Instead of answering me he turned round to the Count.

`What did I tell you?' he asked. `What do you say now?'

`What I said before,' replied the Count -- `No.'

Even in the vehemence of my anger I felt his calm, cold, grey eyes on my face. They turned away from me as soon as he had spoken, and looked significantly at his wife. Madame Fosco immediately moved close to my side, and in that position addressed Sir Percival before either of us could speak again.

`Favour me with your attention for one moment,' she said, in her clear icily-suppressed tones. `I have to thank you, Sir Percival, for your hospitality, and to decline taking advantage of it any longer. I remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your wife and Miss Halcombe have been treated here today!'

Sir Percival drew back a step. and stared at her in dead silence. The declaration he had just heard -- a declaration which he well knew, as I well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make without her husband's permission -- seemed to petrify him with surprise. The Count stood by, and looked at his wife with the most enthusiastic admiration.

`She is sublime!' he said to himself. He approached her while he spoke, and drew her hand through his arm. `I am at your service, Eleanor,' he went on, with a quiet dignity that I had never noticed in him before. `And at Miss Halcombe's service, if she will honour me by accepting all the assistance I can offer her.'

`Damn it! what do you mean?' cried Sir Percival, as the Count quietly moved away with his wife to the door.

`At other times I mean what I say, but at this time I mean what my wife says,' replied the impenetrable Italian. `We have changed places, Percival, for once, and Madame Fosco's opinion is -- mine.'

Sir Percival crumpled up the paper in his hand, and pushing past the Count, with another oath, stood between him and the door.

`Have your own way,' he said, with baffled rage in his low, half-whispering tones. `Have your own way -- and see what comes of it.' With those words he left the room.

Madame Fosco glanced inquiringly at her husband. `He has

gone away very suddenly,' she said. `What does it mean?'

`It means that you and I together have brought the worst-tempered man in all England to his senses,' answered the Count. `It means, Miss Halcombe, that Lady Glyde is relieved from a gross indignity, and you from the repetition of an unpardonable insult. Suffer me to express my admiration of your conduct and your courage at a very trying moment.'

`Sincere admiration,' suggested Madame Fosco.

`Sincere admiration,' echoed the Count.

I had no longer the strength of my first angry resistance to outrage and injury to support me. My heart- sick anxiety to see Laura, my sense of my own helpless ignorance of what had happened at the boat- house, pressed on me with an intolerable weight. I tried to keep up appearances by speaking to the Count and his wife in the tone which they had chosen to adopt in speaking to me, but the words failed on my lips -- my breath came short and thick -- my eyes looked longingly, in silence, at the door. The Count, understanding my anxiety, opened it, went out, and pulled it to after him. At the same time Sir Percival's heavy step descended the stairs. I heard them whispering together outside, while Madame