Take care of her, sir!
With my hand on my heart, I solemnly implore you, take care of Miss Halcombe!"
Those were the last words he said to me before he squeezed his huge body into the cab and drove off.
The agent and I waited at the door a few moments looking after him.
While we were standing together, a second cab appeared from a turning a little way down the road.
It followed the direction previously taken by the Count's cab, and as it passed the house and the open garden gate, a person inside looked at us out of the window.
The stranger at the Opera again!—the foreigner with a scar on his left cheek.
"You wait here with me, sir, for half an hour more!" said Monsieur Rubelle.
"I do."
We returned to the sitting-room.
I was in no humour to speak to the agent, or to allow him to speak to me.
I took out the papers which the Count had placed in my hands, and read the terrible story of the conspiracy told by the man who had planned and perpetrated it.
THE STORY CONTINUED BY ISIDOR, OTTAVIO, BALDASSARE FOSCO
(Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Brazen Crown, Perpetual Arch-Master of the Rosicrucian Masons of Mesopotamia; Attached (in Honorary Capacities) to Societies Musical, Societies Medical, Societies Philosophical, and Societies General Benevolent, throughout Europe; etc. etc. etc.)
THE COUNT'S NARRATIVE In the summer of eighteen hundred and fifty I arrived in England, charged with a delicate political mission from abroad.
Confidential persons were semi-officially connected with me, whose exertions I was authorised to direct, Monsieur and Madame Rubelle being among the number.
Some weeks of spare time were at my disposal, before I entered on my functions by establishing myself in the suburbs of London.
Curiosity may stop here to ask for some explanation of those functions on my part.
I entirely sympathise with the request.
I also regret that diplomatic reserve forbids me to comply with it.
I arranged to pass the preliminary period of repose, to which I have just referred, in the superb mansion of my late lamented friend, Sir Percival Glyde. HE arrived from the Continent with his wife.
I arrived from the Continent with MINE.
England is the land of domestic happiness—how appropriately we entered it under these domestic circumstances!
The bond of friendship which united Percival and myself was strengthened, on this occasion, by a touching similarity in the pecuniary position on his side and on mine.
We both wanted money.
Immense necessity!
Universal want!
Is there a civilised human being who does not feel for us?
How insensible must that man be!
Or how rich!
I enter into no sordid particulars, in discussing this part of the subject.
My mind recoils from them.
With a Roman austerity, I show my empty purse and Percival's to the shrinking public gaze.
Let us allow the deplorable fact to assert itself, once for all, in that manner, and pass on.
We were received at the mansion by the magnificent creature who is inscribed on my heart as
"Marian," who is known in the colder atmosphere of society as "Miss Halcombe."
Just Heaven! with what inconceivable rapidity I learnt to adore that woman.
At sixty, I worshipped her with the volcanic ardour of eighteen.
All the gold of my rich nature was poured hopelessly at her feet.
My wife—poor angel!—my wife, who adores me, got nothing but the shillings and the pennies.
Such is the World, such Man, such Love.
What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box?
Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently!
Dance us mercifully off our miserable little stage!
The preceding lines, rightly understood, express an entire system of philosophy.
It is mine.
I resume.
The domestic position at the commencement of our residence at Blackwater Park has been drawn with amazing accuracy, with profound mental insight, by the hand of Marian herself. (Pass me the intoxicating familiarity of mentioning this sublime creature by her Christian name.) Accurate knowledge of the contents of her journal—to which I obtained access by clandestine means, unspeakably precious to me in the remembrance—warns my eager pen from topics which this essentially exhaustive woman has already made her own.
The interests—interests, breathless and immense!—with which I am here concerned, begin with the deplorable calamity of Marian's illness.
The situation at this period was emphatically a serious one.