He left us suddenly.

His manner all through this strange conversation had been very unlike what it usually was.  He seemed to be almost as nervous and fluttered, every now and then, as his lady herself.  I should never have supposed that his health had been so delicate, or his composure so easy to upset.

I tried to prevail on Lady Glyde to go back to her room, but it was useless.  She stopped in the passage, with the look of a woman whose mind was panic-stricken.

“Something has happened to my sister!” she said.

“Remember, my lady, what surprising energy there is in Miss Halcombe,” I suggested.  “She might well make an effort which other ladies in her situation would be unfit for.  I hope and believe there is nothing wrong—­I do indeed.”

“I must follow Marian,” said her ladyship, with the same panic-stricken look.  “I must go where she has gone, I must see that she is alive and well with my own eyes.  Come! come down with me to Sir Percival.”

I hesitated, fearing that my presence might be considered an intrusion.  I attempted to represent this to her ladyship, but she was deaf to me.  She held my arm fast enough to force me to go downstairs with her, and she still clung to me with all the little strength she had at the moment when I opened the dining-room door.

Sir Percival was sitting at the table with a decanter of wine before him.  He raised the glass to his lips as we went in and drained it at a draught.  Seeing that he looked at me angrily when he put it down again, I attempted to make some apology for my accidental presence in the room.

“Do you suppose there are any secrets going on here?” he broke out suddenly; “there are none—­there is nothing underhand, nothing kept from you or from any one.”  After speaking those strange words loudly and sternly, he filled himself another glass of wine and asked Lady Glyde what she wanted of him.

“If my sister is fit to travel I am fit to travel” said her ladyship, with more firmness than she had yet shown.  “I come to beg you will make allowances for my anxiety about Marian, and let me follow her at once by the afternoon train.”

“You must wait till to-morrow,” replied Sir Percival, “and then if you don’t hear to the contrary you can go.  I don’t suppose you are at all likely to hear to the contrary, so I shall write to Fosco by to-night’s post.”

He said those last words holding his glass up to the light, and looking at the wine in it instead of at Lady Glyde.  Indeed he never once looked at her throughout the conversation.  Such a singular want of good breeding in a gentleman of his rank impressed me, I own, very painfully.

“Why should you write to Count Fosco?” she asked, in extreme surprise.

“To tell him to expect you by the midday train,” said Sir Percival.  “He will meet you at the station when you get to London, and take you on to sleep at your aunt’s in St. John’s Wood.”