strated the Count. "What is your solid
English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body,
and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer's footsteps. It
is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set
my eyes on."

"Humbug!" said Sir Percival, cutting away fiercely at his stick. "You
know what I mean. The dreary scenery, the lonely situation. If you
choose to understand me, you can--if you don't choose, I am not going
to trouble myself to explain my meaning."

"And why not," asked the Count, "when your meaning can be explained by
anybody in two words? If a fool was going to commit a murder, your lake
is the first place he would choose for it. If a wise man was going to
commit a murder, your lake is the last place he would choose for it.
Is that your meaning? If it is, there is your explanation for you ready
made. Take it, Percival, with your good Fosco's blessing."

Laura looked at the Count with her dislike for him appearing a little
too plainly in her face. He was so busy with his mice that he did not
notice her.

"I am sorry to hear the lake-view connected with anything so horrible
as the idea of murder," she said. "And if Count Fosco must divide
murderers into classes, I think he has been very unfortunate in his
choice of expressions. To describe them as fools only seems like
treating them with an indulgence to which they have no claim. And to
describe them as wise men sounds to me like a downright contradiction
in terms. I have always heard that truly wise men are truly good men,
and have a horror of crime."

"My dear lady," said the Count, "those are admirable sentiments, and I
have seen them stated at the tops of copy-books." He lifted one of the
white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical
way. "My pretty little smooth white rascal," he said, "here is a moral
lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention
that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of
your cage again as long as you live."

"It is easy to turn everything into ridicule," said Laura resolutely;
"but you will not find it quite so easy, Count Fosco, to give me an
instance of a wise man who has been a great criminal."

The Count shrugged his huge shoulders, and smiled on Laura in the
friendliest manner.

"Most true!" he said. "The fool's crime is the crime that is found
out, and the wise man's crime is the crime t