IV

June 17th.—­Just as my hand was on the door of my room, I heard Sir Percival’s voice calling to me from below.

“I must beg you to come downstairs again,” he said.  “It is Fosco’s fault, Miss Halcombe, not mine.  He has started some nonsensical objection to his wife being one of the witnesses, and has obliged me to ask you to join us in the library.”

I entered the room immediately with Sir Percival.  Laura was waiting by the writing-table, twisting and turning her garden hat uneasily in her hands.  Madame Fosco sat near her, in an arm-chair, imperturbably admiring her husband, who stood by himself at the other end of the library, picking off the dead leaves from the flowers in the window.

The moment I appeared the Count advanced to meet me, and to offer his explanations.

“A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe,” he said.  “You know the character which is given to my countrymen by the English?  We Italians are all wily and suspicious by nature, in the estimation of the good John Bull.  Set me down, if you please, as being no better than the rest of my race.  I am a wily Italian and a suspicious Italian.  You have thought so yourself, dear lady, have you not?  Well! it is part of my wiliness and part of my suspicion to object to Madame Fosco being a witness to Lady Glyde’s signature, when I am also a witness myself.”

“There is not the shadow of a reason for his objection,” interposed Sir Percival.  “I have explained to him that the law of England allows Madame Fosco to witness a signature as well as her husband.”

“I admit it,” resumed the Count.  “The law of England says, Yes, but the conscience of Fosco says, No.”  He spread out his fat fingers on the bosom of his blouse, and bowed solemnly, as if he wished to introduce his conscience to us all, in the character of an illustrious addition to the society.  “What this document which Lady Glyde is about to sign may be,” he continued, “I neither know nor desire to know.  I only say this, circumstances may happen in the future which may oblige Percival, or his representatives, to appeal to the two witnesses, in which case it is certainly desirable that those witnesses should represent two opinions which are perfectly independent the one of the other.  This cannot be if my wife signs as well as myself, because we have but one opinion between us, and that opinion is mine.  I will not have it cast in my teeth, at some future day, that Madame Fosco acted under my coercion, and was, in plain fact, no witness at all.  I speak in Percival’s interest, when I propose that my name shall appear (as the nearest friend of the husband), and your name, Miss Halcombe (as the nearest friend of the wife).  I am a Jesuit, if you please to think so—­a splitter of straws—­a man of trifles and crochets and scruples—­but you will humour me, I hope, in merciful consideration for my suspicious Italian character, and my uneasy Italian conscience.”  He bowed again, stepped back a few paces, and withdrew his conscience from our society as politely as he had introduced it.