hat is NOT found out. If I
could give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man.
Dear Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for
me. It is checkmate for me this time, Miss Halcombe--ha?"

"Stand to your guns, Laura," sneered Sir Percival, who had been
listening in his place at the door. "Tell him next, that crimes cause
their own detection. There's another bit of copy-book morality for
you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!"

"I believe it to be true," said Laura quietly.

Sir Percival burst out laughing, so violently, so outrageously, that he
quite startled us all--the Count more than any of us.

"I believe it too," I said, coming to Laura's rescue.

Sir Percival, who had been unaccountably amused at his wife's remark,
was just as unaccountably irritated by mine. He struck the new stick
savagely on the sand, and walked away from us.

"Poor dear Percival!" cried Count Fosco, looking after him gaily, "he
is the victim of English spleen. But, my dear Miss Halcombe, my dear
Lady Glyde, do you really believe that crimes cause their own
detection? And you, my angel," he continued, turning to his wife, who
had not uttered a word yet, "do you think so too?"

"I wait to be instructed," replied the Countess, in tones of freezing
reproof, intended for Laura and me, "before I venture on giving my
opinion in the presence of well-informed men."

"Do you, indeed?" I said. "I remember the time, Countess, when you
advocated the Rights of Women, and freedom of female opinion was one of
them."

"What is your view of the subject, Count?" asked Madame Fosco, calmly
proceeding with her cigarettes, and not taking the least notice of me.

The Count stroked one of his white mice reflectively with his chubby
little finger before he answered.

"It is truly wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console
itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of
clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is
miserably ineffective--and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that
it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that
moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out
(another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at inquests in
large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of
life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your own
public journa