The chair creaked, and the pillar shook once more.  The Count was on his feet again—­this time in astonishment.

“What!!!” he exclaimed eagerly.

“Fancy my wife, after a bad illness, with a touch of something wrong in her head—­and there is Anne Catherick for you,” answered Sir Percival.

“Are they related to each other?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“And yet so like?”

“Yes, so like.  What are you laughing about?”

There was no answer, and no sound of any kind.  The Count was laughing in his smooth silent internal way.

“What are you laughing about?” reiterated Sir Percival.

“Perhaps at my own fancies, my good friend.  Allow me my Italian humour—­do I not come of the illustrious nation which invented the exhibition of Punch?  Well, well, well, I shall know Anne Catherick when I see her—­and so enough for to-night.  Make your mind easy, Percival.  Sleep, my son, the sleep of the just, and see what I will do for you when daylight comes to help us both.  I have my projects and my plans here in my big head.  You shall pay those bills and find Anne Catherick—­my sacred word of honour on it, but you shall!  Am I a friend to be treasured in the best corner of your heart, or am I not?  Am I worth those loans of money which you so delicately reminded me of a little while since?  Whatever you do, never wound me in my sentiments any more.  Recognise them, Percival! imitate them, Percival!  I forgive you again—­I shake hands again.  Good-night!”

Not another word was spoken.  I heard the Count close the library door.  I heard Sir Percival barring up the window-shutters.  It had been raining, raining all the time.  I was cramped by my position and chilled to the bones.  When I first tried to move, the effort was so painful to me that I was obliged to desist.  I tried a second time, and succeeded in rising to my knees on the wet roof.

As I crept to the wall, and raised myself against it, I looked back, and saw the window of the Count’s dressing-room gleam into light.  My sinking courage flickered up in me again, and kept my eyes fixed on his window, as I stole my way back, step by step, past the wall of the house.

The clock struck the quarter after one, when I laid my hands on the window-sill of my own room.  I had seen nothing and heard nothing which could lead me to suppose that my retreat had been discovered.

X

June 20th.—­Eight o’clock.  The sun is shining in a clear sky.  I have not been near my bed—­I have not once closed my weary wakeful eyes.  From the same window at which I looked out into the darkness of last night, I look out now at the bright stillness of the morning.

I count the hours that have passed since I escaped to the shelter of this room by my own sensations—­and those hours seem like weeks.

How short a time, and yet how long to me—­since I sank down in the darkness, here, on the floor—­drenched to the skin, cramped in every limb, cold to the bones, a useless, helpless, panic-stricken creature.