I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want of taste in that direction.  He only appealed to me again with a vehemence which set all further protest on my part at defiance.  “The English and the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music.  We were perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking of their Symphonies.  Did we forget and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini?  What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room?  What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name?  Had I heard Moses in Egypt?  Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed by mortal man?”—­And without waiting for a word of assent or dissent on my part, looking me hard in the face all the time, he began thundering on the piano, and singing to it with loud and lofty enthusiasm—­only interrupting himself, at intervals, to announce to me fiercely the titles of the different pieces of music:  “Chorus of Egyptians in the Plague of Darkness, Miss Halcombe!”—­“Recitativo of Moses with the tables of the Law.”—­“Prayer of Israelites, at the passage of the Red Sea.  Aha!  Aha!  Is that sacred? is that sublime?” The piano trembled under his powerful hands, and the teacups on the table rattled, as his big bass voice thundered out the notes, and his heavy foot beat time on the floor.

There was something horrible—­something fierce and devilish—­in the outburst of his delight at his own singing and playing, and in the triumph with which he watched its effect upon me as I shrank nearer and nearer to the door.  I was released at last, not by my own efforts, but by Sir Percival’s interposition.  He opened the dining-room door, and called out angrily to know what “that infernal noise” meant.  The Count instantly got up from the piano.  “Ah! if Percival is coming,” he said, “harmony and melody are both at an end.  The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!” He stalked out into the verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses, sotto voce, in the garden.

I heard Sir Percival call after him from the dining-room window.  But he took no notice—­he seemed determined not to hear.  That long-deferred quiet talk between them was still to be put off, was still to wait for the Count’s absolute will and pleasure.

He had detained me in the drawing-room nearly half an hour from the time when his wife left us.  Where had she been, and what had she been doing in that interval?

I went upstairs to ascertain, but I made no discoveries, and when I questioned Laura, I found that she had not heard anything.  Nobody had disturbed her, no faint rustling of the silk dress had been audible, either in the ante-room or in the passage.