“Allow me to present myself, Mr. Fairlie,” he said. “I come from Blackwater Park, and I have the honour and the happiness of being Madame Fosco’s husband. Let me take my first and last advantage of that circumstance by entreating you not to make a stranger of me. I beg you will not disturb yourself—I beg you will not move.”
“You are very good,” I replied. “I wish I was strong enough to get up. Charmed to see you at Limmeridge. Please take a chair.”
“I am afraid you are suffering today,” said the Count.
“As usual,” I said. “I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed up to look like a man.”
“I have studied many subjects in my time,” remarked this sympathetic person. “Among others the inexhaustible subject of nerves. May I make a suggestion, at once the simplest and the most profound? Will you let me alter the light in your room?”
“Certainly—if you will be so very kind as not to let any of it in on me.”
He walked to the window. Such a contrast to dear Marian! so extremely considerate in all his movements!
“Light,” he said, in that delightfully confidential tone which is so soothing to an invalid, “is the first essential. Light stimulates, nourishes, preserves. You can no more do without it, Mr. Fairlie, than if you were a