Percival in sending me to Torquay, he assisted under a delusion, for which, as a foreigner and a stranger, he was not to blame.  If he was concerned in bringing Mrs. Rubelle to Blackwater Park, it was his misfortune and not his fault, when that foreign person was base enough to assist a deception planned and carried out by the master of the house.  I protest, in the interests of morality, against blame being gratuitously and wantonly attached to the proceedings of the Count.

In the second place, I desire to express my regret at my own inability to remember the precise day on which Lady Glyde left Blackwater Park for London.  I am told that it is of the last importance to ascertain the exact date of that lamentable journey, and I have anxiously taxed my memory to recall it.  The effort has been in vain.  I can only remember now that it was towards the latter part of July.  We all know the difficulty, after a lapse of time, of fixing precisely on a past date unless it has been previously written down.  That difficulty is greatly increased in my case by the alarming and confusing events which took place about the period of Lady Glyde’s departure.  I heartily wish I had made a memorandum at the time.  I heartily wish my memory of the date was as vivid as my memory of that poor lady’s face, when it looked at me sorrowfully for the last time from the carriage window.

THE STORY CONTINUED IN SEVERAL NARRATIVES

1.  The narrative of Hester Pinhorn, cook in the service of count Fosco

[Taken down from her own statement]

I am sorry to say that I have never learnt to read or write.  I have been a hard-working woman all my life, and have kept a good character.  I know that it is a sin and wickedness to say the thing which is not, and I will truly beware of doing so on this occasion.  All that I know I will tell, and I humbly beg the gentleman who takes this down to put my language right as he goes on, and to make allowances for my being no scholar.

In this last summer I happened to be out of place (through no fault of my own), and I heard of a situation as plain cook, at Number Five, Forest Road, St. John’s Wood.  I took the place on trial.  My master’s name was Fosco.  My mistress was an English lady.  He was Count and she was Countess.  There was a girl to do housemaid’s work when I got there.  She was not over-clean or tidy, but there was no harm in her.  I and she were the only servants in the house.

Our master and mistress came after we got in; and as soon as they did come we were told, downstairs, that company was expected from the country.