat down cross-legged on the floor, among
his papers; strung them together with a bodkin
and a piece of string; revised them; wrote all
the titles and honours by which he was
personally distinguished, at the head of the first
page; and then read the manuscript to me,
with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse
theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have
an opportunity, ere long, of forming his own
opinion of the document. It will be sufficient
to mention here that it answered my purpose.

His next proceeding was to write me the
address of the person from whom he had hired
the fly to go to the railway, and to hand me
Sir Percival's letter. I read this last with
breathless interest. It only contained a few
lines; but it distinctly announced the arrival
of " Lady Glyde" in London, by the midday
train from Blackwater, on the 29th of July, 1850
—exactly, as I had supposed, one day after the
date of her (assumed) death on the doctor's
certificate.

"Are you satisfied?" asked the Count.

"l am."

"A quarter past five," he said, looking at his
watch. "Time for my restorative snooze. I
personally resemble Napoleon the Great (as you
may have remarked, Mr. Hartright)—I also
resemble that immortal man in my power of
commanding sleep at will. Excuse me, one
moment. I will summon Madame Fosco, to keep
you from feeling dull."

Knowing as well as he did, that he was
summoning Madame Fosco, to ensure my not leaving
the house while he was asleep, I made
no reply, and occupied myself in tying up
the papers which he had placed in my possession.

The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous
as ever. " Amuse Mr. Hartright, my angel,"
said the Count. He placed a chair for her,
kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew
to a sofa, and, in three minutes, was as peacefully
and happily asleep as the most virtuous
man in existence.

Madame Fosco took a book from the table,
sat down, and looked at me, with the steady,
vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot
and never forgave.

"I have been listening to your conversation
with my husband," she said. " If I had been
in his place I would have laid you dead on the
hearth-rug."

With those words, she opened her book;
and never looked at me, or spoke to me,
from that time till the time when her husband
woke.

He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa,
accurately to an hour from the time when he
had gone to sleep.

"I feel infinitely refreshed," he remarked.
"Eleanor, my good wife, are you all ready,
upstairs? That is well. My little packing here
can be completed in ten minutes—my travelling-
dress assumed in ten minutes more. What
remains, before the agent comes?" He looked
about the room, and noticed the cage with his
white mice in it. " Ah!" he cried, piteously;
"a last laceration of my sympathies still
remains. My innocent pets! my little cherished
children! what am I to do with them? For
the present, we are settled nowhere; for the
present, we travel incessantly—the less baggage
we carry, the better for ourselves. My cockatoo,
my canaries, and my little mice—who
will cherish them, when their good Papa is
gone?"

He walked about the room, deep in thought.
He had not been at all troubled about writing
his confession, but he was visibly perplexed and
distressed about the far more important question
of the disposal of his pets. After long
consideration, he suddenly sat down again at the
writing-table.

"An idea!" he exclaimed. "I will offer my
canaries and my cockatoo to this vast Metropolis
—my agent shall present them, in my name,