Her last proceeding was to put on the quiet gray cloak which she had

brought from Birmingham, and which had been padded inside by Captain

Wragge’s own experienced hands, so as to hide the youthful grace and

beauty of her back and shoulders. Her costume being now complete, she

practiced the walk which had been originally taught her as appropriate

to the character—a walk with a slight limp—and, returning to the glass

after a minute’s trial, exercised herself next in the disguise of her

voice and manner. This was the only part of the character in which it

had been possible, with her physical peculiarities, to produce an

imitation of Miss Garth; and here the resemblance was perfect. The

harsh voice, the blunt manner, the habit of accompanying certain

phrases by an emphatic nod of the head, the Northumbrian _burr_

expressing itself in every word which contained the letter “r”—all

these personal peculiarities of the old North-country governess were

reproduced to the life. The personal transformation thus completed was

literally what Captain Wragge had described it to be—a triumph in the

art of self-disguise. Excepting the one case of seeing her face close,

with a strong light on it, nobody who now looked at Magdalen could have

suspected for an instant that she was other than an ailing, ill-made,

unattractive woman of fifty years old at least.

Before unlocking the door, she looked about her carefully, to make sure

that none of her stage materials were exposed to view in case the

landlady entered the room in her absence. The only forgotten object

belonging to her that she discovered was a little packet of Norah’s

letters which she had been reading overnight, and which had been

accidentally pushed under the looking-glass while she was engaged in

dressing herself. As she took up the letters to put them away, the

thought struck her for the first time, “Would Norah know me now if we

met each other in the street?” She looked in the glass, and smiled

sadly. “No,” she said, “not even Norah.”

She unlocked the door, after first looking at her watch. It was close

on twelve o’clock. There was barely an hour left to try her desperate

experiment, and to return to the lodging before the landlady’s children

came back from school.

An instant’s listening on the landing assured her that all was quiet in

the passage below. She noiselessly descended the stairs and gained the

street without having met any living creature on her way out of the

house. In another minute she had crossed the road, and had knocked at

Noel Vanstone’s door.

The door was opened by the same woman-servant whom she had followed on

the previous evening to the stationer’s shop. With a momentary tremor,

which recalled the memorable first night of her appearance in public,

Magdalen inquired (in Miss Garth’s voice, and with Miss Garth’s manner)

for Mrs. Lecount.

“Mrs. Lecount has gone out, ma’am,” said the servant.

“Is Mr. Vanstone at home?” asked Magdalen, her resolution asserting

itself at once against the first obstacle that opposed it.

“My master is not up yet, ma’am.”

Another check! A weaker nature would have accepted the warning.

Magdalen’s nature rose in revolt against it.

“What time will Mrs. Lecount be back?” she asked.

“About one o’clock, ma’am.”

“Say, if you please, that I will call again as soon after one o’clock

as possible. I particularly wish to see Mrs. Lecount. My name is Miss

Garth.”

She turned and left the house. Going back to her own room was out of

the question. The servant (as Magdalen knew by not hearing the door

close) was looking after her; and, moreover, she would expose herself,

if she went indoors, to the risk of going out again exactly at the time

when the landlady’s children were sure to be about the house. She

turned mechanically to the right, walked on until she recalled Vauxhall

Bridge, and waited there, looking out over the river.

The interval of unemployed time now before her was nearly an hour. How

should she occupy it?

As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck her

when she put away the packet of Norah’s letters rose in her mind once

more. A sudden impulse to test the miserable completeness of her

disguise mixed with the higher and purer feeling at her heart, and

strengthened her natural longing to see her sister’s face again, though

she dare not discover herself and speak. Norah’s later letters had

described, in the fullest details, her life as a governess—her hours

for teaching, her hours of leisure, her hours for walking out with her

pupils. There was just time, if she could find a vehicle at once, for

Magdalen to drive to the house of Norah’s employer, with the chance of

getting there a few minutes before the hour when her sister would be

going out. “One look at her will tell me more than a hundred letters!”

With that thought in her heart, with the one object of following Norah

on her daily walk, under protection of the disguise, Magdalen hastened

over the bridge, and made for the northern bank of the river.

So, at the turning-point of her life—so, in the interval before she

took the irrevocable step, and passed the threshold of Noel Vanstone’s

door—the forces of Good triumphing in the strife for her over the

forces of Evil, turned her back on the scene of her meditated

deception, and hurried her mercifully further and further away from the

fatal house.

She stopped the first empty cab that passed her; told the driver to go

to New Street, Spring Gardens; and promised to double his fare if he

reached his destination by a given time. The man earned the money—more

than earned it, as the event proved. Magdalen had not taken ten steps

in advance along New Street, walking toward St. James’s Park, before

the door of a house beyond her opened, and a lady in mourning came out,

accompanied by two little girls. The lady also took the direction of

the Park, without turning her head toward Magdalen as she descended the

house step. It mattered little; Magdalen’s heart looked through her

eyes, and told her that she saw Norah.

