ny more harm in your amiable estimations--I will get up and
take a little airy walk of my own. Dear ladies, as your excellent
Sheridan said, I go--and leave my character behind me."

He got up, put the cage on the table, and paused for a moment to count
the mice in it. "One, two, three, four----Ha!" he cried, with a look
of horror, "where, in the name of Heaven, is the fifth--the youngest,
the whitest, the most amiable of all--my Benjamin of mice!"

Neither Laura nor I were in any favorable disposition to be amused.
The Count's glib cynicism had revealed a new aspect of his nature from
which we both recoiled. But it was impossible to resist the comical
distress of so very large a man at the loss of so very small a mouse.
We laughed in spite of ourselves; and when Madame Fosco rose to set the
example of leaving the boat-house empty, so that her husband might
search it to its remotest corners, we rose also to follow her out.

Before we had taken three steps, the Count's quick eye discovered the
lost mouse under the seat that we had been occupying. He pulled aside
the bench, took the little animal up in his hand, and then suddenly
stopped, on his knees, looking intently at a particular place on the
ground just beneath him.

When he rose to his feet again, his hand shook so that he could hardly
put the mouse back in the cage, and his face was of a faint livid
yellow hue all over.

"Percival!" he said, in a whisper. "Percival! come here."

Sir Percival had paid no attention to any of us for the last ten
minutes. He had been entirely absorbed in writing figures on the sand,
and then rubbing them out again with the point of his stick.

"What's the matter now?" he asked, lounging carelessly into the
boat-house.

"Do you see nothing there?" said the Count, catching him nervously by
the collar with one hand, and pointing with the other to the place near
which he had found the mouse.

"I see plenty of dry sand," answered Sir Percival, "and a spot of dirt
in the middle of it."

"Not dirt," whispered the Count, fastening the other hand suddenly on
Sir Percival's collar, and shaking it in his agitation. "Blood."

Laura was near enough to hear the last word, softly as he whispered it.
She turned to me with a look of terror.

"Nonsense, my dear," I said. "There is no need to be alarmed. It is
only the blood of a poor little stray dog."

Everybody was astonished, and everybody's eyes were fixed on me
inquiringly.