?"

"Fosco! that's rather a downright question."

"I am a downright man, and I repeat it."

"Why the devil do you look at me in that way?"

"You won't answer me? Well, then, let us say your wife dies before the
summer is out----"

"Drop it, Fosco!"

"Let us say your wife dies----"

"Drop it, I tell you!"

"In that case, you would gain twenty thousand pounds, and you would
lose----"

"I should lose the chance of three thousand a year."

"The REMOTE chance, Percival--the remote chance only. And you want
money, at once. In your position the gain is certain--the loss
doubtful."

"Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want has
been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife's death would
be ten thousand pounds in your wife's pocket. Sharp as you are, you
seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco's legacy. Don't look
at me in that way! I won't have it! What with your looks and your
questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!"

"Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? I speak of your
wife's death as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The respectable
lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your wills look the deaths
of living people in the face. Do lawyers make your flesh creep? Why
should I? It is my business to-night to clear up your position beyond
the possibility of mistake, and I have now done it. Here is your
position. If your wife lives, you pay those bills with her signature to
the parchment. If your wife dies, you pay them with her death."

As he spoke the light in Madame Fosco's room was extinguished, and the
whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness.

"Talk! talk!" grumbled Sir Percival. "One would think, to hear you,
that my wife's signature to the deed was got already."

"You have left the matter in my hands," retorted the Count, "and I have
more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more about it,
if you please, for the present. When the bills are due, you will see
for yourself if my 'talk! talk!' is worth something, or if it is not.
And now, Percival, having done with the money matters for to-night, I
can place my attention at your disposal, if you wish to consult me on
that second difficulty which has mixed itself up with our little
embarrassments, and which has so altered you for the worse, that I
hardly know you again. Speak, my friend--and pardon me if I shock your
fiery national tastes by mi