“No, no,” he answered hastily.  “My arrangement can wait.  After lunch will do as well for it as after breakfast.  All going to the lake, eh?  A good idea.  Let’s have an idle morning—­I’ll be one of the party.”

There was no mistaking his manner, even if it had been possible to mistake the uncharacteristic readiness which his words expressed, to submit his own plans and projects to the convenience of others.  He was evidently relieved at finding any excuse for delaying the business formality in the library, to which his own words had referred.  My heart sank within me as I drew the inevitable inference.

The Count and his wife joined us at that moment.  The lady had her husband’s embroidered tobacco-pouch, and her store of paper in her hand, for the manufacture of the eternal cigarettes.  The gentleman, dressed, as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, carried the gay little pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and smiled on them, and on us, with a bland amiability which it was impossible to resist.

“With your kind permission,” said the Count, “I will take my small family here—­my poor-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an airing along with us.  There are dogs about the house, and shall I leave my forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs?  Ah, never!”

He chirruped paternally at his small white children through the bars of the pagoda, and we all left the house for the lake.

In the plantation Sir Percival strayed away from us.  It seems to be part of his restless disposition always to separate himself from his companions on these occasions, and always to occupy himself when he is alone in cutting new walking-sticks for his own use.  The mere act of cutting and lopping at hazard appears to please him.  He has filled the house with walking-sticks of his own making, not one of which he ever takes up for a second time.  When they have been once used his interest in them is all exhausted, and he thinks of nothing but going on and making more.

At the old boat-house he joined us again.  I will put down the conversation that ensued when we were all settled in our places exactly as it passed.  It is an important conversation, so far as I am concerned, for it has seriously disposed me to distrust the influence which Count Fosco has exercised over my thoughts and feelings, and to resist it for the future as resolutely as I can.

The boat-house was large enough to hold us all, but Sir Percival remained outside trimming the last new stick with his pocket-axe.  We three women found plenty of room on the large seat.  Laura took her work, and Madame Fosco began her cigarettes.  I, as usual, had nothing to do.  My hands always were, and always will be, as awkward as a man’s.  The Count good-humouredly took a stool many sizes too small for him, and balanced himself on it with his back against the side of the shed, which creaked and groaned under his weight.  He put the pagoda-cage on his lap, and let out the mice to crawl over him as usual.  They are pretty, innocent-looking little creatures, but the sight of them creeping about a man’s body is for some reason not pleasant to me.  It excites a strange responsive creeping in my own nerves, and suggests hideous ideas of men dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the dungeon preying on them undisturbed.