“Of course I won’t.  There’s the dog-cart at the door for you.  My groom will get you to the station in no time.  Benjamin, drive like mad!  Jump in.  If Mr. Merriman misses the train you lose your place.  Hold fast, Merriman, and if you are upset trust to the devil to save his own.”  With that parting benediction the baronet turned about and walked back to the library.

I had not heard much, but the little that had reached my ears was enough to make me feel uneasy.  The “something” that “had happened” was but too plainly a serious money embarrassment, and Sir Percival’s relief from it depended upon Laura.  The prospect of seeing her involved in her husband’s secret difficulties filled me with dismay, exaggerated, no doubt, by my ignorance of business and my settled distrust of Sir Percival.  Instead of going out, as I proposed, I went back immediately to Laura’s room to tell her what I had heard.

She received my bad news so composedly as to surprise me.  She evidently knows more of her husband’s character and her husband’s embarrassments than I have suspected up to this time.

“I feared as much,” she said, “when I heard of that strange gentleman who called, and declined to leave his name.”

“Who do you think the gentleman was, then?” I asked.

“Some person who has heavy claims on Sir Percival,” she answered, “and who has been the cause of Mr. Merriman’s visit here to-day.”

“Do you know anything about those claims?”

“No, I know no particulars.”

“You will sign nothing, Laura, without first looking at it?”

“Certainly not, Marian.  Whatever I can harmlessly and honestly do to help him I will do—­for the sake of making your life and mine, love, as easy and as happy as possible.  But I will do nothing ignorantly, which we might, one day, have reason to feel ashamed of.  Let us say no more about it now.  You have got your hat on—­ suppose we go and dream away the afternoon in the grounds?”

On leaving the house we directed our steps to the nearest shade.

As we passed an open space among the trees in front of the house, there was Count Fosco, slowly walking backwards and forwards on the grass, sunning himself in the full blaze of the hot June afternoon.  He had a broad straw hat on, with a violet-coloured ribbon round it.  A blue blouse, with profuse white fancy-work over the bosom, covered his prodigious body, and was girt about the place where his waist might once have been with a broad scarlet leather belt.  Nankeen trousers, displaying more white fancy-work over the ankles, and purple morocco slippers, adorned his lower extremities.  He was singing Figaro’s famous song in the Barber of Seville, with that crisply fluent vocalisation which is never heard from any other than an Italian throat, accompanying himself on the concertina, which he played with ecstatic throwings-up of his arms, and graceful twistings and turnings of his head, like a fat St. Cecilia masquerading in male attire.  “Figaro qua!  Figaro la!  Figaro su!  Figaro giu!” sang the Count, jauntily tossing up the concertina at arm’s length, and bowing to us, on one side of the instrument, with the airy grace and elegance of Figaro himself at twenty years of age.