Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at me, with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot and never forgave.

“I have been listening to your conversation with my husband,” she said.  “If I had been in his place—­I would have laid you dead on the hearthrug.”

With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or spoke to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.

He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour from the time when he had gone to sleep.

“I feel infinitely refreshed,” he remarked.  “Eleanor, my good wife, are you all ready upstairs?  That is well.  My little packing here can be completed in ten minutes—­my travelling-dress assumed in ten minutes more.  What remains before the agent comes?” He looked about the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in it.  “Ah!” he cried piteously, “a last laceration of my sympathies still remains.  My innocent pets! my little cherished children! what am I to do with them?  For the present we are settled nowhere; for the present we travel incessantly—­the less baggage we carry the better for ourselves.  My cockatoo, my canaries, and my little mice—­who will cherish them when their good Papa is gone?”

He walked about the room deep in thought.  He had not been at all troubled about writing his confession, but he was visibly perplexed and distressed about the far more important question of the disposal of his pets.  After long consideration he suddenly sat down again at the writing-table.

“An idea!” he exclaimed.  “I will offer my canaries and my cockatoo to this vast Metropolis—­my agent shall present them in my name to the Zoological Gardens of London.  The Document that describes them shall be drawn out on the spot.”

He began to write, repeating the words as they flowed from his pen.

“Number one.  Cockatoo of transcendent plumage:  attraction, of himself, to all visitors of taste.  Number two.  Canaries of unrivalled vivacity and intelligence:  worthy of the garden of Eden, worthy also of the garden in the Regent’s Park.  Homage to British Zoology.  Offered by Fosco.”

The pen spluttered again, and the flourish was attached to his signature.

“Count! you have not included the mice,” said Madame Fosco

He left the table, took her hand, and placed it on his heart.

“All human resolution, Eleanor,” he said solemnly, “has its limits.  My limits are inscribed on that Document.  I cannot part with my white mice.  Bear with me, my angel, and remove them to their travelling cage upstairs.”

“Admirable tenderness!” said Madame Fosco, admiring her husband, with a last viperish look in my direction.  She took up the cage carefully, and left the room.

The Count looked at his watch.  In spite of his resolute assumption of composure, he was getting anxious for the agent’s arrival.  The candles had long since been extinguished, and the sunlight of the new morning poured into the room.  It was not till five minutes past seven that the gate bell rang, and the agent made his appearance.  He was a foreigner with a dark beard.