ceased, Madame Fosco's shadow darkened the blind again. Instead of passing this time, it remained, for a moment, quite still. I saw her fingers steal round the corner of the blind, and draw it on one side. The dim white outline of her face, looking out straight over me, appeared behind the window. I kept quite still, shrouded from head to foot in my black cloak. The rain, which was fast wetting me, dripped over the glass, blurred it, and prevented her from seeing anything. "More rain!" I heard her say to herself. She dropped the blind-and I breathed again freely.

The talk went on below me; the Count resuming it, this time.

66

Percival! do you care about your wife ?"
"Fosco! that's rather a downright question."
I am a downright man; and I repeat it."
Why the devil do you look at me in that

way ?"

"I should lose the chance of three thousand a year."

The remote chance, Percival-the remote chance only. And you want money, at once. In your position, the gain is certain-the loss doubtful."

"Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want has been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife's death would be ten thousand pounds in your wife's pocket. Sharp as you are, you seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco's legacy. Don't look at me in that way! I won't have it! What with your looks and your questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!"

if it is not. And now, Percival, having done with the money-matters, for to-night, I can place my attention at your disposal, if you wish to consult me on that second difficulty, which has mixed itself up with our little embarrassments, and which has so altered you for the worse, that I hardly know you again. Speak, my friend-and pardon me if I shock your fiery national tastes by mixing myself a second glass of sugar-andwater."

"It's very well to say speak," replied Sir Percival, in a far more quiet and more polite tone than he had yet adopted; "but it's not so easy to know how to begin."

"Shall I help you?" suggested the Count. "Shall I give this private difficulty of yours a name? What, if I call it-Anne Catherick ?"

"Look here, Fosco, you and I have known each other for a long time; and, if you have helped me out of one or two scrapes before this, I have done the best I could to help you in return, as far as money would go. We have made as many friendly sacrifices, on both sides, as men could; but we have had our secrets from each other, of course-haven't we?"

"So! so! my face speaks the truth, then? What an immense foundation of good there must be in the nature of a man who arrives at my age, and whose face has not yet lost the habit of speaking the truth!-Come, Glyde! let us be candid one with the other. This secret of yours has sought me: I have not sought it. Let us say I am curious-do you ask me, as your old friend, to respect your secret, and to leave it, once for all, in your own keeping?" "Yes-that's just what I do ask."

"Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? I speak of your wife's death, as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The respect-me, able lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your wills, look the deaths of living people in the face. Do lawyers make your flesh creep? Why should I? It is my business to-night, to clear up your position beyond the possibility of mistake-and I have now done it. Here is your position. If your wife lives, you pay those bills with her signature to the parchment. If your wife dies, you pay them with her death."

As he spoke, the light in Madame Fosco's room was extinguished; and the whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness.

"Talk! talk!" grumbled Sir Percival. "One would think, to hear you, that my wife's signature to the deed was got already."

"You have left the matter in my hands," retorted the Count; "and I have more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more about it, if you please, for the present. When the bills are due, you will see for your self if my 'talk! talk!' is worth something, or

Then my curiosity is at an end. It dies in from this moment."

"Do you really mean that ?"

"What makes you doubt me?"

"I have had some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways; and I am not so sure that you won't worm it out of me, after all."

The chair below suddenly creaked again-I felt the trellis-work pillar under me shake from top to bottom. The Count had started to his feet and struck it with his hand, in indignation.

Has

"Percival! Percival!" he cried, passionately, "do you know me no better than that? all your experience shown you nothing of my character yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the most exalted acts of virtuewhen I have the chance of performing them. It has been the misfortune of my life that I have had few chances. My conception of friendship is sublime! Is it my fault that your skeleton has peeped out at me? Why do I confess my curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman, it is to magnify my own self-control. I could

draw your secret out of you, if I liked, as I and in communication with Lady Glyde-there's draw this finger out of the palm of my hand-the danger, plain enough. Who can read the you know I could! But you have appealed to letter she hid in the sand, and not see that my friendship; and the duties of friendship are my wife is in possession of the secret, deny it as sacred to me. See! I trample my base curiosity she may?" under my feet. My exalted sentiments lift me above it. Recognise them, Percival! imitate them, Percival! Shake hands-I forgive you." His voice faltered over the last words faltered, as if he was actually shedding tears! Sir Percival confusedly attempted to excuse himself. But the Count was too magnanimous to listen to him.

