When I entered the bedchamber, and softly approached the bedside by the dim flicker of the night-lamp, my wife was asleep.

We had not been married quite a month yet. If my heart was heavy, if my resolution for a moment faltered again, when I looked at her face turned faithfully to my pillow in her sleep -- when I saw her hand resting open on the coverlid, as if it was waiting unconsciously for mine -- surely there was some excuse for me? I only allowed myself a few minutes to kneel down at the bedside, and to look close at her -- so close that her breath, as it came and went, fluttered on my face. I only touched her hand and her cheek with my lips at parting. She stirred in her sleep and murmured my name, but without waking. I lingered for an instant at the door to look at her again. `God bless and keep you, my darling!' I whispered, and left her.

Marian was at the stairhead waiting for me. She had a folded slip of paper in her hand.

`The landlord's son has brought this for you,' she said. `He has got a cab at the door -- he says you ordered him to keep it at your disposal.'

`Quite right, Marian. I want the cab -- I am going out again.'

I descended the stairs as I spoke, and looked into the sitting-room to read the slip of paper by the light on the table. It contained these two sentences in Pesca's handwriting --

`Your letter is received. If I don't see you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes.'

I placed the paper in my pocket-book, and made for the door. Marian met me on the threshold, and pushed me hack into the room, where the candle-light fell full on my face. She held me by both hands, and her eyes fastened searchingly on mine.

`I see!' she said, in a low eager whisper. `You are trying the last chance tonight.'

`Yes, the last chance and the best,' I whispered back.

`Not alone! Oh, Walter, for God's sake, not alone! Let me go with you. Don't refuse me because I'm only a woman. I must go! I will go! I'll wait outside in the cab!'

It was my turn now to hold her. She tried to break away from me and get down first to the door.

`If you want to help me,' I said, `stop here and sleep in my wife's room tonight. Only let me go away with my mind easy about Laura, and I answer for everything else. Come, Marian, give me a kiss, and show that you have the courage to wait till I come back.'

I dared not allow her time to say a word more. She tried to hold me again. I unclasped her hands, and was out of the room in a moment. The boy below heard me on the stairs, and opened the hall-door. I jumped into the cab before the driver could get off the box. `Forest Road, St John's Wood,' I called to him through the front window. `Double fare if you get there in a quarter of an hour.' `I'll do it, sir.' I looked at my watch. Eleven o'clock. Not a minute to lose.

The rapid motion of the cab, the sense that every instant now was bringing me nearer to the Count, the conviction that I was embarked at last, without let or hindrance, on my hazardous enterprise, heated me into such a fever of excitement that I shouted to the man to go faster and faster. As we left the streets, and crossed St John's Wood Road, my impatience so completely overpowered me that I stood up in the cab and stretched my head out of the window, to see the end of the journey before we reached it. Just as a church clock in the distance struck the quarter past, we turned into the Forest Road. I stopped the driver a little away from the Count's house, paid and dismissed him, and walked on to the door.