“Perfectly right,” she said.  “I saw him yesterday, and worse than that, Walter—­I spoke to him.”

“Spoke to him?  Did he know where we lived?  Did he come to the house?”

“He did.  To the house—­but not upstairs.  Laura never saw him—­ Laura suspects nothing.  I will tell you how it happened:  the danger, I believe and hope, is over now.  Yesterday, I was in the sitting-room, at our old lodgings.  Laura was drawing at the table, and I was walking about and setting things to rights.  I passed the window, and as I passed it, looked out into the street.  There, on the opposite side of the way, I saw the Count, with a man talking to him——­”

“Did he notice you at the window?”

“No—­at least, I thought not.  I was too violently startled to be quite sure.”

“Who was the other man?  A stranger?”

“Not a stranger, Walter.  As soon as I could draw my breath again, I recognised him.  He was the owner of the Lunatic Asylum.”

“Was the Count pointing out the house to him?”

“No, they were talking together as if they had accidentally met in the street.  I remained at the window looking at them from behind the curtain.  If I had turned round, and if Laura had seen my face at that moment——­Thank God, she was absorbed over her drawing!  They soon parted.  The man from the Asylum went one way, and the Count the other.  I began to hope they were in the street by chance, till I saw the Count come back, stop opposite to us again, take out his card-case and pencil, write something, and then cross the road to the shop below us.  I ran past Laura before she could see me, and said I had forgotten something upstairs.  As soon as I was out of the room I went down to the first landing and waited—­I was determined to stop him if he tried to come upstairs.  He made no such attempt.  The girl from the shop came through the door into the passage, with his card in her hand—­a large gilt card with his name, and a coronet above it, and these lines underneath in pencil:  ‘Dear lady’ (yes! the villain could address me in that way still)—­’dear lady, one word, I implore you, on a matter serious to us both.’  If one can think at all, in serious difficulties, one thinks quick.  I felt directly that it might be a fatal mistake to leave myself and to leave you in the dark, where such a man as the Count was concerned.  I felt that the doubt of what he might do, in your absence, would be ten times more trying to me if I declined to see him than if I consented.  ‘Ask the gentleman to wait in the shop,’ I said.  ’I will be with him in a moment.’  I ran upstairs for my bonnet, being determined not to let him speak to me indoors.  I knew his deep ringing voice, and I was afraid Laura might hear it, even in the shop.  In less than a minute I was down again in the passage, and had opened the door into the street.  He came round to meet me from the shop.  There he was in deep mourning, with his smooth bow and his deadly smile, and some idle boys and women near him, staring at his great size, his fine black clothes, and his large cane with the gold knob to it.  All the horrible time at Blackwater came back to me the moment I set eyes on him.  All the old loathing crept and crawled through me, when he took off his hat with a flourish and spoke to me, as if we had parted on the friendliest terms hardly a day since.”