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"If my signature pledges me to anything," she said, "surely I have some claim to know what that pledge is?" He lifted up the parchment, and struck it angrily on the table. "Speak out!" he said. "You were always famous for telling the truth. Never mind Miss Halcombe, never mind Fosco say, in plain terms, you distrust me."
The drawing-room and the breakfast-room were both empty. I went on to the library, and there I found Sir Percival, the Count, and Madame Fosco. They were all three standing up, close together, and Sir Percival had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I opened the door I heard the Count say to him, "No a thousand times over, no." I walked straight up to him, and looked him full in the face.
Neither husband nor wife could, by any possibility, have been out late that evening, and have just got back to the house in a hurry. I felt that my object in visiting the library was answered the moment I set eyes on them. Count Fosco rose in polite confusion and tied his cravat on when I entered the room. "Pray don't let me disturb you," I said. "I have only come here to get a book."
But when her marriage took place, somewhat late in life, and when that marriage united her to an Italian gentleman named Fosco, or, rather, to an Italian nobleman seeing that he rejoiced in the title of Count Mr. Fairlie disapproved of her conduct so strongly that he ceased to hold any communication with her, and even went the length of striking her name out of his will.
You have not got my lamented friend to deal with now you are face to face with Fosco! If the lives of twenty Mr. Hartrights were the stepping-stones to my safety, over all those stones I would go, sustained by my sublime indifference, self-balanced by my impenetrable calm. Respect me, if you love your own life! I summon you to answer three questions before you open your lips again.
Having arrived at something like a conclusion so far, my next great interest was to know what discoveries Sir Percival had made after Count Fosco had given him his information. "How came you to lose possession of the letter?" I asked. "What did you do with it when you found it in the sand?"
Laura writes readily enough about the meeting with Madame Fosco, and assures me that she has found her aunt so much changed for the better so much quieter, and so much more sensible as a wife than she was as a single woman that I shall hardly know her again when I see her here.
"Chocolat a la Vanille," cried the impenetrable man, cheerfully rattling the sweetmeats in the box, and bowing all round. "Offered by Fosco as an act of homage to the charming society." "Be good enough to go on, Count," said his wife, with a spiteful reference to myself. "Oblige me by answering Miss Halcombe."
I received Sir Percival's consent to live with him as companion to his wife in their new home in Hampshire. I was interested to discover that Count Fosco, the husband of Laura's Aunt Eleanor, is a great friend of Sir Percival's. December 22, 11 o'clock. It is all over. They are married. Black-water Park, Hampshire, June 11. Six long months have elapsed since Laura and I last saw each other.
It simply confirms the plan of conduct which I had previously arranged. I have to thank these pages for awakening the finest sensibilities in my nature nothing more. To a person of similar sensibility this simple assertion will explain and excuse everything. Miss Halcombe is a person of similar sensibility. In that persuasion I sign myself, Fosco. The manner in which Mr.
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