19th.—­More discoveries in the inexhaustible mine of Sir Percival’s virtues.

To-day I approached the subject of my proposed sojourn under his wife’s roof when he brings her back to England.  I had hardly dropped my first hint in this direction before he caught me warmly by the hand, and said I had made the very offer to him which he had been, on his side, most anxious to make to me.  I was the companion of all others whom he most sincerely longed to secure for his wife, and he begged me to believe that I had conferred a lasting favour on him by making the proposal to live with Laura after her marriage, exactly as I had always lived with her before it.

When I had thanked him in her name and mine for his considerate kindness to both of us, we passed next to the subject of his wedding tour, and began to talk of the English society in Rome to which Laura was to be introduced.  He ran over the names of several friends whom he expected to meet abroad this winter.  They were all English, as well as I can remember, with one exception.  The one exception was Count Fosco.

The mention of the Count’s name, and the discovery that he and his wife are likely to meet the bride and bridegroom on the continent, puts Laura’s marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly favourable light.  It is likely to be the means of healing a family feud.  Hitherto Madame Fosco has chosen to forget her obligations as Laura’s aunt out of sheer spite against the late Mr. Fairlie for his conduct in the affair of the legacy.  Now however, she can persist in this course of conduct no longer.  Sir Percival and Count Fosco are old and fast friends, and their wives will have no choice but to meet on civil terms.  Madame Fosco in her maiden days was one of the most impertinent women I ever met with—­capricious, exacting, and vain to the last degree of absurdity.  If her husband has succeeded in bringing her to her senses, he deserves the gratitude of every member of the family, and he may have mine to begin with.

I am becoming anxious to know the Count.  He is the most intimate friend of Laura’s husband, and in that capacity he excites my strongest interest.  Neither Laura nor I have ever seen him.  All I know of him is that his accidental presence, years ago, on the steps of the Trinita del Monte at Rome, assisted Sir Percival’s escape from robbery and assassination at the critical moment when he was wounded in the hand, and might the next instant have been wounded in the heart.  I remember also that, at the time of the late Mr. Fairlie’s absurd objections to his sister’s marriage, the Count wrote him a very temperate and sensible letter on the subject, which, I am ashamed to say, remained unanswered.  This is all I know of Sir Percival’s friend.  I wonder if he will ever come to England?  I wonder if I shall like him?