Laura’s face and manner suggested to me that this last consideration had occurred to her as well as to myself.  Anyway, it is only a trifling matter, and I am almost ashamed to put it down here in writing—­it seems to set the forlornness of our situation in such a miserably vivid light.  We must have little indeed to depend on, when the discovery that my memory can still be trusted to serve us is hailed as if it was the discovery of a new friend!

The first bell for dinner separated us.  Just as it had done ringing, Sir Percival and the Count returned from their walk.  We heard the master of the house storming at the servants for being five minutes late, and the master’s guest interposing, as usual, in the interests of propriety, patience, and peace.

* * * * * * * * * *

The evening has come and gone.  No extraordinary event has happened.  But I have noticed certain peculiarities in the conduct of Sir Percival and the Count, which have sent me to my bed feeling very anxious and uneasy about Anne Catherick, and about the results which to-morrow may produce.

I know enough by this time, to be sure, that the aspect of Sir Percival which is the most false, and which, therefore, means the worst, is his polite aspect.  That long walk with his friend had ended in improving his manners, especially towards his wife.  To Laura’s secret surprise and to my secret alarm, he called her by her Christian name, asked if she had heard lately from her uncle, inquired when Mrs. Vesey was to receive her invitation to Blackwater, and showed her so many other little attentions that he almost recalled the days of his hateful courtship at Limmeridge House.  This was a bad sign to begin with, and I thought it more ominous still that he should pretend after dinner to fall asleep in the drawing-room, and that his eyes should cunningly follow Laura and me when he thought we neither of us suspected him.  I have never had any doubt that his sudden journey by himself took him to Welmingham to question Mrs. Catherick—­but the experience of to-night has made me fear that the expedition was not undertaken in vain, and that he has got the information which he unquestionably left us to collect.  If I knew where Anne Catherick was to be found, I would be up to-morrow with sunrise and warn her.

While the aspect under which Sir Percival presented himself to-night was unhappily but too familiar to me, the aspect under which the Count appeared was, on the other hand, entirely new in my experience of him.  He permitted me, this evening, to make his acquaintance, for the first time, in the character of a Man of Sentiment—­of sentiment, as I believe, really felt, not assumed for the occasion.