whose feelings are acutely impressionable, whose
sympathies are perpetually alive? Tell me, can I do this?"

If I had been strong enough to sit up in my chair I should, of course,
have bowed. Not being strong enough, I smiled my acknowledgments
instead. It did just as well, we both understood one another.

"Pray follow my train of thought," continued the Count. "I sit here, a
man of refined sympathies myself, in the presence of another man of
refined sympathies also. I am conscious of a terrible necessity for
lacerating those sympathies by referring to domestic events of a very
melancholy kind. What is the inevitable consequence? I have done
myself the honour of pointing it out to you already. I sit confused."

Was it at this point that I began to suspect he was going to bore me? I
rather think it was.

"Is it absolutely necessary to refer to these unpleasant matters?" I
inquired. "In our homely English phrase, Count Fosco, won't they keep?"

The Count, with the most alarming solemnity, sighed and shook his head.

"Must I really hear them?"

He shrugged his shoulders (it was the first foreign thing he had done
since he had been in the room), and looked at me in an unpleasantly
penetrating manner. My instincts told me that I had better close my
eyes. I obeyed my instincts.

"Please break it gently," I pleaded. "Anybody dead?"

"Dead!" cried the Count, with unnecessary foreign fierceness. "Mr.
Fairlie, your national composure terrifies me. In the name of Heaven,
what have I said or done to make you think me the messenger of death?"

"Pray accept my apologies," I answered. "You have said and done
nothing. I make it a rule in these distressing cases always to
anticipate the worst. It breaks the blow by meeting it half-way, and
so on. Inexpressibly relieved, I am sure, to hear that nobody is dead.
Anybody ill?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him. Was he very yellow when he came
in, or had he turned very yellow in the last minute or two? I really
can't say, and I can't ask Louis, because he was not in the room at the
time.

"Anybody ill?" I repeated, observing that my national composure still
appeared to affect him.

"That is part of my bad news, Mr. Fairlie. Yes. Somebody is ill."

"Grieved, I am sure. Which of them is it?"

"To my profound sorrow, Miss Halcombe. Perhaps you were in some degree
prepared to hear this? Perhaps when you found that Miss Halcombe did
not come here by herself