ner-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 an