She followed them into St. James’s Park, and thence (along the Mall)

into the Green Park, venturing closer and closer as they reached the

grass and ascended the rising ground in the direction of Hyde Park

Corner. Her eager eyes devoured every detail in Norah’s dress, and

detected the slightest change that had taken place in her figure and

her bearing. She had become thinner since the autumn—her head drooped a

little; she walked wearily. Her mourning dress, worn with the modest

grace and neatness which no misfortune could take from her, was suited

to her altered station; her black gown was made of stuff; her black

shawl and bonnet were of the plainest and cheapest kind. The two little

girls, walking on either side of her, were dressed in silk. Magdalen

instinctively hated them.

She made a wide circuit on the grass, so as to turn gradually and meet

her sister without exciting suspicion that the meeting was contrived.

Her heart beat fast; a burning heat glowed in her as she thought of her

false hair, her false color, her false dress, and saw the dear familiar

face coming nearer and nearer. They passed each other close. Norah’s

dark gentle eyes looked up, with a deeper light in them, with a sadder

beauty than of old—rested, all unconscious of the truth, on her

sister’s face—and looked away from it again as from the face of a

stranger. That glance of an instant struck Magdalen to the heart. She

stood rooted to the ground after Norah had passed by. A horror of the

vile disguise that concealed her; a yearning to burst its trammels and

hide her shameful painted face on Norah’s bosom, took possession of

her, body and soul. She turned and looked back.

Norah and the two children had reached the higher ground, and were

close to one of the gates in the iron railing which fenced the Park

from the street. Drawn by an irresistible fascination, Magdalen

followed them again, gained on them as they reached the gate, and heard

the voices of the two children raised in angry dispute which way they

wanted to walk next. She saw Norah take them through the gate, and then

stoop and speak to them, while waiting for an opportunity to cross the

road. They only grew the louder and the angrier for what she said. The

youngest—a girl of eight or nine years old—flew into a child’s vehement

passion, cried, screamed, and even kicked at the governess. The people

in the street stopped and laughed; some of them jestingly advised a

little wholesome correction; one woman asked Norah if she was the

child’s mother; another pitied her audibly for being the child’s

governess. Before Magdalen could push her way through the crowd—before

her all-mastering anxiety to help her sister had blinded her to every

other consideration, and had brought her, self-betrayed, to Norah’s

side—an open carriage passed the pavement slowly, hindered in its

progress by the press of vehicles before it. An old lady seated inside

heard the child’s cries, recognized Norah, and called to her

immediately. The footman parted the crowd, and the children were put

into the carriage. “It’s lucky I happened to pass this way,” said the

old lady, beckoning contemptuously to Norah to take her place on the

front seat; “you never could manage my daughter’s children, and you

never will.” The footman put up the steps, the carriage drove on with

the children and the governess, the crowd dispersed, and Magdalen was

alone again.

“So be it!” she thought, bitterly. “I should only have distressed her.

We should only have had the misery of parting to suffer again.”

She mechanically retraced her steps; she returned, as in a dream, to

the open space of the Park. Arming itself treacherously with the

strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the

indignation that she felt for her sister’s sake, the terrible

temptation of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever.

Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce

despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and

horrible. Norah made an object of public curiosity and amusement; Norah

reprimanded in the open street; Norah, the hired victim of an old

woman’s insolence and a child’s ill-temper, and the same man to thank

for it who had sent Frank to China!—and that man’s son to thank after

him! The thought of her sister, which had turned her from the scene of

her meditated deception, which had made the consciousness of her own

disguise hateful to her, was now the thought which sanctioned that

means, or any means, to compass her end; the thought which set wings to

her feet, and hurried her back nearer and nearer to the fatal house.

She left the Park again, and found herself in the streets without

knowing where. Once more she hailed the first cab that passed her, and

told the man to drive to Vauxhall Walk.

The change from walking to riding quieted her. She felt her attention

returning to herself and her dress. The necessity of making sure that

no accident had happened to her disguise in the interval since she had

left her own room impressed itself immediately on her mind. She stopped

the driver at the first pastry-cook’s shop which he passed, and there

obtained the means of consulting a looking-glass before she ventured

back to Vauxhall Walk.

Her gray head-dress was disordered, and the old-fashioned bonnet was a

little on one side. Nothing else had suffered. She set right the few

defects in her costume, and returned to the cab. It was half-past one

when she approached the house and knocked, for the second time, at Noel

Vanstone’s door. The woman-servant opened it as before.

“Has Mrs. Lecount come back?”

“Yes, ma’am. Step this way, if you please.”

The servant preceded Magdalen along an empty passage, and, leading her

past an uncarpeted staircase, opened the door of a room at the back of

the house. The room was lighted by one window looking out on a yard;

the walls were bare; the boarded floor was uncovered. Two bedroom

chairs stood against the wall, and a kitchen-table was placed under the

window. On the table stood a glass tank filled with water, and

ornamented in the middle by a miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced

with weeds. Snails clung to the sides of the tank; tadpoles and tiny

fish swam swiftly in the green water, slippery efts and slimy frogs

twined their noiseless way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on

top of the pyramid there sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the

stone, motionless as the stone, a little bright-eyed toad. The art of

keeping fish and reptiles as domestic pets had not at that time been

popularized in England; and Magdalen, on entering the room, started

back, in irrepressible astonishment and disgust, from the first

specimen of an Aquarium that she had ever seen.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said a woman’s voice behind her. “My pets hurt

nobody.”