"One moment, Percival. If Lady Glyde does know the secret, she must know also that it is a compromising secret for you. As your wife, surely it is her interest to keep it ?"

66

Is it? I'm coming to that. It might be her interest if she cared two straws about me. But I happen to be an encumbrance in the way of another man. She was in love with him, "No!" he said. When my friend has before she married me-she's in love with him wounded me, I can pardon him without apolo-now-an infernal vagabond of a drawing-master, gies. Tell me, in plain words, do you want my named Hartright." help ?"

ແ Yes, badly enough."

"My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all in love with some other

And you can ask for it without compromising man. Who gets the first of a woman's heart? In

yourself "

I can try, at any rate." "Try, then."

Well, this is how it stands :-I told you, today, that I had done my best to find Anne Catherick, and failed."

"Yes; you did."

"Fosco! I'm a lost man, if I don't find her." "Ha! Is it so serious as that?"

A little stream of light travelled out under the verandah, and fell over the gravel-walk. The Count had taken the lamp from the inner part of the room, to see his friend clearly by the light of it.

"Yes!" he said. "Your face speaks the truth this time. Serious, indeed-as serious as the money matters themselves."

"More serious. As true as I sit here, more serious!"

on.

The light disappeared again, and the talk went

"I showed you the letter to my wife that Anne Catherick hid in the sand," Sir Percival continued. "There's no boasting in that letter, Fosco she does know the Secret."

"Say as little as possible, Percival, in my presence, of the Secret. Does she know it from you ?"

"No; from her mother."

"Two women in possession of your private mind-bad, bad, bad, my friend! One question here, before we go any farther. The motive of your shutting up the daughter in the asylum, is now plain enough to me--but the manner of her escape is not quite so clear. Do you suspect the people in charge of her of closing their eyes purposely, at the instance of some enemy, who could afford to make it worth their while ?"

all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course-but, I have not met with him."

"Wait! I haven't done yet. Who do you think helped Anne Catherick to get the start, when the people from the madhouse were after her? Hartright. Who do you think saw her again in Cumberland? Hartright. Both times, he spoke to her alone. Stop! don't interrupt me. The scoundrel's as sweet on my wife, as she is on him. He knows the secret, and she knows the secret. Once let them both get together again, and it's her interest and his interest to turn their information against me."

Gently, Percival-gently! Are you insensible to the virtue of Lady Glyde ?"

"That for the virtue of Lady Glyde! I believe in nothing about her but her money. Don't you see how the case stands? She might be harmless enough by herself; but if she and that vagabond Hartright

Yes, yes, I see. Where is Mr. Hart

right ?"

"Out of the country. If he means to keep a whole skin on his bones, I recommend him not to come back in a hurry.'

"Are you sure he is out of the country ?" "Certain. I had him watched from the time he left Cumberland to the time he sailed. Oh, I've been careful, I can tell you! Anne Catherick lived with some people at a farm-house near Limmeridge. I went there, myself, after she had given me the slip, and made sure that they knew nothing. I gave her mother a form of letter to write to Miss Halcombe, exonerating me from any bad motive in putting her "No; she was the best-behaved patient they under restraint. I've spent, I'm afraid to say had-and, like fools, they trusted her. She's how much, in trying to trace her. And, in just mad enough to be shut up, and just sane spite of it all, she turns up here, and escapes me enough to ruin me when she's at large-if you on my own property! How do I know who understand that ?" else may see her, who else may speak to her? That prying scoundrel, Hartright, may come back without my knowing it, and may make use of her to-morrow

"I do understand it. Now, Percival, come at once to the point; and then I shall know what to do. Where is the danger of your position at the present moment ?"

"Anne Catherick is in this neighbourhood,

"Not he, Percival! While I am on the spot, and while that woman is in the neighbourhood,

I will answer for our laying hands on her, before Mr. Hartright-even if he does come back. I see! yes, yes, I see! The finding of Anne Catherick is the first necessity: make your mind easy about the rest. Your wife is here, under your thumb; Miss Halcombe is inseparable from her, and is, therefore, under your thumb also; and Mr. Hartright is out of the country. This invisible Anne of yours, is all we have to think of for the present. You have made your inquiries ?"

"Yes. I have been to her mother; I have ransacked the village-and all to no purpose." "Is her mother to be depended on ?" "Yes."

"She has told your secret once." "She won't tell it again.”

"Why not? Are her own interests cerned in keeping it, as well as yours ?"

