on my ready memory not long since—but you
seem to doubt it now. I will get my journal,
and you shall see if I am right or wrong."

I went away and got the book at once. On
looking back to the entry referring to the
lawyer's visit, we found that my recollection of
the two alternatives presented was accurately
correct. It was almost as great a relief to my
mind as to Laura's, to find that my memory
had served me, on this occasion, as faithfully as
usual. In the perilous uncertainty of our present
situation, it is hard to say what future interests
may not depend upon the regularity of
the entries in my journal, and upon the reliability
of my recollection at the time when I
make them.

Laura's face and manner suggested to me
that this last consideration had occurred to her
as well as to myself. Any way, it is only a
trifling matter; and I am almost ashamed to
put it down here in writing—it seems to set
the forlornness of our situation in such a
miserably vivid light. We must have little
indeed to depend on, when the discovery
that my memory can still be trusted to serve
us, is hailed as if it was the discovery of a new
friend!

The first bell for dinner separated us. Just
as it had done ringing, Sir Percival and the
Count returned from their walk. We heard
the master of the house storming at the servant
for being five minutes late; and the master's
guest interposing, as usual, in the interests of
propriety, patience, and peace.

          *          *         *          *          *

The evening has come and gone. No extraordinary
event has happened. But I have
noticed certain peculiarities in the conduct of
Sir Percival and the Count, which have sent me
to my bed, feeling very anxious and uneasy
about Anne Catherick, and about the results
which to-morrow may produce.

I know enough by this time, to be sure that
the aspect of Sir Percival which is the most
false, and which, therefore, means the worst, is
his polite aspect. That long walk with his
friend had ended in improving his manners,
especially towards his wife. To Laura's secret surprise
and to my secret alarm, he called her by
her Christian name, asked if she had heard lately
from her uncle, inquired when Mrs. Vesey was
to receive her invitation to Blackwater, and
showed her so many other little attentions, that
he almost recalled the days of his hateful courtship
at Limmeridge House. This was a bad
sign, to begin with; and I thought it more
ominous still, that he should pretend, after
dinner, to fall asleep in the drawing-room, and
that his eyes should cunningly follow Laura and
me, when he thought we neither of us suspected
him. I have never had any doubt that
his sudden journey by himself took him to
Welmingham to question Mrs. Catherick but the
experience of to-night has made me fear that
the expedition was not undertaken in vain, and
that he has got the information which he
unquestionably left us to collect. If I knew where
Anne Catherick was to be found, I would be
up to-morrow with sunrise, and warn her.

While the aspect under which Sir Percival
presented himself, to-night, was unhappily but
too familiar to me, the aspect under which the
Count appeared was, on the other hand, entirely
new in my experience of him. He permitted
me, this evening, to make his acquaintance, for
the first time, in the character of a Man of
Sentiment—of sentiment, as I believe, really
felt, not assumed for the occasion.

For instance, he was quiet and subdued; his
eyes and his voice expressed a restrained
sensibility. He wore (as if there was some hidden
connexion between his showiest finery and his
deepest feeling) the most magnificent waistcoat
he had yet appeared in—it was made of pale sea-
green silk, and delicately trimmed with fine
silver braid. His voice sank into the tenderest
inflections, his smile expressed a thoughtful,
fatherly admiration, whenever he spoke to Laura
or to me. He pressed his wife's hand under the
table, when she thanked him for trifling little
attentions at dinner. He took wine with her.
"Your health and happiness, my angel!" he
said, with fond, glistening eyes. He ate little or
nothing; and sighed, and said " Good Percival!"
when his friend laughed at him. After dinner,
he took Laura by the hand, and asked her if
she would be "so sweet as to play to him."
She complied, through sheer astonishment. He
sat by the piano, with his watch-chain resting in
folds, like a golden serpent, on the sea-green
protuberance of his waistcoat. His immense
head lay languidly on one side; and he gently
beat time with two of his yellow-white fingers.
He highly approved of the music, and tenderly
admired Laura's manner of playing—not as poor
Hartright used to praise it, with an innocent
enjoyment of the sweet sounds, but with a clear,
cultivated, practical knowledge of the merits of
the composition, in the first place, and of the
merits of the player's touch* in the second. As
the evening closed in, he begged that the lovely
dying light might not be profaned, just yet, by
the appearance of the lamps. He came, with
his horribly silent tread, to the distant window
at which I was standing, to be out of his way
and to avoid the very sight of him—he came to
ask me to support his protest against the lamps.
If any one of them could only have burnt him
up, at that moment, I would have gone down to
the kitchen, and fetched it myself.

"Surely you like this modest, trembling
English twilight?" he said, softly. "Ah! I
love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that
is noble and great and good, purified by the
breath of Heaven, on an evening like this.
Nature has such imperishable charms, such
inextinguishable tendernesses for me! I am an
old, fat man: talk which would become your
lips, Miss Halcombe, sounds like a derision and
a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at
in my moments of sentiment, as if my soul was
like myself, old and overgrown. Observe, dear
lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does
it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?"