Magdalen turned, and confronted Mrs. Lecount. She had expected—founding

her anticipations on the letter which the housekeeper had written to

her—to see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent old woman. She found

herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose

dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity,

whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical

resistance to the deteriorating influence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had

struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted

herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man in a

thousand, or one woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to

believe her. Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more. It

was plainly parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with

mourning ribbons. Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white forehead,

or her plump white cheeks. Her double chin was dimpled, and her teeth

were marvels of whiteness and regularity. Her lips might have been

critically considered as too thin, if they had not been accustomed to

make the best of their defects by means of a pleading and persuasive

smile. Her large black eyes might have looked fierce if they had been

set in the face of another woman, they were mild and melting in the

face of Mrs. Lecount; they were tenderly interested in everything she

looked at—in Magdalen, in the toad on the rock-work, in the back-yard

view from the window; in her own plump fair hands,—which she rubbed

softly one over the other while she spoke; in her own pretty cambric

chemisette, which she had a habit of looking at complacently while she

listened to others. The elegant black gown in which she mourned the

memory of Michael Vanstone was not a mere dress—it was a well-made

compliment paid to Death. Her innocent white muslin apron was a little

domestic poem in itself. Her jet earrings were so modest in their

pretensions that a Quaker might have looked at them and committed no

sin. The comely plumpness of her face was matched by the comely

plumpness of her figure; it glided smoothly over the ground; it flowed

in sedate undulations when she walked. There are not many men who could

have observed Mrs. Lecount entirely from the Platonic point of

view—lads in their teens would have found her irresistible—women only

could have hardened their hearts against her, and mercilessly forced

their way inward through that fair and smiling surface. Magdalen’s

first glance at this Venus of the autumn period of female life more

than satisfied her that she had done well to feel her ground in

disguise before she ventured on matching herself against Mrs. Lecount.

“Have I the pleasure of addressing the lady who called this morning?”

inquired the housekeeper. “Am I speaking to Miss Garth?”

Something in the expression of her eyes, as she asked that question,

warned Magdalen to turn her face further inward from the window than

she had turned it yet. The bare doubt whether the housekeeper might not

have seen her already under too strong a light shook her

self-possession for the moment. She gave herself time to recover it,

and merely answered by a bow.

“Accept my excuses, ma’am, for the place in which I am compelled to

receive you,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount in fluent English, spoken with a

foreign accent. “Mr. Vanstone is only here for a temporary purpose. We

leave for the sea-side to-morrow afternoon, and it has not been thought

worth while to set the house in proper order. Will you take a seat, and

oblige me by mentioning the object of your visit?”

She glided imperceptibly a step or two nearer to Magdalen, and placed a

chair for her exactly opposite the light from the window. “Pray sit

down,” said Mrs. Lecount, looking with the tenderest interest at the

visitor’s inflamed eyes through the visitor’s net veil.

“I am suffering, as you see, from a complaint in the eyes,” replied

Magdalen, steadily keeping her profile toward the window, and carefully

pitching her voice to the tone of Miss Garth’s. “I must beg your

permission to wear my veil down, and to sit away from the light.” She

said those words, feeling mistress of herself again. With perfect

composure she drew the chair back into the corner of the room beyond

the window and seated herself, keeping the shadow of her bonnet well

over her face. Mrs. Lecount’s persuasive lips murmured a polite

expression of sympathy; Mrs. Lecount’s amiable black eyes looked more

interested in the strange lady than ever. She placed a chair for

herself exactly on a line with Magdalen’s, and sat so close to the wall

as to force her visitor either to turn her head a little further round

toward the window, or to fail in politeness by not looking at the

person whom she addressed. “Yes,” said Mrs. Lecount, with a

confidential little cough. “And to what circumstances am I indebted for

the honor of this visit?”

“May I inquire, first, if my name happens to be familiar to you?” said

Magdalen, turning toward her as a matter of necessity, but coolly

holding up her handkerchief at the same time between her face and the

light.

“No,” answered Mrs. Lecount, with another little cough, rather harsher

than the first. “The name of Miss Garth is not familiar to me.”

“In that case,” pursued Magdalen, “I shall best explain the object that

causes me to intrude on you by mentioning who I am. I lived for many

years as governess in the family of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone, of

Combe-Raven, and I come here in the interest of his orphan daughters.”

Mrs. Lecount’s hands, which had been smoothly sliding one over the

other up to this time, suddenly stopped; and Mrs. Lecount’s lips,

self-forgetfully shutting up, owned they were too thin at the very

outset of the interview.

“I am surprised you can bear the light out-of-doors without a green

shade,” she quietly remarked; leaving the false Miss Garth’s

announcement of herself as completely unnoticed as it she had not

spoken at all.