Yes-deeply concerned."

those bills and find Anne Catherick-my sacred word of honour on it, but you shall! Am I a friend to be treasured in the best corner of your heart, or am I not? Am I worth those loans of money which you so delicately reminded me of a little while since? Whatever you do, never wound me in my sentiments any more. Recognise them, Percival! imitate them! I forgive you again; I shake hands again. Good night!"

Not another word was spoken. I heard the Count close the library door. I heard Sir Percival barring up the window-shutters. It had been raining, raining all the time. I was cramped by my position, and chilled to the bones. When I first tried to move, the effort was so painful to me, that I was obliged to desist. I tried a secon- cond time, and succeeded in rising to my knees on the wet roof.

"I am glad to hear it, Percival, for your sake. Don't be discouraged, my friend. Our money matters, as I told you, leave me plenty of time to turn round in; and I may search for Anne Catherick to-morrow to better purpose than you. One last question, before we go to bed."

66

What is it ?"

"Like? Come! I'll tell you in two words. She's a sickly likeness of my wife."

The chair creaked, and the pillar shook once more. The Count was on his feet again-this time in astonishment.

"What!!!" he exclaimed, eagerly.

"Fancy my wife, after a bad illness, with a touch of something wrong in her head-and there is Anne Catherick for you," answered Sir Percival.

"Are they related to each other ?" "Not a bit of it."

And yet, so like ?"

Yes, so like.

about?"

What are you laughing

There was no answer, and no sound of any kind. The Count was laughing in his smooth, silent, internal way.

"What are you laughing about ?" reiterated Sir Percival.

"Perhaps, at my own fancies, my good friend. Allow me my Italian humour-do I not come of the illustrious nation which invented the exhibition of Punch? Well, well, well, I shall know Anne Catherick when I see her and so enough for to-night. Make your mind easy, Percival. Sleep, my son, the sleep of the just; and see what I will do for you, when daylight comes to help us both. I have my projects and my plans, here in my big head. You shall pay

As I crept to the wall, and raised myself against it, I looked back, and saw the window of the Count's dressing-room gleam into light. My sinking courage flickered up in me again, and kept my eyes fixed on his window, as I stole my way, step by step, back, along the wall of the house.

The clock struck the quarter-past one, when I laid my hands on the window-sill of my own room. I had seen nothing and heard nothing which could lead me to suppose that my retreat had been discovered.

BEYOND GOOD HOPE.

ON the south-eastern coast of Africa, about eight hundred miles from the Cape of Good Hope, is Vasco de Gama's "Land of the Nativity;" that green, mild, tempting land which he and his discovered on the twenty-fifth of December, fourteen hundred and ninety-seven ; just ten years after Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Stormy Cape, known since as "of Good Hope." Vasco de Gama called the land Terra Natalis, in honour of the day of its discovery; also Terra de Fumo, because of the dense clouds of smoke perpetually hanging over the table-lands, from the burning of the coarse Ixia grass growing there. It is the Land of Smoke to the present day, and from the same cause; much to the discomfiture of astronomers and star-gazers, who might as well attempt to make observations through the atmosphere of a London fog, as through the smoke-clouds which for ever darken the brilliancy of those summer skies.

The Land of the Nativity, or Natal, as we English call it, is in a chaotic geological condition. The ground has been so upheaved and split open, so jammed together and sundered, that no one can say what lies uppermost and what beneath, or judge, from position, of priority of formation. Granite and gneiss, slate, trap, and sandstone are tumbled together, as if they had been flung down anyhow out of a Titan's hod, and left to lie where they fell; everywhere are evidences of convulsion and wreck, and of new conditions created on the ruin of the old. The great peculiarity, though, of the

