Strongly as I was fortified in my resolution by the desperate nature of our situation, I hoped most fervently that I might escape this last emergency.  My courage was only a woman’s courage after all, and it was very near to failing me when I thought of trusting myself on the ground floor, at the dead of night, within reach of Sir Percival and the Count.

I went softly back to my bedroom to try the safer experiment of the verandah roof first.

A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many reasons.  I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me.  I next removed the white and cumbersome parts of my underclothing, and replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel.  Over this I put my black travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on to my head.  In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of three men at least.  In my present dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces more easily than I. The little breadth left on the roof of the verandah, between the flower-pots on one side and the wall and the windows of the house on the other, made this a serious consideration.  If I knocked anything down, if I made the least noise, who could say what the consequences might be?

I only waited to put the matches near the candle before I extinguished it, and groped my way back into the sitting-room, I locked that door, as I had locked my bedroom door—­then quietly got out of the window, and cautiously set my feet on the leaden roof of the verandah.

My two rooms were at the inner extremity of the new wing of the house in which we all lived, and I had five windows to pass before I could reach the position it was necessary to take up immediately over the library.  The first window belonged to a spare room which was empty.  The second and third windows belonged to Laura’s room.  The fourth window belonged to Sir Percival’s room.  The fifth belonged to the Countess’s room.  The others, by which it was not necessary for me to pass, were the windows of the Count’s dressing-room, of the bath-room, and of the second empty spare room.

No sound reached my ears—­the black blinding darkness of the night was all round me when I first stood on the verandah, except at that part of it which Madame Fosco’s window over-looked.  There, at the very place above the library to which my course was directed—­there I saw a gleam of light!  The Countess was not yet in bed.

It was too late to draw back—­it was no time to wait.  I determined to go on at all hazards, and trust for security to my own caution and to the darkness of the night.  “For Laura’s sake!” I thought to myself, as I took the first step forward on the roof, with one hand holding my cloak close round me, and the other groping against the wall of the house.  It was better to brush close by the wall than to risk striking my feet against the flower-pots within a few inches of me, on the other side.