II

June 15th.—The confusion of their arrival has had time to subside. Two

days have elapsed since the return of the travellers, and that interval

has sufficed to put the new machinery of our lives at Blackwater Park

in fair working order. I may now return to my journal, with some little

chance of being able to continue the entries in it as collectedly as

usual.

I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark which has suggested

itself to me since Laura came back.

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and

one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative

or friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative

or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when

the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new

habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old

habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the

sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and

to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable

by both, between them on either side. After the first happiness of

my meeting with Laura was over, after we had sat down together hand

in hand to recover breath enough and calmness enough to talk, I felt

this strangeness instantly, and I could see that she felt it too. It

has partially worn away, now that we have fallen back into most of

our old habits, and it will probably disappear before long. But it

has certainly had an influence over the first impressions that I have

formed of her, now that we are living together again—for which reason

only I have thought fit to mention it here.

She has found me unaltered, but I have found her changed.

Changed in person, and in one respect changed in character. I cannot

absolutely say that she is less beautiful than she used to be—I can

only say that she is less beautiful to me.

Others, who do not look at her with my eyes and my recollections, would

probably think her improved. There is more colour and more decision and

roundness of outline in her face than there used to be, and her figure

seems more firmly set and more sure and easy in all its movements

than it was in her maiden days. But I miss something when I look at

her—something that once belonged to the happy, innocent life of Laura

Fairlie, and that I cannot find in Lady Glyde. There was in the old

times a freshness, a softness, an ever-varying and yet ever-remaining

tenderness of beauty in her face, the charm of which it is not possible

to express in words, or, as poor Hartright used often to say, in

painting either. This is gone. I thought I saw the faint reflection of

it for a moment when she turned pale under the agitation of our sudden

meeting on the evening of her return, but it has never reappeared

since. None of her letters had prepared me for a personal change in

her. On the contrary, they had led me to expect that her marriage had

left her, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps I read her

letters wrongly in the past, and am now reading her face wrongly in the

present? No matter! Whether her beauty has gained or whether it has

lost in the last six months, the separation either way has made her own

dear self more precious to me than ever, and that is one good result of

her marriage, at any rate!

The second change, the change that I have observed in her character,

has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it in this case by the

tone of her letters. Now that she is at home again, I find her just as

unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life

as I had previously found her all through the time of our separation,

when we could only communicate with each other by writing. At the first

approach I made to the forbidden topic she put her hand on my lips with

a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my

memory the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone time when there

were no secrets between us.

“Whenever you and I are together, Marian,” she said, “we shall both be

happier and easier with one another, if we accept my married life for

what it is, and say and think as little about it as possible. I would

tell you everything, darling, about myself,” she went on, nervously

buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, “if my confidences

could only end there. But they could not—they would lead me into

confidences about my husband too; and now I am married, I think I had

better avoid them, for his sake, and for your sake, and for mine. I

don’t say that they would distress you, or distress me—I wouldn’t have

you think that for the world. But—I want to be so happy, now I have

got you back again, and I want you to be so happy too——” She broke off

abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sitting-room, in which we

were talking. “Ah!” she cried, clapping her hands with a bright smile

of recognition, “another old friend found already! Your book-case,

Marian—your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood book-case—how glad I am

you brought it with you from Limmeridge! And the horrid heavy man’s

umbrella, that you always would walk out with when it rained! And first

and foremost of all, your own dear, dark, clever, gipsy-face, looking

at me just as usual! It is so like home again to be here. How can we

make it more like home still? I will put my father’s portrait in your

room instead of in mine—and I will keep all my little treasures from

Limmeridge here—and we will pass hours and hours every day with these

four friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian!” she said, suddenly seating

herself on a footstool at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my

face, “promise you will never marry, and leave me. It is selfish to say

so, but you are so much better off as a single woman—unless—unless you

are very fond of your husband—but you won’t be very fond of anybody but

me, will you?” She stopped again, crossed my hands on my lap, and laid

her face on them. “Have you been writing many letters, and receiving

many letters lately?” she asked, in low, suddenly-altered tones. I

understood what the question meant, but I thought it my duty not to

encourage her by meeting her half way. “Have you heard from him?” she

went on, coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on which she now

ventured, by kissing my hands, upon which her face still rested. “Is

he well and happy, and getting on in his profession? Has he recovered

himself—and forgotten me?”

