Where did I leave off?  Ah, yes—­she fainted after drinking a cup of tea with the Countess—­a proceeding which might have interested me if I had been her medical man, but being nothing of the sort I felt bored by hearing of it, nothing more.  When she came to herself in half an hour’s time she was on the sofa, and nobody was with her but the landlady.  The Countess, finding it too late to remain any longer at the inn, had gone away as soon as the girl showed signs of recovering, and the landlady had been good enough to help her upstairs to bed.

Left by herself, she had felt in her bosom (I regret the necessity of referring to this part of the subject a second time), and had found the two letters there quite safe, but strangely crumpled.  She had been giddy in the night, but had got up well enough to travel in the morning.  She had put the letter addressed to that obtrusive stranger, the gentleman in London into the post, and had now delivered the other letter into my hands as she was told.  This was the plain truth, and though she could not blame herself for any intentional neglect, she was sadly troubled in her mind, and sadly in want of a word of advice.  At this point Louis thinks the secretions appeared again.  Perhaps they did, but it is of infinitely greater importance to mention that at this point also I lost my patience, opened my eyes, and interfered.

“What is the purport of all this?” I inquired.

My niece’s irrelevant maid stared, and stood speechless.

“Endeavour to explain,” I said to my servant.  “Translate me, Louis.”

Louis endeavoured and translated.  In other words, he descended immediately into a bottomless pit of confusion, and the Young Person followed him down.  I really don’t know when I have been so amused.  I left them at the bottom of the pit as long as they diverted me.  When they ceased to divert me, I exerted my intelligence, and pulled them up again.

It is unnecessary to say that my interference enabled me, in due course of time, to ascertain the purport of the Young Person’s remarks.

I discovered that she was uneasy in her mind, because the train of events that she had just described to me had prevented her from receiving those supplementary messages which Miss Halcombe had intrusted to the Countess to deliver.  She was afraid the messages might have been of great importance to her mistress’s interests.  Her dread of Sir Percival had deterred her from going to Blackwater Park late at night to inquire about them, and Miss Halcombe’s own directions to her, on no account to miss the train in the morning, had prevented her from waiting at the inn the next day.  She was most anxious that the misfortune of her fainting-fit should not lead to the second misfortune of making her mistress think her neglectful, and she would humbly beg to ask me whether I would advise her to write her explanations and excuses to Miss Halcombe, requesting to receive the messages by letter, if it was not too late.  I make no apologies for this extremely prosy paragraph.  I have been ordered to write it.  There are people, unaccountable as it may appear, who actually take more interest in what my niece’s maid said to me on this occasion than in what I said to my niece’s maid.  Amusing perversity!