he puzzles her, and that she will not tell me what her impression of
him is until I have seen him, and formed my own opinion first.

This, to my mind, looks ill for the Count. Laura has preserved, far
more perfectly than most people do in later life, the child's subtle
faculty of knowing a friend by instinct, and if I am right in assuming
that her first impression of Count Fosco has not been favourable, I for
one am in some danger of doubting and distrusting that illustrious
foreigner before I have so much as set eyes on him. But, patience,
patience--this uncertainty, and many uncertainties more, cannot last
much longer. To-morrow will see all my doubts in a fair way of being
cleared up, sooner or later.

Twelve o'clock has struck, and I have just come back to close these
pages, after looking out at my open window.

It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and few.
The trees that shut out the view on all sides look dimly black and
solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the croaking
of frogs, faint and far off, and the echoes of the great clock hum in
the airless calm long after the strokes have ceased. I wonder how
Blackwater Park will look in the daytime? I don't altogether like it by
night.

12th.--A day of investigations and discoveries--a more interesting day,
for many reasons, than I had ventured to anticipate.

I began my sight-seeing, of course, with the house.

The main body of the building is of the time of that highly-overrated
woman, Queen Elizabeth. On the ground floor there are two hugely long
galleries, with low ceilings lying parallel with each other, and
rendered additionally dark and dismal by hideous family
portraits--every one of which I should like to burn. The rooms on the
floor above the two galleries are kept in tolerable repair, but are
very seldom used. The civil housekeeper, who acted as my guide,
offered to show me over them, but considerately added that she feared I
should find them rather out of order. My respect for the integrity of
my own petticoats and stockings infinitely exceeds my respect for all
the Elizabethan bedrooms in the kingdom, so I positively declined
exploring the upper regions of dust and dirt at the risk of soiling my
nice clean clothes. The housekeeper said, "I am quite of your opinion,
miss," and appeared to think me the most sensible woman she had met
with for a long time past.

So much, then, for the main buildin