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From this point her recollections were found to be confused, fragmentary, and difficult to reconcile with any reasonable probability. Vesey's that she drank tea there, and that she passed the night under Mrs. Vesey's roof. She was totally unable to say how, or when, or in what company she left the house to which Count Fosco had brought her. But she persisted in asserting that she had been to Mrs.
I recollected immediately that Laura's own account of herself on her arrival in London described her luggage as being collected for her by some person whom Count Fosco brought with him to the station. This was the man. "Did you see the lady?" I asked. "What did she look like? Was she young or old?"
In all human probability the Countess Fosco would never enjoy this money, for she was well advanced in age, while Laura was not yet twenty-one. Regarding the £20,000, the proper and fair course was that the whole amount should be settled so as to give the income to the lady for her life, afterwards to Sir Percival for his life, and the principal to the children of the marriage.
He was just putting a letter into the post-bag. After he had dropped it in and had closed the bag, he asked me where I had left Madame Fosco. I told him, and he went out at the hall door immediately to join his wife. His manner when he spoke to me was so unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked after him, wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.
I left the Count with a piece of sugar between his lips, and the vicious cockatoo scrambling up his waistcoat to get at it, while Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively as if she had never seen anything of the sort before in her life.
When I took her into the drawing-room when she saw no one present but Madame Fosco, who was a stranger to her she exhibited the most violent agitation; if she had scented danger in the air, as a dog scents the presence of some creature unseen, her alarm could not have displayed itself more suddenly and more causelessly. I interposed in vain.
Her statement that she was Lady Glyde was held to be proof of the unsoundness of her mind. Unfortunately for the count's plans, the real Anne Catherick died the day before the incarceration of Lady Glyde, but, as there was no one to prove the dates of these events, both Fosco and Sir Percival regarded themselves as secure.
In almost every small social and individual attitude Count Fosco was human. He was exceedingly attentive to his wife in society and bullied her only in private and when necessary. He struck no dramatic attitudes. "The world is mine oyster!" is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds.
He was as polite and agreeable to all of us, as he used to be in the days of his probation at Limmeridge, and he was so amazingly attentive and kind to his wife, that even icy Madame Fosco was roused into looking at him with a grave surprise. What does this mean? I think I can guess I am afraid Laura can guess and I am sure Count Fosco knows.
"Yes, badly enough." "And you can ask for it without compromising yourself?" "I can try, at any rate." "Try, then." "Well, this is how it stands: I told you to-day that I had done my best to find Anne Catherick, and failed." "Yes, you did." "Fosco! I'm a lost man if I DON'T find her." "Ha! Is it so serious as that?"
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