“I said this:  Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman.  One way is to knock her down—­a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them.  The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but in the end not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman’s hands.  It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up.  Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children, and the women all fail in.  If they can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the better of him.  If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he gets the better of them.  I said to you, Remember that plain truth when you want your wife to help you to the money.  I said, Remember it doubly and trebly in the presence of your wife’s sister, Miss Halcombe.  Have you remembered it?  Not once in all the implications that have twisted themselves about us in this house.  Every provocation that your wife and her sister could offer to you, you instantly accepted from them.  Your mad temper lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money, set Miss Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time.”

“First time!  Has she written again?”

“Yes, she has written again to-day.”

A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah—­fell with a crash, as if it had been kicked down.

It was well for me that the Count’s revelation roused Sir Percival’s anger as it did.  On hearing that I had been once more discovered I started so that the railing against which I leaned cracked again.  Had he followed me to the inn?  Did he infer that I must have given my letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for the post-bag.  Even if it was so, how could he have examined the letters when they had gone straight from my hand to the bosom of the girl’s dress?

“Thank your lucky star,” I heard the Count say next, “that you have me in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it.  Thank your lucky star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of turning the key to-day on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your mischievous folly on your wife.  Where are your eyes?  Can you look at Miss Halcombe and not see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man?  With that woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world.  With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience—­I, Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times—­I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells!  And this grand creature—­I drink her health in my sugar-and-water—­this grand creature, who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of yours—­this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as if she was no sharper and no bolder than the rest of her sex.  Percival!  Percival! you deserve to fail, and you have failed.”