The passage to which I allude occurs in that part of her journal which delineates his character and his personal appearance. She describes him as “not having crossed the frontiers of his native country for years past”⁠—as “anxious to know if any Italian gentlemen were settled in the nearest town to Blackwater Park”⁠—as “receiving letters with all sorts of odd stamps on them, and one with a large official-looking seal on it.” She is inclined to consider that his long absence from his native country may be accounted for by assuming that he is a political exile. But she is, on the other hand, unable to reconcile this idea with the reception of the letter from abroad bearing “the large official-looking seal”⁠—letters from the Continent addressed to political exiles being usually the last to court attention from foreign post-offices in that way.

The considerations thus presented to me in the diary, joined to certain surmises of my own that grew out of them, suggested a conclusion which I wondered I had not arrived at before. I now said to myself⁠—what Laura had once said to Marian at Blackwater Park, what Madame Fosco had overheard by listening at the door⁠—the Count is a spy!