me low tones) ceased to
be audible. It was no matter. I had heard enough to determine me on
justifying the Count's opinion of my sharpness and my courage. Before
the red sparks were out of sight in the darkness I had made up my mind
that there should be a listener when those two men sat down to their
talk--and that the listener, in spite of all the Count's precautions to
the contrary, should be myself. I wanted but one motive to sanction
the act to my own conscience, and to give me courage enough for
performing it--and that motive I had. Laura's honour, Laura's
happiness--Laura's life itself--might depend on my quick ears and my
faithful memory to-night.

I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on each
side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he entered on
any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of his intentions
was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the library was the room
in which he proposed that the conversation should take place. The one
moment of time which was long enough to bring me to that conclusion was
also the moment which showed me a means of baffling his
precautions--or, in other words, of hearing what he and Sir Percival
said to each other, without the risk of descending at all into the
lower regions of the house.

In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned
incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by
means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The
top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being carried off from it
by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow
leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather
less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a
row of flower-pots was ranged, with wide intervals between each
pot--the whole being protected from falling in high winds by an
ornamental iron railing along the edge of the roof.

The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room
window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached that
part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to crouch
down between the flower-pots, with my ear against the outer railing.
If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked to-night, as I had seen
them sitting and smoking many nights before, with their chairs close at
the open window, and their feet stretched on the zinc garden