he had received a formal compliment
from a polite stranger, and drew back to let me pass out first.

Sir Percival was standing in the hall. As I hurried to the stairs I
heard him call impatiently to the Count to come out of the library.

"What are you waiting there for?" he said. "I want to speak to you."

"And I want to think a little by myself," replied the other. "Wait till
later, Percival, wait till later."

Neither he nor his friend said any more. I gained the top of the
stairs and ran along the passage. In my haste and my agitation I left
the door of the ante-chamber open, but I closed the door of the bedroom
the moment I was inside it.

Laura was sitting alone at the far end of the room, her arms resting
wearily on a table, and her face hidden in her hands. She started up
with a cry of delight when she saw me.

"How did you get here?" she asked. "Who gave you leave? Not Sir
Percival?"

In my overpowering anxiety to hear what she had to tell me, I could not
answer her--I could only put questions on my side. Laura's eagerness to
know what had passed downstairs proved, however, too strong to be
resisted. She persistently repeated her inquiries.

"The Count, of course," I answered impatiently. "Whose influence in
the house----"

She stopped me with a gesture of disgust.

"Don't speak of him," she cried. "The Count is the vilest creature
breathing! The Count is a miserable Spy----!"

Before we could either of us say another word we were alarmed by a soft
knocking at the door of the bedroom.

I had not yet sat down, and I went first to see who it was. When I
opened the door Madame Fosco confronted me with my handkerchief in her
hand.

"You dropped this downstairs, Miss Halcombe," she said, "and I thought
I could bring it to you, as I was passing by to my own room."

Her face, naturally pale, had turned to such a ghastly whiteness that I
started at the sight of it. Her hands, so sure and steady at all other
times, trembled violently, and her eyes looked wolfishly past me
through the open door, and fixed on Laura.

She had been listening before she knocked! I saw it in her white face,
I saw it in her trembling hands, I saw it in her look at Laura.

After waiting an instant she turned from me in silence, and slowly
walked away.

I closed the door again. "Oh, Laura! Laura! We shall both rue the day
when you called the Count a Spy!"

"You would have called him so yourself, Marian, if you h