d--gently!"

Sir Percival hesitated, followed me a few steps, and, to my great
surprise, offered me an apology.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe," he said. "I have been out of order
lately, and I am afraid I am a little irritable. But I should like to
know what Mrs. Catherick could possibly want here. When did she come?
Was the housekeeper the only person who saw her?"

"The only person," I answered, "so far as I know."

The Count interposed again.

"In that case why not question the housekeeper?" he said. "Why not go,
Percival, to the fountain-head of information at once?"

"Quite right!" said Sir Percival. "Of course the housekeeper is the
first person to question. Excessively stupid of me not to see it
myself." With those words he instantly left us to return to the house.

The motive of the Count's interference, which had puzzled me at first,
betrayed itself when Sir Percival's back was turned. He had a host of
questions to put to me about Mrs. Catherick, and the cause of her visit
to Blackwater Park, which he could scarcely have asked in his friend's
presence. I made my answers as short as I civilly could, for I had
already determined to check the least approach to any exchanging of
confidences between Count Fosco and myself. Laura, however,
unconsciously helped him to extract all my information, by making
inquiries herself, which left me no alternative but to reply to her, or
to appear in the very unenviable and very false character of a
depositary of Sir Percival's secrets. The end of it was, that, in
about ten minutes' time, the Count knew as much as I know of Mrs.
Catherick, and of the events which have so strangely connected us with
her daughter, Anne, from the time when Hartright met with her to this
day.

The effect of my information on him was, in one respect, curious enough.

Intimately as he knows Sir Percival, and closely as he appears to be
associated with Sir Percival's private affairs in general, he is
certainly as far as I am from knowing anything of the true story of
Anne Catherick. The unsolved mystery in connection with this unhappy
woman is now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute
conviction which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir
Percival from the most intimate friend he has in the world. It was
impossible to mistake the eager curiosity of the Count's look and
manner while he drank in greedily every word that fell from my lips.
There are