“I find a shade over my eyes keeps them too hot at this time of the

year,” rejoined Magdalen, steadily matching the housekeeper’s

composure. “May I ask whether you heard what I said just now on the

subject of my errand in this house?”

“May I inquire on my side, ma’am, in what way that errand can possibly

concern _me?_” retorted Mrs. Lecount.

“Certainly,” said Magdalen. “I come to you because Mr. Noel Vanstone’s

intentions toward the two young ladies were made known to them in the

form of a letter from yourself.”

That plain answer had its effect. It warned Mrs. Lecount that the

strange lady was better informed than she had at first suspected, and

that it might hardly be wise, under the circumstances, to dismiss her

unheard.

“Pray pardon me,” said the housekeeper, “I scarcely understood before;

I perfectly understand now. You are mistaken, ma’am, in supposing that

I am of any importance, or that I exercise any influence in this

painful matter. I am the mouth-piece of Mr. Noel Vanstone; the pen he

holds, if you will excuse the expression—nothing more. He is an

invalid, and like other invalids, he has his bad days and his good. It

was his bad day when that answer was written to the young person—shall

I call her Miss Vanstone? I will, with pleasure, poor girl; for who am

I to make distinctions, and what is it to me whether her parents were

married or not? As I was saying, it was one of Mr. Noel Vanstone’s bad

days when that answer was sent, and therefore I had to write it; simply

as his secretary, for want of a better. If you wish to speak on the

subject of these young ladies—shall I call them young ladies, as you

did just now? no, poor things, I will call them the Misses Vanstone.—If

you wish to speak on the subject of these Misses Vanstone, I will

mention your name, and your object in favoring me with this call, to

Mr. Noel Vanstone. He is alone in the parlor, and this is one of his

good days. I have the influence of an old servant over him, and I will

use that influence with pleasure in your behalf. Shall I go at once?”

asked Mrs. Lecount, rising, with the friendliest anxiety to make

herself useful.

“If you please,” replied Magdalen; “and if I am not taking any undue

advantage of your kindness.”

“On the contrary,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “you are laying me under an

obligation—you are permitting me, in my very limited way, to assist the

performance of a benevolent action.” She bowed, smiled, and glided out

of the room.

Left by herself, Magdalen allowed the anger which she had suppressed in

Mrs. Lecount’s presence to break free from her. For want of a nobler

object to attack, it took the direction of the toad. The sight of the

hideous little reptile sitting placid on his rock throne, with his

bright eyes staring impenetrably into vacancy, irritated every nerve in

her body. She looked at the creature with a shrinking intensity of

hatred; she whispered at it maliciously through her set teeth. “I

wonder whose blood runs coldest,” she said, “yours, you little monster,

or Mrs. Lecount’s? I wonder which is the slimiest, her heart or your

back? You hateful wretch, do you know what your mistress is? Your

mistress is a devil!”

The speckled skin under the toad’s mouth mysteriously wrinkled itself,

then slowly expanded again, as if he had swallowed the words just

addressed to him. Magdalen started back in disgust from the first

perceptible movement in the creature’s body, trifling as it was, and

returned to her chair. She had not seated herself again a moment too

soon. The door opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Lecount appeared once more.

“Mr. Vanstone will see you,” she said, “if you will kindly wait a few

minutes. He will ring the parlor bell when his present occupation is at

an end, and he is ready to receive you. Be careful, ma’am, not to

depress his spirits, nor to agitate him in any way. His heart has been

a cause of serious anxiety to those about him, from his earliest years.

There is no positive disease; there is only a chronic feebleness—a

fatty degeneration—a want of vital power in the organ itself. His heart

will go on well enough if you don’t give his heart too much to do—that

is the advice of all the medical men who have seen him. You will not

forget it, and you will keep a guard over your conversation

accordingly. Talking of medical men, have you ever tried the Golden

Ointment for that sad affliction in your eyes? It has been described to

me as an excellent remedy.”

“It has not succeeded in my case,” replied Magdalen, sharply. “Before I

see Mr. Noel Vanstone,” she continued, “may I inquire—”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Mrs. Lecount. “Does your question refer

in any way to those two poor girls?”

“It refers to the Misses Vanstone.”

“Then I can’t enter into it. Excuse me, I really can’t discuss these

poor girls (I am so glad to hear you call them the Misses Vanstone!)

except in my master’s presence, and by my master’s express permission.

Let us talk of something else while we are waiting here. Will you

notice my glass Tank? I have every reason to believe that it is a

perfect novelty in England.”

“I looked at the tank while you were out of the room,” said Magdalen.

“Did you? You take no interest in the subject, I dare say? Quite

natural. I took no interest either until I was married. My dear

husband—dead many years since—formed my tastes and elevated me to

himself. You have heard of the late Professor Lecomte, the eminent

Swiss naturalist? I am his widow. The English circle at Zurich (where I

lived in my late master’s service) Anglicized my name to Lecount. Your

generous country people will have nothing foreign about them—not even a

name, if they can help it. But I was speaking of my husband—my dear

husband, who permitted me to assist him in his pursuits. I have had

only one interest since his death—an interest in science. Eminent in

many things, the professor was great at reptiles. He left me his

Subjects and his Tank. I had no other legacy. There is the Tank. All

the Subjects died but this quiet little fellow—this nice little toad.

