The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

The suddenness of his appearance, in the very last place under heaven in which I should have expected to see him, took me completely by surprise. The messenger wished me good morning, and got into the fly again. I could not say a word to him⁠—I was not even able to return his bow. The conviction that I was discovered⁠—and by that man, of all others⁠—absolutely petrified me.

“Are you going back to the house, Miss Halcombe?” he inquired, without showing the least surprise on his side, and without even looking after the fly, which drove off while he was speaking to me.

I collected myself sufficiently to make a sign in the affirmative.

“I am going back too,” he said. “Pray allow me the pleasure of accompanying you. Will you take my arm? You look surprised at seeing me!”

I took his arm. The first of my scattered senses that came back was the sense that warned me to sacrifice anything rather than make an enemy of him.

“You look surprised at seeing me!” he repeated in his quietly pertinacious way.

“I thought, Count, I heard you with your birds in the breakfast-room,” I answered, as quietly and firmly as I could.

“Surely. But my little feathered children, dear lady, are only too like other children. They have their days of perversity, and this morning was one of them. My wife came in as I was putting them back in their cage, and said she had left you going out alone for a walk. You told her so, did you not?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, Miss Halcombe, the pleasure of accompanying you was too great a temptation for me to resist. At my age there is no harm in confessing so much as that, is there? I seized my hat, and set off to offer myself as your escort. Even so fat an old man as Fosco is surely better than no escort at all? I took the wrong path⁠—I came back in despair, and here I am, arrived (may I say it?) at the height of my wishes.”

He talked on in this complimentary strain with a fluency which left me no exertion to make beyond the effort of maintaining my composure. He never referred in the most distant manner to what he had seen in the lane, or to the letter which I still had in my hand. This ominous discretion helped to convince me that he must have surprised, by the most dishonourable means, the secret of my application in Laura’s interest to the lawyer; and that, having now assured himself of the private manner in which I had received the answer, he had discovered enough to suit his purposes, and was only bent on trying to quiet the suspicions which he knew he must have aroused in my mind. I was wise enough, under these circumstances, not to attempt to deceive him by plausible explanations, and woman enough, notwithstanding my dread of him, to feel as if my hand was tainted by resting on his arm.

On the drive in front of the house we met the dogcart being taken round to the stables. Sir Percival had just returned. He came out to meet us at the house-door. Whatever other results his journey might have had, it had not ended in softening his savage temper.

“Oh! here are two of you come back,” he said, with a lowering face. “What is the meaning of the house being deserted in this way? Where is Lady Glyde?”

I told him of the loss of the brooch, and said that Laura had gone into the plantation to look for it.

“Brooch or no brooch,” he growled sulkily, “I recommend her not to forget her appointment in the library this afternoon. I shall expect to see her in half an hour.”

I took my hand from the Count’s arm, and slowly ascended the steps. He honoured me with one of his magnificent bows, and then addressed himself gaily to the scowling master of the house.

“Tell me, Percival,” he said, “have you had a pleasant drive? And has your pretty shining Brown Molly come back at all tired?”

“Brown Molly be hanged⁠—and the drive too! I want my lunch.”

“And I want five minutes’ talk with you, Percival, first,” returned the Count. “Five minutes’ talk, my friend, here on the grass.”

“What about?”

“About business that very much concerns you.”

I lingered long enough in passing through the hall-door to hear this question and answer, and to see Sir Percival thrust his hands into his pockets in sullen hesitation.

“If you want to badger me with any more of your infernal scruples,” he said, “I for one won’t hear them. I want my lunch.”

“Come out here and speak to me,” repeated the Count, still perfectly uninfluenced by the rudest speech that his friend could make to him.

Sir Percival descended the steps. The Count took him by the arm, and walked him away gently. The “business,” I was sure, referred to the question of the signature. They were speaking of Laura and of me beyond a doubt. I felt heartsick and faint with anxiety. It might be of the last importance to both of us to know what they were saying to each other at that moment, and not one word of it could by any possibility reach my ears.

I walked about the house, from room to room, with the lawyer’s letter in my bosom (I was afraid by this time even to trust it under lock and key), till the oppression of my suspense half maddened me. There were no signs of Laura’s return, and I thought of going out to look for her. But my strength was so exhausted by the trials and anxieties of the morning that the heat of the day quite overpowered me, and after an attempt to get to the door I was obliged to return to the drawing-room and lie down on the nearest sofa to recover.

I was just composing myself when the door opened softly and the Count looked