The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

and forwards on the grass, sunning himself in the full blaze of the hot June afternoon. He had a broad straw hat on, with a violet-coloured ribbon round it. A blue blouse, with profuse white fancywork over the bosom, covered his prodigious body, and was girt about the place where his waist might once have been with a broad scarlet leather belt. Nankeen trousers, displaying more white fancywork over the ankles, and purple morocco slippers, adorned his lower extremities. He was singing Figaro’s famous song in the Barber of Seville , with that crisply fluent vocalisation which is never heard from any other than an Italian throat, accompanying himself on the concertina, which he played with ecstatic throwings-up of his arms, and graceful twistings and turnings of his head, like a fat St. Cecilia masquerading in male attire. “ Figaro qua! Figaro la! Figaro su! Figaro giu! ” sang the Count, jauntily tossing up the concertina at arm’s length, and bowing to us, on one side of the instrument, with the airy grace and elegance of Figaro himself at twenty years of age. “Take my word for it, Laura, that man knows something of Sir Percival’s embarrassments,” I said, as we returned the Count’s salutation from a safe distance. “What makes you think that?” she asked. “How should he have known, otherwise, that Mr. Merriman was Sir Percival’s solicitor?” I rejoined. “Besides, when I followed you out of the luncheon-room, he told me, without a single word of inquiry on my part, that something had happened. Depend upon it, he knows more than we do.”