Are you surprised at my liking him? There is nothing to be surprised

at. The professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common

prejudice against the reptile creation. Properly understood, the

reptile creation is beautiful. Properly dissected, the reptile creation

is instructive in the last degree.” She stretched out her little

finger, and gently stroked the toad’s back with the tip of it. “So

refreshing to the touch,” said Mrs. Lecount—“so nice and cool this

summer weather!”

The bell from the parlor rang. Mrs. Lecount rose, bent fondly over the

Aquarium, and chirruped to the toad at parting as if it had been a

bird. “Mr. Vanstone is ready to receive you. Follow me, if you please,

Miss Garth.” With these words she opened the door, and led the way out

of the room.

CHAPTER III.

“Miss Garth, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, opening the parlor door, and

announcing the visitor’s appearance with the tone and manner of a

well-bred servant.

Magdalen found herself in a long, narrow room, consisting of a back

parlor and a front parlor, which had been thrown into one by opening

the folding-doors between them. Seated not far from the front window,

with his back to the light, she saw a frail, flaxen-haired,

self-satisfied little man, clothed in a fair white dressing-gown many

sizes too large for him, with a nosegay of violets drawn neatly through

the button-hole over his breast. He looked from thirty to

five-and-thirty years old. His complexion was as delicate as a young

girl’s, his eyes were of the lightest blue, his upper lip was adorned

by a weak little white mustache, waxed and twisted at either end into a

thin spiral curl. When any object specially attracted his attention he

half closed his eyelids to look at it. When he smiled, the skin at his

temples crumpled itself up into a nest of wicked little wrinkles. He

had a plate of strawberries on his lap, with a napkin under them to

preserve the purity of his white dressing-gown. At his right hand stood

a large round table, covered with a collection of foreign curiosities,

which seemed to have been brought together from the four quarters of

the globe. Stuffed birds from Africa, porcelain monsters from China,

silver ornaments and utensils from India and Peru, mosaic work from

Italy, and bronzes from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with

the coarse deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them

for traveling. The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simpering

conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his

delicate health; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his

attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor’s disposal.

Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. Lecount had

not deceived her. Was this the man who mercilessly followed the path on

which his merciless father had walked before him? She could hardly

believe it. “Take a seat, Miss Garth,” he repeated, observing her

hesitation, and announcing his own name in a high, thin,

fretfully-consequential voice: “I am Mr. Noel Vanstone. You wished to

see me—here I am!”

“May I be permitted to retire, sir?” inquired Mrs. Lecount.

“Certainly not!” replied her master. “Stay here, Lecount, and keep us

company. Mrs. Lecount has my fullest confidence,” he continued,

addressing Magdalen. “Whatever you say to me, ma’am, you say to her.

She is a domestic treasure. There is not another house in England has

such a treasure as Mrs. Lecount.”

The housekeeper listened to the praise of her domestic virtues with

eyes immovably fixed on her elegant chemisette. But Magdalen’s quick

penetration had previously detected a look that passed between Mrs.

Lecount and her master, which suggested that Noel Vanstone had been

instructed beforehand what to say and do in his visitor’s presence. The

suspicion of this, and the obstacles which the room presented to

arranging her position in it so as to keep her face from the light,

warned Magdalen to be on her guard.

She had taken her chair at first nearly midway in the room. An

instant’s after-reflection induced her to move her seat toward the left

hand, so as to place herself just inside, and close against, the left

post of the folding-door. In this position she dexterously barred the

only passage by which Mrs. Lecount could have skirted round the large

table and contrived to front Magdalen by taking a chair at her master’s

side. On the right hand of the table the empty space was well occupied

by the fireplace and fender, by some traveling-trunks, and a large

packing-case. There was no alternative left for Mrs. Lecount but to

place herself on a line with Magdalen against the opposite post of the

folding-door, or to push rudely past the visitor with the obvious

intention of getting in front of her. With an expressive little cough,

and with one steady look at her master, the housekeeper conceded the

point, and took her seat against the right-hand door-post. “Wait a

little,” thought Mrs. Lecount; “my turn next!”

“Mind what you are about, ma’am!” cried Noel Vanstone, as Magdalen

accidentally approached the table in moving her chair. “Mind the sleeve

of your cloak! Excuse me, you nearly knocked down that silver

candlestick. Pray don’t suppose it’s a common candlestick. It’s nothing

of the sort—it’s a Peruvian candlestick. There are only three of that

pattern in the world. One is in the possession of the President of

Peru; one is locked up in the Vatican; and one is on My table. It cost

ten pounds; it’s worth fifty. One of my father’s bargains, ma’am. All

these things are my father’s bargains. There is not another house in

England which has such curiosities as these. Sit down, Lecount; I beg

you will make yourself comfortable. Mrs. Lecount is like the

curiosities, Miss Garth—she is one of my father’s bargains. You are one

of my father’s bargains, are you not, Lecount? My father was a

remarkable man, ma’am. You will be reminded of him here at every turn.

