hey were all three standing up, close together, and Sir
Percival had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I opened the door
I heard the Count say to him, "No--a thousand times over, no."

I walked straight up to him, and looked him full in the face.

"Am I to understand, Sir Percival, that your wife's room is a prison,
and that your housemaid is the gaoler who keeps it?" I asked.

"Yes, that is what you are to understand," he answered. "Take care my
gaoler hasn't got double duty to do--take care your room is not a
prison too."

"Take YOU care how you treat your wife, and how you threaten ME," I
broke out in the heat of my anger. "There are laws in England to
protect women from cruelty and outrage. If you hurt a hair of Laura's
head, if you dare to interfere with my freedom, come what may, to those
laws I will appeal."

Instead of answering me he turned round to the Count.

"What did I tell you?" he asked. "What do you say now?"

"What I said before," replied the Count--"No."

Even in the vehemence of my anger I felt his calm, cold, grey eyes on
my face. They turned away from me as soon as he had spoken, and looked
significantly at his wife. Madame Fosco immediately moved close to my
side, and in that position addressed Sir Percival before either of us
could speak again.

"Favour me with your attention for one moment," she said, in her clear
icily-suppressed tones. "I have to thank you, Sir Percival, for your
hospitality, and to decline taking advantage of it any longer. I
remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your wife and Miss
Halcombe have been treated here to-day!"

Sir Percival drew back a step, and stared at her in dead silence. The
declaration he had just heard--a declaration which he well knew, as I
well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make without her
husband's permission--seemed to petrify him with surprise. The Count
stood by, and looked at his wife with the most enthusiastic admiration.

"She is sublime!" he said to himself. He approached her while he
spoke, and drew her hand through his arm. "I am at your service,
Eleanor," he went on, with a quiet dignity that I had never noticed in
him before. "And at Miss Halcombe's service, if she will honour me by
accepting all the assistance I can offer her."

"Damn it! what do you mean?" cried Sir Percival, as the Count quietly
moved away with his wife to the door.

"At other times I mean what I say, but at this