第104章 Chapter 16 (4)

‘Hush,' she whispered. ‘I hear something behind us.'

‘Dead leaves,' I said to cheer her, ‘or a twig blown off the trees.'

‘It is summer time, Marian, and there is not a breath of wind. Listen!'

I heard the sound too -- a sound like a light footstep following us.

‘No matter who it is, or what it is,' I said, ‘let us walk on. In another minute, if there is anything to alarm us, we shall be near enough to the house to be heard.'

We went on quickly -- so quickly, that Laura was breathless by the time we were nearly though the plantation, and within sight of the lighted windows.

I waited a moment to give her breathing-time. Just as we were about to proceed she stopped me again, and signed to me with her hand to listen once more. We both heard distinctly a long, heavy sigh behind us, in the black depths of the trees.

‘Who's there?' I called out.

There was no answer.

‘Who's there?' I repeated.

An instant of silence followed, and then we heard the light fall of the footsteps again, fainter and fainter -- sinking away into the darkness -- sinking, sinking, sinking -- till they were lost in the silence.

We hurried out from the trees to the open lawn beyond, crossed it rapidly, and without another word passing between us, reached the house.

In the light of the hall-lamp Laura looked at me, with white cheeks and startled eyes.

‘I am half dead with fear,' she said. ‘Who could it have been?'

‘We will try to guess tomorrow,' I replied. ‘In the meantime say nothing to any one of what we have heard and seen.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because silence is safe, and we have need of safety in this house.'

I sent Laura upstairs immediately, waited a minute to take off my hat and put my hair smooth, and then went at once to make my first investigations in the library, on pretence of searching for a book.

There sat the Count, filling out the largest easy-chair in the house, smoking and reading calmly, with his feet on an ottoman, his cravat across his knees, and his shirt collar wide open. And there sat Madame Fosco, like a quiet child, on a stool by his side, making cigarettes. Neither husband nor wife could, by any possibility, have been out late that evening, and have just got back to the house in a hurry. I felt that my object in visiting the library was answered the moment I set eyes on them.

Count Fosco rose in polite confusion and tied his cravat on when I entered the room.

‘Pray don't let me disturb you,' I said. ‘I have only come here to get a book.'

‘All unfortunate men of my size suffer from the heat,' said the Count, refreshing himself gravely with a large green fan. ‘I wish I could change places with my excellent wife. She is as cool at this moment as a fish in the pond outside.'

The Countess allowed herself to thaw under the influence of her husband's quaint comparison. I am never warm, Miss Halcombe,' she remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to one of her own merits.

‘Have you and Lady Glyde been out this evening?' asked the Count, while I was taking a book from the shelves to preserve appearances.

‘Yes, we went out to get a little air.'

‘May I ask in what direction?'

‘In the direction of the lake -- as far as the boat-house.'

‘Aha? As far as the boat-house?'

Under other circumstances I might have resented his curiosity. But tonight I hailed it as another proof that neither he nor his wife were connected with the mysterious appearance at the lake.

‘No more adventures, I supPose, this evening?' he went on. ‘No more discoveries, like your discovery of the wounded dog?'

He fixed his unfathomable grey eyes on me, with that cold, clear, irresistible glitter in them which always forces me to look at him, and always makes me uneasy while I do look. An unutterable suspicion that his mind is prying into mine overcomes me at these times, and it overcame me now.

‘No,' I said shortly; ‘no adventures -- no discoveries.'

I tried to look away from him and leave the room. Strange as it seems, I hardly think I should have succeeded in the attempt if Madame Fosco had not helped me by causing him to move and look away first.

‘Count, you are keeping Miss Halcombe standing,' she said.

The moment he turned round to get me a chair, I seized my opportunity -- thanked him -- made my excuses -- and slipped out.

An hour later, when Laura's maid happened to be in her mistress's room, I took occasion to refer to the closeness of the night, with a view to ascertaining next how the servants had been passing their time.

‘Have you been suffering much from the heat downstairs?' I asked.

‘No, miss,' said the girl, ‘we have not felt it to speak of.'

‘You have been out in the woods then, I suppose?'

‘Some of us thought of going, miss. But cook said she should take her chair into the cool court-yard, outside the kitchen door, and on second thoughts, all the rest of us took our chairs out there too.'

The housekeeper was now the only person who remained to be accounted for.

‘Is Mrs Michelson gone to bed yet?' I inquired.

‘I should this not, miss,' said the girl, smiling. ‘Mrs Michelson is more likely to be getting up just now than going to bed.'

‘Why? What do you mean? Has Mrs Michelson been taking to her bed in the daytime?'

‘No, miss, not exactly, but the next thing to it. She's been asleep all the evening on the sofa in her own room.'

Putting together what I observed for myself in the library, and what I have just heard from Laura's maid, one conclusion seems inevitable. The figure we saw at the lake was not the figure of Madame Fosco, of her husband, or of any of the servants. The footsteps we heard behind us were not the footsteps of any one belonging to the house.

Who could it have been?

It seems useless to inquire. I cannot even decide whether the figure was a man's or a woman's. I can only say that I think it was a woman's.