I have got his dressing-gown on at this moment. No such linen as this

is made now—you can’t get it for love or money. Would you like to feel

the texture? Perhaps you’re no judge of texture? Perhaps you would

prefer talking to me about these two pupils of yours? They are two, are

they not? Are they fine girls? Plump, fresh, full-blown English

beauties?”

“Excuse me, sir,” interposed Mrs. Lecount, sorrowfully. “I must really

beg permission to retire if you speak of the poor things in that way. I

can’t sit by, sir, and hear them turned into ridicule. Consider their

position; consider Miss Garth.”

“You good creature!” said Noel Vanstone, surveying the housekeeper

through his half-closed eyelids. “You excellent Lecount! I assure you,

ma’am, Mrs. Lecount is a worthy creature. You will observe that she

pities the two girls. I don’t go so far as that myself, but I can make

allowances for them. I am a large-minded man. I can make allowances for

them and for you.” He smiled with the most cordial politeness, and

helped himself to a strawberry from the dish on his lap.

“You shock Miss Garth; indeed, sir, without meaning it, you shock Miss

Garth,” remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. “She is not accustomed to you as I

am. Consider Miss Garth, sir. As a favor to _me_, consider Miss Garth.”

Thus far Magdalen had resolutely kept silence. The burning anger, which

would have betrayed her in an instant if she had let it flash its way

to the surface, throbbed fast and fiercely at her heart, and warned

her, while Noel Vanstone was speaking, to close her lips. She would

have allowed him to talk on uninterruptedly for some minutes more if

Mrs. Lecount had not interfered for the second time. The refined

insolence of the housekeeper’s pity was a woman’s insolence; and it

stung her into instantly controlling herself. She had never more

admirably imitated Miss Garth’s voice and manner than when she spoke

her next words.

“You are very good,” she said to Mrs. Lecount. “I make no claim to be

treated with any extraordinary consideration. I am a governess, and I

don’t expect it. I have only one favor to ask. I beg Mr. Noel Vanstone,

for his own sake, to hear what I have to say to him.”

“You understand, sir?” observed Mrs. Lecount. “It appears that Miss

Garth has some serious warning to give you. She says you are to hear

her, for your own sake.”

Mr. Noel Vanstone’s fair complexion suddenly turned white. He put away

the plate of strawberries among his father’s bargains. His hand shook

and his little figure twisted itself uneasily in the chair. Magdalen

observed him attentively. “One discovery already,” she thought; “he is

a coward!”

“What do you mean, ma’am?” asked Noel Vanstone, with visible

trepidation of look and manner. “What do you mean by telling me I must

listen to you for my own sake? If you come her to intimidate me, you

come to the wrong man. My strength of character was universally noticed

in our circle at Zurich—wasn’t it, Lecount?”

“Universally, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “But let us hear Miss Garth.

Perhaps I have misinterpreted her meaning.”

“On the contrary,” replied Magdalen, “you have exactly expressed my

meaning. My object in coming here is to warn Mr. Noel Vanstone against

the course which he is now taking.”

“Don’t!” pleaded Mrs. Lecount. “Oh, if you want to help these poor

girls, don’t talk in that way! Soften his resolution, ma’am, by

entreaties; don’t strengthen it by threats!” She a little overstrained

the tone of humility in which she spoke those words—a little overacted

the look of apprehension which accompanied them. If Magdalen had not

seen plainly enough already that it was Mrs. Lecount’s habitual

practice to decide everything for her master in the first instance, and

then to persuade him that he was not acting under his housekeeper’s

resolution but under his own, she would have seen it now.

“You hear what Lecount has just said?” remarked Noel Vanstone. “You

hear the unsolicited testimony of a person who has known me from

childhood? Take care, Miss Garth—take care!” He complacently arranged

the tails of his white dressing-gown over his knees and took the plate

of strawberries back on his lap.

“I have no wish to offend you,” said Magdalen. “I am only anxious to

open your eyes to the truth. You are not acquainted with the characters

of the two sisters whose fortunes have fallen into your possession. I

have known them from childhood; and I come to give you the benefit of

my experience in their interests and in yours. You have nothing to

dread from the elder of the two; she patiently accepts the hard lot

which you, and your father before you, have forced on her. The younger

sister’s conduct is the very opposite of this. She has already declined

to submit to your father’s decision, and she now refuses to be silenced

by Mrs. Lecount’s letter. Take my word for it, she is capable of giving

you serious trouble if you persist in making an enemy of her.”

Noel Vanstone changed color once more, and began to fidget again in his

chair. “Serious trouble,” he repeated, with a blank look. “If you mean

writing letters, ma’am, she has given trouble enough already. She has

written once to me, and twice to my father. One of the letters to my

father was a threatening letter—wasn’t it, Lecount?”

“She expressed her feelings, poor child,” said Mrs. Lecount. “I thought

it hard to send her back her letter, but your dear father knew best.

What I said at the time was, Why not let her express her feelings? What

are a few threatening words, after all? In her position, poor creature,

they are words, and nothing more.”

