‘Yes, yes. Don't be uneasy if I am a little late -- I must be careful not to give offence by leaving them too soon.'
The dinner-bell rang and I hastened away.
Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room, and the Count gave me his ann. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner, and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a little more severely than usual?
However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he was not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner he was almost as silent as Sir Percival himself, and he, every now and then, looked at his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness which was quite new in my experience of him. The one social obligation which he seemed to be self-possessed enough to perform as carefully as ever was the obligation of being persistently civil and attentive to me. What vile object he has in view I cannot still discover, but be the design what it may, invariable politeness towards myself, invariable humility towards Laura, and invariable suppression (at any cost) of Sir Percival's clumsy violence, have been the means he has resolutely and impenetrably used to get to his end ever since he set foot in this house. I suspected it when he first interfered in our favour, on the day when the deed was produced in the library, and I feel certain of it now.
When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to accompany us back to the drawing-room.
‘What are you going away for?' asked Sir Percival -- ‘I mean you , Fosco.'
‘I am going away because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,' answered the Count. ‘Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for my foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in with them.'
‘Nonsense! Another glass of claret won't hurt you. Sit down again like an Englishman. I want half an hour's quiet talk with you over our wine.'
‘A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now, and not over the wine. Later in the evening, if you please -- later in the evening.'
‘Civil!' said Sir Percival savagely. ‘Civil behaviour, upon my soul, to a man in his own house!'
I had more than once seen him look at the Count uneasily during dinner-time, and had observed that the Count carefully abstained from looking at him in return. This circumstance, coupled with the host's anxiety for a little quiet talk over the wine, and the guest's obstinate resolution not to sit down again at the table, revived in my memory the request which Sir Percival had vainly addressed to his friend earlier in the day, to come out of the library and speak to him. The Count had deferred granting that private interview, when it was first asked for in the afternoon, and had again deferred granting it, when it was a second time asked for at the dinner-table.
Whatever the coming subject of discussion between them might be, it was clearly an important subject in Sir Percival's estimation -- and perhaps (judging from his evident reluctance to approach it) a dangerous subject as well, in the estimation of the Count.
These considerations occurred to me while we were passing from the dining-room to the drawing-room. Sir Percival's angry commentary on his friend's desertion of him had not produced the slightest effect. The Count obstinately accompanied us to the tea-table -- waited a minute or two in the room -- went out into the hall -- and returned with the post-bag in his hands. It was then eight o'clock -- the hour at which the letters were always despatched from Blackwater Park.
‘Have you any letter for the post, Miss Halcombe?' he asked, approaching me with the bag.
I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-tongs in her hand, to listen for my answer.
‘No, Count, thank you. No letters today.'
He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down at the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-song, ‘La mia Carolina,' twice over. His wife, who was usually the most deliberate of women in all her movements, made tea as quickly as I could have made it myself -- finished her own cup in two minutes, and quietly glided out of the room.
I rose to follow her example -- partly because I suspected her of attempting some treachery upstairs with Laura, partly because I was resolved not to remain alone in the same room with her husband.
Before I could get to the door the Count stopped me, by a request for a cup of tea. I gave him the cup of tea, and tried a second time to get away. He stopped me again -- this time by going back to the piano, and suddenly appealing to me on a musical question in which he declared that the honour of his country was concerned.
I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want of taste in that direction. He only appealed to me again with a vehemence which set all further protest on my part at defiance. ‘The English and the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. We were perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking of their Symphonies.
Did we forget and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini?
What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed by mortal man?'
