"To live under the same roof, and yet—"
"My dear sir, during the negotiations which followed on the Countess's refusal to—to well, to meet my wishes, I represented that to her with all the emphasis at my command. I am bound to add that she represented it no less urgently to me."
"On the other hand, of course, the scandal—" Dieppe began.
"We Fieramondi do not much mind scandal. That was n't the difficulty. The fact is that I thought it the Countess's plain duty to relieve me of her presence. She took what I may call the exactly converse view. You follow me?"
"Perfectly," said Dieppe, repressing an inclination to smile.
"And declared that nothing—nothing on earth—should induce her to quit the Castle even for a day; she would regard such an act as a surrender. I said I should regard my own departure in the same light. So we stay here under the extremely inconvenient arrangement I have referred to. To make sure of my noticing her presence, my wife indulges in something approaching to an illumination every night."
The Count rose and began to walk up and down as he went on with a marked access of warmth. "But even the understanding we arrived at," he pursued, "I regret to say that my wife did n't see fit to adhere to in good faith. She treated it with what I must call levity." He faced round on his guest suddenly. "I mentioned a cat to you," he said.
"You did," Dieppe admitted, eyeing him rather apprehensively.
"I don't know," pursued the Count, "whether you noticed a door in your room?" Dieppe nodded. "It was bolted?" Dieppe nodded again. "If you had opened that door—pardon the supposition—you would have seen a passage. At the other end is another door, leading to the Countess's apartments. See, I will show you. This fork is the door from your room, this knife is—"
"I follow your description perfectly," interposed Dieppe, assailed now with a keener sense of guilt.