Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the long evening.  It was necessary in common politeness to ask Madame Fosco to join us, but this time she had apparently received her orders beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her.  “The Count will probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes,” she remarked by way of apology, “and nobody can make them to his satisfaction but myself.”  Her cold blue eyes almost warmed as she spoke the words—­she looked actually proud of being the officiating medium through which her lord and master composed himself with tobacco-smoke!

Laura and I went out together alone.

It was a misty, heavy evening.  There was a sense of blight in the air; the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was parched and dewless.  The western heaven, as we saw it over the quiet trees, was of a pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting faintly in a haze.  Coming rain seemed near—­it would fall probably with the fall of night.

“Which way shall we go?” I asked

“Towards the lake, Marian, if you like,” she answered.

“You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake.”

“No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it.  The sand and heath and the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in all this large place, to remind me of Limmeridge.  But we will walk in some other direction if you prefer it.”

“I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love.  One is the same as another to me.  Let us go to the lake—­we may find it cooler in the open space than we find it here.”

We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence.  The heaviness in the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boat-house we were glad to sit down and rest inside.

A white fog hung low over the lake.  The dense brown line of the trees on the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest floating in the sky.  The sandy ground, shelving downward from where we sat, was lost mysteriously in the outward layers of the fog.  The silence was horrible.  No rustling of the leaves—­no bird’s note in the wood—­no cry of water-fowl from the pools of the hidden lake.  Even the croaking of the frogs had ceased to-night.

“It is very desolate and gloomy,” said Laura.  “But we can be more alone here than anywhere else.”

She spoke quietly and looked at the wilderness of sand and mist with steady, thoughtful eyes.  I could see that her mind was too much occupied to feel the dreary impressions from without which had fastened themselves already on mine.

“I promised, Marian, to tell you the truth about my married life, instead of leaving you any longer to guess it for yourself,” she began.  “That secret is the first I have ever had from you, love, and I am determined it shall be the last.  I was silent, as you know, for your sake—­and perhaps a little for my own sake as well.  It is very hard for a woman to confess that the man to whom she has given her whole life is the man of all others who cares least for the gift.  If you were married yourself, Marian—­and especially if you were happily married—­you would feel for me as no single woman can feel, however kind and true she may be.”