She should not have asked those questions. She should have remembered

her own resolution, on the morning when Sir Percival held her to her

marriage engagement, and when she resigned the book of Hartright’s

drawings into my hands for ever. But, ah me! where is the faultless

human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without

sometimes failing and falling back? Where is the woman who has ever

really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it

by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have

existed—but what does our own experience say in answer to books?

I made no attempt to remonstrate with her: perhaps, because I sincerely

appreciated the fearless candour which let me see, what other women

in her position might have had reasons for concealing even from

their dearest friends—perhaps, because I felt, in my own heart and

conscience, that in her place I should have asked the same questions

and had the same thoughts. All I could honestly do was to reply that I

had not written to him or heard from him lately, and then to turn the

conversation to less dangerous topics.

There has been much to sadden me in our interview—my first confidential

interview with her since her return. The change which her marriage has

produced in our relations towards each other, by placing a forbidden

subject between us, for the first time in our lives; the melancholy

conviction of the dearth of all warmth of feeling, of all close

sympathy, between her husband and herself, which her own unwilling

words now force on my mind; the distressing discovery that the

influence of that ill-fated attachment still remains (no matter how

innocently, how harmlessly) rooted as deeply as ever in her heart—all

these are disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly, and

feels for her as acutely, as I do.

There is only one consolation to set against them—a consolation that

ought to comfort me, and that does comfort me. All the graces and

gentleness of her character—all the frank affection of her nature—all

the sweet, simple, womanly charms which used to make her the darling

and delight of every one who approached her, have come back to me with

herself. Of my other impressions I am sometimes a little inclined to

doubt. Of this last, best, happiest of all impressions, I grow more and

more certain every hour in the day.

Let me turn, now, from her to her travelling companions. Her husband

must engage my attention first. What have I observed in Sir Percival,

since his return, to improve my opinion of him?

I can hardly say. Small vexations and annoyances seem to have beset

him since he came back, and no man, under those circumstances, is

ever presented at his best. He looks, as I think, thinner than he

was when he left England. His wearisome cough and his comfortless

restlessness have certainly increased. His manner—at least his manner

towards me—is much more abrupt than it used to be. He greeted me, on

the evening of his return, with little or nothing of the ceremony and

civility of former times—no polite speeches of welcome—no appearance

of extraordinary gratification at seeing me—nothing but a short shake

of the hand, and a sharp “How-d’ye-do, Miss Halcombe—glad to see you

again.” He seemed to accept me as one of the necessary fixtures of

Blackwater Park, to be satisfied at finding me established in my proper

place, and then to pass me over altogether.

Most men show something of their disposition in their own houses, which

they have concealed elsewhere, and Sir Percival has already displayed

a mania for order and regularity, which is quite a new revelation of

him, so far as my previous knowledge of his character is concerned. If

I take a book from the library and leave it on the table, he follows

me and puts it back again. If I rise from a chair, and let it remain

where I have been sitting, he carefully restores it to its proper

place against the wall. He picks up stray flower-blossoms from the

carpet, and mutters to himself as discontentedly as if they were hot

cinders burning holes in it, and he storms at the servants if there is

a crease in the tablecloth, or a knife missing from its place at the

dinner-table, as fiercely as if they had personally insulted him.

I have already referred to the small annoyances which appear to have

troubled him since his return. Much of the alteration for the worse

which I have noticed in him may be due to these. I try to persuade

myself that it is so, because I am anxious not to be disheartened

already about the future. It is certainly trying to any man’s temper to

be met by a vexation the moment he sets foot in his own house again,

after a long absence, and this annoying circumstance did really happen

to Sir Percival in my presence.

On the evening of their arrival the housekeeper followed me into

the hall to receive her master and mistress and their guests. The

instant he saw her, Sir Percival asked if any one had called lately.

The housekeeper mentioned to him, in reply, what she had previously

mentioned to me, the visit of the strange gentleman to make inquiries

about the time of her master’s return. He asked immediately for the

gentleman’s name. No name had been left. The gentleman’s business?

