te flourishes. I threw the letter on the table
with all the contempt that I felt for it.

"He is trying to frighten you--a sure sign that he is frightened
himself," I said.

She was too genuine a woman to treat the letter as I treated it. The
insolent familiarity of the language was too much for her self-control.
As she looked at me across the table, her hands clenched themselves in
her lap, and the old quick fiery temper flamed out again brightly in
her cheeks and her eyes.

"Walter!" she said, "if ever those two men are at your mercy, and if
you are obliged to spare one of them, don't let it be the Count."

"I will keep this letter, Marian, to help my memory when the time
comes."

She looked at me attentively as I put the letter away in my pocket-book.

"When the time comes?" she repeated. "Can you speak of the future as
if you were certain of it?--certain after what you have heard in Mr.
Kyrle's office, after what has happened to you to-day?"

"I don't count the time from to-day, Marian. All I have done to-day
is to ask another man to act for me. I count from to-morrow----"

"Why from to-morrow?"

"Because to-morrow I mean to act for myself."

"How?"

"I shall go to Blackwater by the first train, and return, I hope, at
night."

"To Blackwater!"

"Yes. I have had time to think since I left Mr. Kyrle. His opinion on
one point confirms my own. We must persist to the last in hunting down
the date of Laura's journey. The one weak point in the conspiracy, and
probably the one chance of proving that she is a living woman, centre
in the discovery of that date."

"You mean," said Marian, "the discovery that Laura did not leave
Blackwater Park till after the date of her death on the doctor's
certificate?"

"Certainly."

"What makes you think it might have been AFTER? Laura can tell us
nothing of the time she was in London."

"But the owner of the Asylum told you that she was received there on
the twenty-seventh of July. I doubt Count Fosco's ability to keep her
in London, and to keep her insensible to all that was passing around
her, more than one night. In that case, she must have started on the
twenty-sixth, and must have come to London one day after the date of
her own death on the doctor's certificate. If we can prove that date,
we prove our case against Sir Percival and the Count."

"Yes, yes--I see! But how is the proof to be obtained?"

"Mrs. Michelson's narrative has suggested to me