“I advise you not to be too sure of that,” said Magdalen. “I know her

better than you do.”

She paused at those words—paused in a momentary terror. The sting of

Mrs. Lecount’s pity had nearly irritated her into forgetting her

assumed character, and speaking in her own voice.

“You have referred to the letters written by my pupil,” she resumed,

addressing Noel Vanstone as soon as she felt sure of herself again. “We

will say nothing about what she has written to your father; we will

only speak of what she has written to you. Is there anything unbecoming

in her letter, anything said in it that is false? Is it not true that

these two sisters have been cruelly deprived of the provision which

their father made for them? His will to this day speaks for him and for

them; and it only speaks to no purpose, because he was not aware that

his marriage obliged him to make it again, and because he died before

he could remedy the error. Can you deny that?”

Noel Vanstone smiled, and helped himself to a strawberry. “I don’t

attempt to deny it,” he said. “Go on, Miss Garth.”

“Is it not true,” persisted Magdalen, “that the law which has taken the

money from these sisters, whose father made no second will, has now

given that very money to you, whose father made no will at all? Surely,

explain it how you may, this is hard on those orphan girls?”

“Very hard,” replied Noel Vanstone. “It strikes you in that light,

too—doesn’t it, Lecount?”

Mrs. Lecount shook her head, and closed her handsome black eyes.

“Harrowing,” she said; “I can characterize it, Miss Garth, by no other

word—harrowing. How the young person—no! how Miss Vanstone, the

younger—discovered that my late respected master made no will I am at a

loss to understand. Perhaps it was put in the papers? But I am

interrupting you, Miss Garth. Do have something more to say about your

pupil’s letter?” She noiselessly drew her chair forward, as she said

these words, a few inches beyond the line of the visitor’s chair. The

attempt was neatly made, but it proved useless. Magdalen only kept her

head more to the left, and the packing-case on the floor prevented Mrs.

Lecount from advancing any further.

“I have only one more question to put,” said Magdalen. “My pupil’s

letter addressed a proposal to Mr. Noel Vanstone. I beg him to inform

me why he has refused to consider it.”

“My good lady!” cried Noel Vanstone, arching his white eyebrows in

satirical astonishment. “Are you really in earnest? Do you know what

the proposal is? Have you seen the letter?”

“I am quite in earnest,” said Magdalen, “and I have seen the letter. It

entreats you to remember how Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s fortune has come

into your hands; it informs you that one-half of that fortune, divided

between his daughters, was what his will intended them to have; and it

asks of your sense of justice to do for his children what he would have

done for them himself if he had lived. In plainer words still, it asks

you to give one-half of the money to the daughters, and it leaves you

free to keep the other half yourself. That is the proposal. Why have

you refused to consider it?”

“For the simplest possible reason, Miss Garth,” said Noel Vanstone, in

high good-humor. “Allow me to remind you of a well-known proverb: A

fool and his money are soon parted. Whatever else I may be, ma’am, I’m

not a fool.”

“Don’t put it in that way, sir!” remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. “Be

serious—pray be serious!”

“Quite impossible, Lecount,” rejoined her master. “I can’t be serious.

My poor father, Miss Garth, took a high moral point of view in this

matter. Lecount, there, takes a high moral point of view—don’t you,

Lecount? I do nothing of the sort. I have lived too long in the

Continental atmosphere to trouble myself about moral points of view. My

course in this business is as plain as two and two make four. I have

got the money, and I should be a born idiot if I parted with it. There

is my point of view! Simple enough, isn’t it? I don’t stand on my

dignity; I don’t meet you with the law, which is all on my side; I

don’t blame your coming here, as a total stranger, to try and alter my

resolution; I don’t blame the two girls for wanting to dip their

fingers into my purse. All I say is, I am not fool enough to open it.

_Pas si bete_, as we used to say in the English circle at Zurich. You

understand French, Miss Garth? _Pas si bete!_” He set aside his plate

of strawberries once more, and daintily dried his fingers on his fine

white napkin.

Magdalen kept her temper. If she could have struck him dead by lifting

her hand at that moment, it is probable she would have lifted it. But

she kept her temper.

“Am I to understand,” she asked, “that the last words you have to say

in this matter are the words said for you in Mrs. Lecount’s letter!”

“Precisely so,” replied Noel Vanstone.

“You have inherited your own father’s fortune, as well as the fortune

of Mr. Andrew Vanstone, and yet you feel no obligation to act from

motives of justice or generosity toward these two sisters? All you

think it necessary to say to them is, you have got the money, and you

refuse to part with a single farthing of it?”

“Most accurately stated! Miss Garth, you are a woman of business.

Lecount, Miss Garth is a woman of business.”

“Don’t appeal to me, sir,” cried Mrs. Lecount, gracefully wringing her

plump white hands. “I can’t bear it! I must interfere! Let me

suggest—oh, what do you call it in English?—a compromise. Dear Mr.

