“In the event of Lady Glyde’s signing such a document, as I am compelled to suppose the deed in question to be, her trustees would be at liberty to advance money to Sir Percival out of her twenty thousand pounds.  If the amount so lent should not be paid back, and if Lady Glyde should have children, their fortune will then be diminished by the sum, large or small, so advanced.  In plainer terms still, the transaction, for anything that Lady Glyde knows to the contrary, may be a fraud upon her unborn children.

“Under these serious circumstances, I would recommend Lady Glyde to assign as a reason for withholding her signature, that she wishes the deed to be first submitted to myself, as her family solicitor (in the absence of my partner, Mr. Gilmore).  No reasonable objection can be made to taking this course—­for, if the transaction is an honourable one, there will necessarily be no difficulty in my giving my approval.

“Sincerely assuring you of my readiness to afford any additional help or advice that may be wanted, I beg to remain, Madam, your faithful servant,

William Kyrle.

I read this kind and sensible letter very thankfully.  It supplied Laura with a reason for objecting to the signature which was unanswerable, and which we could both of us understand.  The messenger waited near me while I was reading to receive his directions when I had done.

“Will you be good enough to say that I understand the letter, and that I am very much obliged?” I said.  “There is no other reply necessary at present.”

Exactly at the moment when I was speaking those words, holding the letter open in my hand, Count Fosco turned the corner of the lane from the high-road, and stood before me as if he had sprung up out of the earth.

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.