No business had been mentioned. What was the gentleman like? The

housekeeper tried to describe him, but failed to distinguish the

nameless visitor by any personal peculiarity which her master could

recognise. Sir Percival frowned, stamped angrily on the floor, and

walked on into the house, taking no notice of anybody. Why he should

have been so discomposed by a trifle I cannot say—but he was seriously

discomposed, beyond all doubt.

Upon the whole, it will be best, perhaps, if I abstain from forming

a decisive opinion of his manners, language, and conduct in his own

house, until time has enabled him to shake off the anxieties, whatever

they may be, which now evidently troubled his mind in secret. I will

turn over to a new page, and my pen shall let Laura’s husband alone for

the present.

The two guests—the Count and Countess Fosco—come next in my catalogue.

I will dispose of the Countess first, so as to have done with the woman

as soon as possible.

Laura was certainly not chargeable with any exaggeration, in writing me

word that I should hardly recognise her aunt again when we met. Never

before have I beheld such a change produced in a woman by her marriage

as has been produced in Madame Fosco.

As Eleanor Fairlie (aged seven-and-thirty), she was always talking

pretentious nonsense, and always worrying the unfortunate men with

every small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on

long-suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco (aged three-and-forty),

she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the

strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous love-locks which

used to hang on either side of her face are now replaced by stiff

little rows of very short curls, of the sort one sees in old-fashioned

wigs. A plain, matronly cap covers her head, and makes her look,

for the first time in her life since I remember her, like a decent

woman. Nobody (putting her husband out of the question, of course)

now sees in her, what everybody once saw—I mean the structure of the

female skeleton, in the upper regions of the collar-bones and the

shoulder-blades. Clad in quiet black or grey gowns, made high round the

throat—dresses that she would have laughed at, or screamed at, as the

whim of the moment inclined her, in her maiden days—she sits speechless

in corners; her dry white hands (so dry that the pores of her skin look

chalky) incessantly engaged, either in monotonous embroidery work or in

rolling up endless cigarettes for the Count’s own particular smoking.

On the few occasions when her cold blue eyes are off her work, they

are generally turned on her husband, with the look of mute submissive

inquiry which we are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog.

The only approach to an inward thaw which I have yet detected under her

outer covering of icy constraint, has betrayed itself, once or twice,

in the form of a suppressed tigerish jealousy of any woman in the house

(the maids included) to whom the Count speaks, or on whom he looks with

anything approaching to special interest or attention. Except in this

one particular, she is always, morning, noon, and night, indoors and

out, fair weather or foul, as cold as a statue, and as impenetrable as

the stone out of which it is cut. For the common purposes of society

the extraordinary change thus produced in her is, beyond all doubt,

a change for the better, seeing that it has transformed her into a

civil, silent, unobtrusive woman, who is never in the way. How far

she is really reformed or deteriorated in her secret self, is another

question. I have once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her

pinched lips, and heard sudden inflexions of tone in her calm voice,

which have led me to suspect that her present state of suppression

may have sealed up something dangerous in her nature, which used

to evaporate harmlessly in the freedom of her former life. It is

quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own

impression, however, is, that I am right. Time will show.

And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation—the

foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward English woman till her

own relations hardly know her again—the Count himself? What of the

Count?

This in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything. If he

had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have tamed the

tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his cigarettes, as

his wife does—I should have held my tongue when he looked at me, as she

holds hers.

I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man

has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him. In two

short days he has made his way straight into my favourable estimation,

and how he has worked the miracle is more than I can tell.

It absolutely startles me, now he is in my mind, to find how plainly I

see him!—how much more plainly than I see Sir Percival, or Mr. Fairlie,

or Walter Hartright, or any other absent person of whom I think, with

the one exception of Laura herself! I can hear his voice, as if he was

speaking at this moment. I know what his conversation was yesterday,

as well as if I was hearing it now. How am I to describe him? There

are peculiarities in his personal appearance, his habits, and his

amusements, which I should blame in the boldest terms, or ridicule in

the most merciless manner, if I had seen them in another man. What is

it that makes me unable to blame them, or to ridicule them in HIM?

For example, he is immensely fat. Before this time I have always

especially disliked corpulent humanity. I have always maintained

that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size

and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies was equivalent to

declaring, either that no people but amiable people ever get fat,

or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a

directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person on

whose body they accumulate. I have invariably combated both these

absurd assertions by quoting examples of fat people who were as mean,

vicious, and cruel as the leanest and the worst of their neighbours. I

have asked whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable character? Whether

Pope Alexander the Sixth was a good man? Whether Mr. Murderer and Mrs.

