I said to you, Remember that plain truth when you want
your wife to help you to the money. I said, Remember it doubly and
trebly in the presence of your wife's sister, Miss Halcombe. Have you
remembered it? Not once in all the implications that have twisted
themselves about us in this house. Every provocation that your wife
and her sister could offer to you, you instantly accepted from them.
Your mad temper lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money,
set Miss Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time."

"First time! Has she written again?"

"Yes, she has written again to-day."

A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah--fell with a crash, as if
it had been kicked down.

It was well for me that the Count's revelation roused Sir Percival's
anger as it did. On hearing that I had been once more discovered I
started so that the railing against which I leaned cracked again. Had
he followed me to the inn? Did he infer that I must have given my
letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for the post-bag. Even if
it was so, how could he have examined the letters when they had gone
straight from my hand to the bosom of the girl's dress?

"Thank your lucky star," I heard the Count say next, "that you have me
in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it. Thank your lucky
star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of turning the key
to-day on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your mischievous folly on
your wife. Where are your eyes? Can you look at Miss Halcombe and not
see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man? With that
woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world.
With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience--I,
Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred
times--I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells! And this grand
creature--I drink her health in my sugar-and-water--this grand
creature, who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm
as a rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of
yours--this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I
oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as
if she was no sharper and no bolder than the rest of her sex.
Percival! Percival! you deserve to fail, and you HAVE failed."

There was a pause. I write the villain's words about myself because I
mean to remember them--because I h