rgency. Little as I know of the
law, I am certain that it can protect a woman from such treatment as
that ruffian has inflicted on you to-day. I will go into no details
about Anne Catherick, because I have no certain information to give.
But the lawyer shall know of those bruises on your arm, and of the
violence offered to you in this room--he shall, before I rest to-night!"

"But think of the exposure, Marian!"

"I am calculating on the exposure. Sir Percival has more to dread from
it than you have. The prospect of an exposure may bring him to terms
when nothing else will."

I rose as I spoke, but Laura entreated me not to leave her. "You will
drive him to desperation," she said, "and increase our dangers tenfold."

I felt the truth--the disheartening truth--of those words. But I could
not bring myself plainly to acknowledge it to her. In our dreadful
position there was no help and no hope for us but in risking the worst.
I said so in guarded terms. She sighed bitterly, but did not contest
the matter. She only asked about the second letter that I had proposed
writing. To whom was it to be addressed?

"To Mr. Fairlie," I said. "Your uncle is your nearest male relative,
and the head of the family. He must and shall interfere."

Laura shook her head sorrowfully.

"Yes, yes," I went on, "your uncle is a weak, selfish, worldly man, I
know, but he is not Sir Percival Glyde, and he has no such friend about
him as Count Fosco. I expect nothing from his kindness or his
tenderness of feeling towards you or towards me, but he will do
anything to pamper his own indolence, and to secure his own quiet. Let
me only persuade him that his interference at this moment will save him
inevitable trouble and wretchedness and responsibility hereafter, and
he will bestir himself for his own sake. I know how to deal with him,
Laura--I have had some practice."

"If you could only prevail on him to let me go back to Limmeridge for a
little while and stay there quietly with you, Marian, I could be almost
as happy again as I was before I was married!"

Those words set me thinking in a new direction. Would it be possible
to place Sir Percival between the two alternatives of either exposing
himself to the scandal of legal interference on his wife's behalf, or
of allowing her to be quietly separated from him for a time under
pretext of a visit to her uncle's house? And could he, in that case, be
reckoned on as likely to accep