Murderess Manning were not both unusually stout people? Whether hired

nurses, proverbially as cruel a set of women as are to be found in

all England, were not, for the most part, also as fat a set of women

as are to be found in all England?—and so on, through dozens of other

examples, modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Holding

these strong opinions on the subject with might and main as I do at

this moment, here, nevertheless, is Count Fosco, as fat as Henry the

Eighth himself, established in my favour, at one day’s notice, without

let or hindrance from his own odious corpulence. Marvellous indeed!

Is it his face that has recommended him?

It may be his face. He is a most remarkable likeness, on a large

scale, of the great Napoleon. His features have Napoleon’s magnificent

regularity—his expression recalls the grandly calm, immovable power

of the Great Soldier’s face. This striking resemblance certainly

impressed me, to begin with; but there is something in him besides

the resemblance, which has impressed me more. I think the influence I

am now trying to find is in his eyes. They are the most unfathomable

grey eyes I ever saw, and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful,

irresistible glitter in them which forces me to look at him, and yet

causes me sensations, when I do look, which I would rather not feel.

Other parts of his face and head have their strange peculiarities. His

complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow-fairness, so much at

variance with the dark-brown colour of his hair, that I suspect the

hair of being a wig, and his face, closely shaven all over, is smoother

and freer from all marks and wrinkles than mine, though (according to

Sir Percival’s account of him) he is close on sixty years of age. But

these are not the prominent personal characteristics which distinguish

him, to my mind, from all the other men I have ever seen. The marked

peculiarity which singles him out from the rank and file of humanity

lies entirely, so far as I can tell at present, in the extraordinary

expression and extraordinary power of his eyes.

His manner and his command of our language may also have assisted him,

in some degree, to establish himself in my good opinion. He has that

quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest in listening

to a woman, and that secret gentleness in his voice in speaking to a

woman, which, say what we may, we can none of us resist. Here, too,

his unusual command of the English language necessarily helps him.

I had often heard of the extraordinary aptitude which many Italians

show in mastering our strong, hard, Northern speech; but, until I

saw Count Fosco, I had never supposed it possible that any foreigner

could have spoken English as he speaks it. There are times when it is

almost impossible to detect by his accent that he is not a countryman

of our own, and as for fluency, there are very few born Englishmen who

can talk with as few stoppages and repetitions as the Count. He may

construct his sentences more or less in the foreign way, but I have

never yet heard him use a wrong expression, or hesitate for a moment in

his choice of a word.

All the smallest characteristics of this strange man have something

strikingly original and perplexingly contradictory in them. Fat as he

is and old as he is, his movements are astonishingly light and easy.

He is as noiseless in a room as any of us women, and more than that,

with all his look of unmistakable mental firmness and power, he is as

nervously sensitive as the weakest of us. He starts at chance noises as

inveterately as Laura herself. He winced and shuddered yesterday, when

Sir Percival beat one of the spaniels, so that I felt ashamed of my own

want of tenderness and sensibility by comparison with the Count.

The relation of this last incident reminds me of one of his most

curious peculiarities, which I have not yet mentioned—his extraordinary

fondness for pet animals.

Some of these he has left on the Continent, but he has brought with

him to this house a cockatoo, two canary-birds, and a whole family

of white mice. He attends to all the necessities of these strange

favourites himself, and he has taught the creatures to be surprisingly

fond of him and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a most vicious and

treacherous bird towards every one else, absolutely seems to love him.

When he lets it out of its cage, it hops on to his knee, and claws its

way up his great big body, and rubs its top-knot against his sallow

double chin in the most caressing manner imaginable. He has only to

set the doors of the canaries’ cages open, and to call them, and the

pretty little cleverly trained creatures perch fearlessly on his hand,

mount his fat outstretched fingers one by one, when he tells them to

“go upstairs,” and sing together as if they would burst their throats

with delight when they get to the top finger. His white mice live in a

little pagoda of gaily-painted wirework, designed and made by himself.

