t.' 'You do!' he called back. 'I'll crush your obstinacy--mind
that!--I'll wring it out of you!' He went away with those words--went
away, Marian, hardly five minutes ago."

He had not found Anne! We were safe for that night--he had not found
her yet.

"You are going downstairs, Marian? Come up again in the evening."

"Yes, yes. Don't be uneasy if I am a little late--I must be careful
not to give offence by leaving them too soon."

The dinner-bell rang and I hastened away.

Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room, and the Count gave
me his arm. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his
customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner,
and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a
little more severely than usual?

However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret
annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he was
not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner he was
almost as silent as Sir Percival himself, and he, every now and then,
looked at his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness which was
quite new in my experience of him. The one social obligation which he
seemed to be self-possessed enough to perform as carefully as ever was
the obligation of being persistently civil and attentive to me. What
vile object he has in view I cannot still discover, but be the design
what it may, invariable politeness towards myself, invariable humility
towards Laura, and invariable suppression (at any cost) of Sir
Percival's clumsy violence, have been the means he has resolutely and
impenetrably used to get to his end ever since he set foot in this
house. I suspected it when he first interfered in our favour, on the
day when the deed was produced in the library, and I feel certain of it
now.

When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to
accompany us back to the drawing-room.

"What are you going away for?" asked Sir Percival--"I mean YOU, Fosco."

"I am going away because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,"
answered the Count. "Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for
my foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in
with them."

"Nonsense! Another glass of claret won't hurt you. Sit down again like
an Englishman. I want half an hour's quiet talk with you over our
wine."

"A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now,