The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in the library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends of music on the piano, and humming to himself.  Judging by appearances, the sentimental side of his character was persistently inclined to betray itself still.  He was silent and sensitive, and ready to sigh and languish ponderously (as only fat men can sigh and languish) on the smallest provocation.

Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return.  The Count took his friend’s place at the table, plaintively devoured the greater part of a fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of cream, and explained the full merit of the achievement to us as soon as he had done.  “A taste for sweets,” he said in his softest tones and his tenderest manner, “is the innocent taste of women and children.  I love to share it with them—­it is another bond, dear ladies, between you and me.”

Laura left the table in ten minutes’ time.  I was sorely tempted to accompany her.  But if we had both gone out together we must have excited suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne Catherick to see Laura, accompanied by a second person who was a stranger to her, we should in all probability forfeit her confidence from that moment, never to regain it again.

I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant came in to clear the table.  When I quitted the room, there were no signs, in the house or out of it, of Sir Percival’s return.  I left the Count with a piece of sugar between his lips, and the vicious cockatoo scrambling up his waistcoat to get at it, while Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively as if she had never seen anything of the sort before in her life.  On my way to the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of view from the luncheon-room window.  Nobody saw me and nobody followed me.  It was then a quarter to three o’clock by my watch.

Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more than half-way through the plantation.  At that point I slackened my pace and proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no voices.  By little and little I came within view of the back of the boat-house—­stopped and listened—­then went on, till I was close behind it, and must have heard any persons who were talking inside.  Still the silence was unbroken—­still far and near no sign of a living creature appeared anywhere.

After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one side and then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured in front of it, and fairly looked in.  The place was empty.

I called, “Laura!”—­at first softly, then louder and louder.  No one answered and no one appeared.  For all that I could see and hear, the only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and the plantation was myself.

My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it, for any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached the place or not.  No mark of her presence appeared inside the building, but I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on the sand.