They are almost as tame as the canaries, and they are perpetually let

out like the canaries. They crawl all over him, popping in and out of

his waistcoat, and sitting in couples, white as snow, on his capacious

shoulders. He seems to be even fonder of his mice than of his other

pets, smiles at them, and kisses them, and calls them by all sorts

of endearing names. If it be possible to suppose an Englishman with

any taste for such childish interests and amusements as these, that

Englishman would certainly feel rather ashamed of them, and would be

anxious to apologise for them, in the company of grown-up people. But

the Count, apparently, sees nothing ridiculous in the amazing contrast

between his colossal self and his frail little pets. He would blandly

kiss his white mice and twitter to his canary-birds amid an assembly of

English fox-hunters, and would only pity them as barbarians when they

were all laughing their loudest at him.

It seems hardly credible while I am writing it down, but it is

certainly true, that this same man, who has all the fondness of an old

maid for his cockatoo, and all the small dexterities of an organ-boy

in managing his white mice, can talk, when anything happens to rouse

him, with a daring independence of thought, a knowledge of books in

every language, and an experience of society in half the capitals of

Europe, which would make him the prominent personage of any assembly in

the civilised world. This trainer of canary-birds, this architect of

a pagoda for white mice, is (as Sir Percival himself has told me) one

of the first experimental chemists living, and has discovered, among

other wonderful inventions, a means of petrifying the body after death,

so as to preserve it, as hard as marble, to the end of time. This

fat, indolent, elderly man, whose nerves are so finely strung that he

starts at chance noises, and winces when he sees a house-spaniel get a

whipping, went into the stable-yard on the morning after his arrival,

and put his hand on the head of a chained bloodhound—a beast so savage

that the very groom who feeds him keeps out of his reach. His wife and

I were present, and I shall not forget the scene that followed, short

as it was.

“Mind that dog, sir,” said the groom; “he flies at everybody!” “He

does that, my friend,” replied the Count quietly, “because everybody

is afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me.” And he laid his

plump, yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been

perching ten minutes before, upon the formidable brute’s head, and

looked him straight in the eyes. “You big dogs are all cowards,” he

said, addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the

dog’s within an inch of each other. “You would kill a poor cat, you

infernal coward. You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal

coward. Anything that you can surprise unawares—anything that is afraid

of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering,

bloodthirsty mouth, is the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle

me at this moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren’t so much

as look me in the face, because I’m not afraid of you. Will you think

better of it, and try your teeth in my fat neck? Bah! not you!” He

turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the yard, and

the dog crept back meekly to his kennel. “Ah! my nice waistcoat!”

he said pathetically. “I am sorry I came here. Some of that brute’s

slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat.” Those words express

another of his incomprehensible oddities. He is as fond of fine clothes

as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four magnificent

waistcoats already—all of light garish colours, and all immensely large

even for him—in the two days of his residence at Blackwater Park.

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as the

singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish triviality

of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with all of

us during the period of his sojourn in this place. He has evidently

discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she confessed as much to

me when I pressed her on the subject)—but he has also found out that

she is extravagantly fond of flowers. Whenever she wants a nosegay he

has got one to give her, gathered and arranged by himself, and greatly

to my amusement, he is always cunningly provided with a duplicate,

composed of exactly the same flowers, grouped in exactly the same

way, to appease his icily jealous wife before she can so much as

think herself aggrieved. His management of the Countess (in public)

is a sight to see. He bows to her, he habitually addresses her as

“my angel,” he carries his canaries to pay her little visits on his

fingers and to sing to her, he kisses her hand when she gives him his

cigarettes; he presents her with sugar-plums in return, which he puts

into her mouth playfully, from a box in his pocket. The rod of iron

with which he rules her never appears in company—it is a private rod,

and is always kept upstairs.

His method of recommending himself to me is entirely different. He

flatters my vanity by talking to me as seriously and sensibly as if

I was a man. Yes! I can find him out when I am away from him—I know

he flatters my vanity, when I think of him up here in my own room—and

yet, when I go downstairs, and get into his company again, he will

blind me again, and I shall be flattered again, just as if I had never

found him out at all! He can manage me as he manages his wife and

Laura, as he managed the bloodhound in the stable-yard, as he manages

Sir Percival himself, every hour in the day. “My good Percival! how I

like your rough English humour!”—“My good Percival! how I enjoy your

solid English sense!” He puts the rudest remarks Sir Percival can make

on his effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that

manner—always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling at him

with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder, and bearing

with him benignantly, as a good-humoured father bears with a wayward

son.