country, and, indeed, of all Southern Africa, is Dingaan, and now held but a slippery footing in the succession of terraces, or broad table-lands, the country. At first he was suspected of being rising far above the level of the plains. The an underhand emissary of Dingaan, and coldly base of these table mountains is composed of dealt with; but when he proved his sincerity green, accessible slopes, with rugged granite by gathering an army of four thousand foot, buttresses breaking through; suddenly, from the Dutch gave him credence and four hunthese slopes, springs up a perpendicular wall dred horse, under the command of Pretorius. of reddish-grey rock, and on the top, "a The result was, that the allied forces fought with wide expanse of level pasture, often many and defeated the king, and that Panda was placed square miles in extent, which thus presents the on the throne in his stead. This was in 1838. curious spectacle of a large tract of land, iso- Things went on briskly enough for about lated from the rest of the world by a circum-eighteen years, when, in 1856, Panda's eldest vallation of downward-dipping precipices, with two sons quarrelled with their father and perhaps only one or two narrow rocky staircases, each other; though, to be sure, they merely by which the heights above can be scaled." It represented the discontents of the nation at is not easy walking on these table-lands even large, and gave the discontented a visible head after you have toiled up the steep serpentine and rallying-point. Panda had grown enorstaircases. You push your way through the mously fat, and lived secluded from his people; thick high grass, and come to perhaps a thus hearing none of their complaints; he kept gentle slope: half a dozen steps more bring you his army, too, without food or pay, and, what was to a precipice striking sheer under your feet, worse, kept them too long enlisted, consequently where another footfall would be your destruc- unwived. After various skirmishes between tion. The country is rich in rivers and water- Ketchwago and Umbulazi, the sons, there was falls, which tumble and riot among the grey a regular pitched battle, when the elder brother granite rocks, neither "blessed for their beauty was successful, and thenceforth assumed the nor made to turn a mill," according to Fox's management of affairs. It was decided that recipe; and almost all have pretty sentimental Panda was too old and too fat to move, and kind of names. There is the Startling River, the that he must therefore only think; that he Great, and the Buffalo, of course; these are ab- was the head, while Ketchwago would be the solute with all savages; the Stone, the Beau-feet, of the empire; and the government has tiful, the Standing, the Glare, the Soft, the Whey, and the River of the Entrance; while one mountain range is the Spying-top Hills, and a certain county is Weenen (Weeping); in commemoration of a frightful massacre by the Zulus, in 1836, of all the Dutch settlers found there-women and children as well as men.

A crew of eighty shipwrecked men, in 1683, were the first English visitors to Natal, but no attempt was made at colonisation or possession until 1823, when Lieutenant Farewell got together a little band of twenty, and established relations and a certain kind of trade with King Chaka and his tribe; he and his successors managing so well, and laying such good foundations, that, in 1856, Natal was considered of sufficient importance to be recognised as a chartered British colony, with governor and legis lative paraphernalia all complete. That Zulu king, Chaka, was a man of remarkable genius; of the Napoleonic and royal bandit order: one of those initiative, original, creative men who are absolutely needed to found a nation. Chaka created the Zulu nation out of a mere handful of warlike men, "ate up" all the clans and tribes lying round, established his throne on the points of his warriors' assegais, and lived and ruled by his army alone. But Chaka's doom came in the old way. His brother Dingaan murdered him as he sat comfortably in his tent. Dingaan proved a tyrant, of course. He had a younger brother, one Panda, living in exile on the Natal side of the Tugela, or Startling River. Panda, exiled from the court, and with only a scanty following of his own, made overtures to the white men, who, befriended by Chaka, had been renounced and persecuted by

gone on ever since in this Japanese, duplex manner. These arrangements were made tacitly, and more by dumb-show and unspoken acts than by words, as it is "high treason in Zululand to recognise in words even the possibility of such an occurrence as the death of the king." Once a missionary, going up to the court, electrified both it and the king with horror, by complimenting him on his good looks, as he had heard a report "that he was dead." Panda was for an instant struck dumb with alarm and terror, but, recovering himself, said in a low voice, hastily, "We never speak of such things here," and changed the conversation.

The Kafirs about Natal seem to be of two races-a mixture, it is supposed, of the Arab and the negro; some having the thick lips, protruding jaw, and broad flat nose of the negro, while others show the aquiline nose, straight lip, and prominent square forehead of the Caucasian; both have woolly hair, soft dark eyes, and delicately moulded limbs, small-boned, slim, and taper. They seem to have come originally, along the eastern coast from the north, and they yet retain certain words and ceremonies essentially Arab; while, on the other hand, the term “ 'Kafir" among the Arabs means literally an unbeliever in Mahomet. Half naked in dress, the Kafir is rich in arms. He wears simply a bunch of skin strips fore and aft, brass bracelets, necklaces of roots, or of wild beasts' teeth and claws; and makes pockets or shelves of the holes in his ears, where he sticks his snuff-box of reeds and other little personals. With these adjuncts he is in court costume, dressed to the utmost of his wardrobe. But to make up for his paucity of clothing he has his buckler of ox-skin, his