This, to my mind, looks ill for the Count. Laura has preserved, far more perfectly than most people do in later life, the child’s subtle faculty of knowing a friend by instinct, and if I am right in assuming that her first impression of Count Fosco has not been favourable, I for one am in some danger of doubting and distrusting that illustrious foreigner before I have so much as set eyes on him. But, patience, patience⁠—this uncertainty, and many uncertainties more, cannot last much longer. Tomorrow will see all my doubts in a fair way of being cleared up, sooner or later.

Twelve o’clock has struck, and I have just come back to close these pages, after looking out at my open window.