The interest which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely

original man has led me to question Sir Percival about his past life.

Sir Percival either knows little, or will tell me little, about it. He

and the Count first met many years ago, at Rome, under the dangerous

circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere. Since that time they

have been perpetually together in London, in Paris, and in Vienna—but

never in Italy again; the Count having, oddly enough, not crossed

the frontiers of his native country for years past. Perhaps he has

been made the victim of some political persecution? At all events,

he seems to be patriotically anxious not to lose sight of any of his

own countrymen who may happen to be in England. On the evening of his

arrival he asked how far we were from the nearest town, and whether we

knew of any Italian gentlemen who might happen to be settled there. He

is certainly in correspondence with people on the Continent, for his

letters have all sorts of odd stamps on them, and I saw one for him

this morning, waiting in his place at the breakfast-table, with a huge,

official-looking seal on it. Perhaps he is in correspondence with his

government? And yet, that is hardly to be reconciled either with my

other idea that he may be a political exile.

How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco! And what does it all

amount to?—as poor, dear Mr. Gilmore would ask, in his impenetrable

business-like way I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even

on this short acquaintance, a strange, half-willing, half-unwilling

liking for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same

sort of ascendency which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival.

Free, and even rude, as he may occasionally be in his manner towards

his fat friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly

see, of giving any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether I am

afraid too? I certainly never saw a man, in all my experience, whom I

should be so sorry to have for an enemy. Is this because I like him, or

because I am afraid of him? Chi sa?—as Count Fosco might say in his own

language. Who knows?

June 16th.—Something to chronicle to-day besides my own ideas and

impressions. A visitor has arrived—quite unknown to Laura and to me,

and apparently quite unexpected by Sir Percival.

We were all at lunch, in the room with the new French windows that open

into the verandah, and the Count (who devours pastry as I have never

yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools)

had just amused us by asking gravely for his fourth tart—when the

servant entered to announce the visitor.

“Mr. Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you

immediately.”

Sir Percival started, and looked at the man with an expression of angry

alarm.

“Mr. Merriman!” he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must have

deceived him.

“Yes, Sir Percival—Mr. Merriman, from London.”

“Where is he?”

“In the library, Sir Percival.”

He left the table the instant the last answer was given, and hurried

out of the room without saying a word to any of us.

“Who is Mr. Merriman?” asked Laura, appealing to me.

“I have not the least idea,” was all I could say in reply.

The Count had finished his fourth tart, and had gone to a side-table to

look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us with the bird

perched on his shoulder.

“Mr. Merriman is Sir Percival’s solicitor,” he said quietly.

Sir Percival’s solicitor. It was a perfectly straightforward answer

to Laura’s question, and yet, under the circumstances, it was not

satisfactory. If Mr. Merriman had been specially sent for by his

client, there would have been nothing very wonderful in his leaving

town to obey the summons. But when a lawyer travels from London to

Hampshire without being sent for, and when his arrival at a gentleman’s

house seriously startles the gentleman himself, it may be safely taken

for granted that the legal visitor is the bearer of some very important

and very unexpected news—news which may be either very good or very

bad, but which cannot, in either case, be of the common everyday kind.

Laura and I sat silent at the table for a quarter of an hour or more,

wondering uneasily what had happened, and waiting for the chance of Sir

Percival’s speedy return. There were no signs of his return, and we

rose to leave the room.

The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which he had

been feeding his cockatoo, with the bird still perched on his shoulder,

and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco went out first. Just

as I was on the point of following them he made a sign with his hand,

and spoke to me, before I passed him, in the oddest manner.

“Yes,” he said, quietly answering the unexpressed idea at that

moment in my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so many

words—“yes, Miss Halcombe, something HAS happened.”

I was on the point of answering, “I never said so,” but the vicious

cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings and gave a screech that set all my

nerves on edge in an instant, and made me only too glad to get out of

the room.

I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind was

the same as the thought in mine, which Count Fosco had surprised, and

when she spoke her words were almost the echo of his. She, too, said to

me secretly that she was afraid something had happened.