His wife's tigerish
jealousy came to my rescue and forced his attention away from me the
moment he possessed himself of my hand. Her cold blue eyes caught
light, her dull white cheeks flushed into bright colour, she looked
years younger than her age in an instant.

"Count!" she said. "Your foreign forms of politeness are not
understood by Englishwomen."

"Pardon me, my angel! The best and dearest Englishwoman in the world
understands them." With those words he dropped my hand and quietly
raised his wife's hand to his lips in place of it.

I ran back up the stairs to take refuge in my own room. If there had
been time to think, my thoughts, when I was alone again, would have
caused me bitter suffering. But there was no time to think. Happily
for the preservation of my calmness and my courage there was time for
nothing but action.

The letters to the lawyer and to Mr. Fairlie were still to be written,
and I sat down at once without a moment's hesitation to devote myself
to them.

There was no multitude of resources to perplex me--there was absolutely
no one to depend on, in the first instance, but myself. Sir Percival
had neither friends nor relatives in the neighbourhood whose
intercession I could attempt to employ. He was on the coldest
terms--in some cases on the worst terms with the families of his own
rank and station who lived near him. We two women had neither father
nor brother to come to the house and take our parts. There was no
choice but to write those two doubtful letters, or to put Laura in the
wrong and myself in the wrong, and to make all peaceable negotiation in
the future impossible by secretly escaping from Blackwater Park.
Nothing but the most imminent personal peril could justify our taking
that second course. The letters must be tried first, and I wrote them.

I said nothing to the lawyer about Anne Catherick, because (as I had
already hinted to Laura) that topic was connected with a mystery which
we could not yet explain, and which it would therefore be useless to
write about to a professional man. I left my correspondent to
attribute Sir Percival's disgraceful conduct, if he pleased, to fresh
disputes about money matters, and simply consulted him on the
possibility of taking legal proceedings for Laura's protection in the
event of her husband's refusal to allow her to leave Blackwater Park
for a time and return with me to Limmeridge. I referred him to Mr.
Fairlie for the details o