Noel, you are perversely refusing to do yourself justice; you have

better reasons than the reason you have given to Miss Garth. You follow

your honored father’s example; you feel it due to his memory to act in

this matter as he acted before you. That is his reason, Miss Garth—— I

implore you on my knees to take that as his reason. He will do what his

dear father did; no more, no less. His dear father made a proposal, and

he himself will now make that proposal over again. Yes, Mr. Noel, you

will remember what this poor girl says in her letter to you. Her sister

has been obliged to go out as a governess; and she herself, in losing

her fortune, has lost the hope of her marriage for years and years to

come. You will remember this—and you will give the hundred pounds to

one, and the hundred pounds to the other, which your admirable father

offered in the past time? If he does this, Miss Garth, will he do

enough? If he gives a hundred pounds each to these unfortunate

sisters—?”

“He will repent the insult to the last hour of his life,” said

Magdalen.

The instant that answer passed her lips she would have given worlds to

recall it. Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting in the right place at

last. Those rash words of Magdalen’s had burst from her passionately,

in her own voice.

Nothing but the habit of public performance saved her from making the

serious error that she had committed more palpable still, by attempting

to set it right. Here her past practice in the Entertainment came to

her rescue, and urged her to go on instantly in Miss Garth’s voice as

if nothing had happened.

“You mean well, Mrs. Lecount,” she continued, “but you are doing harm

instead of good. My pupils will accept no such compromise as you

propose. I am sorry to have spoken violently just now; I beg you will

excuse me.” She looked hard for information in the housekeeper’s face

while she spoke those conciliatory words. Mrs. Lecount baffled the look

by putting her handkerchief to her eyes. Had she, or had she not,

noticed the momentary change in Magdalen’s voice from the tones that

were assumed to the tones that were natural? Impossible to say.

“What more can I do!” murmured Mrs. Lecount behind her handkerchief.

“Give me time to think—give me time to recover myself. May I retire,

sir, for a moment? My nerves are shaken by this sad scene. I must have

a glass of water, or I think I shall faint. Don’t go yet, Miss Garth. I

beg you will give us time to set this sad matter right, if we can—I beg

you will remain until I come back.”

There were two doors of entrance to the room. One, the door into the

front parlor, close at Magdalen’s left hand. The other, the door into

the back parlor, situated behind her. Mrs. Lecount politely

retired—through the open folding-doors—by this latter means of exit, so

as not to disturb the visitor by passing in front of her. Magdalen

waited until she heard the door open and close again behind her, and

then resolved to make the most of the opportunity which left her alone

with Noel Vanstone. The utter hopelessness of rousing a generous

impulse in that base nature had now been proved by her own experience.

The last chance left was to treat him like the craven creature he was,

and to influence him through his fears.

Before she could speak, Noel Vanstone himself broke the silence.

Cunningly as he strove to hide it, he was half angry, half alarmed at

his housekeeper’s desertion of him. He looked doubtingly at his

visitor; he showed a nervous anxiety to conciliate her until Mrs.

Lecount’s return.

“Pray remember, ma’am, I never denied that this case was a hard one,”

he began. “You said just now you had no wish to offend me—and I’m sure

I don’t want to offend you. May I offer you some strawberries? Would

you like to look at my father’s bargains? I assure you, ma’am, I am

naturally a gallant man; and I feel for both these sisters—especially

the younger one. Touch me on the subject of the tender passion, and you

touch me on a weak place. Nothing would please me more than to hear

that Miss Vanstone’s lover (I’m sure I always call her Miss Vanstone,

and so does Lecount)—I say, ma’am, nothing would please me more than to

hear that Miss Vanstone’s lover had come back and married her. If a

loan of money would be likely to bring him back, and if the security

offered was good, and if my lawyer thought me justified—”

“Stop, Mr. Vanstone,” said Magdalen. “You are entirely mistaken in your

estimate of the person you have to deal with. You are seriously wrong

in supposing that the marriage of the younger sister—if she could be

married in a week’s time—would make any difference in the convictions

which induced her to write to your father and to you. I don’t deny that

she may act from a mixture of motives. I don’t deny that she clings to

the hope of hastening her marriage, and to the hope of rescuing her

sister from a life of dependence. But if both those objects were

accomplished by other means, nothing would induce her to leave you in

possession of the inheritance which her father meant his children to

have. I know her, Mr. Vanstone! She is a nameless, homeless, friendless

wretch. The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of

all legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is

your law—not hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile

oppression, an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts her

like a possession of the devil. The resolution to right that wrong

burns in her like fire. If that miserable girl was married and rich,

with millions tomorrow, do you think she would move an inch from her

purpose? I tell you she would resist, to the last breath in her body,

the vile injustice which has struck at the helpless children, through

the calamity of their father’s death! I tell you she would shrink from

no means which a desperate woman can employ to force that closed hand

of yours open, or die in the attempt!”

She stopped abruptly. Once more her own indomitable earnestness had

betrayed her. Once more the inborn nobility of that perverted nature

had risen superior to the deception which it had stooped to practice.

The scheme of the moment vanished from her mind’s view; and the

resolution of her life burst its way outward in her own words, in her

own tones, pouring hotly and more hotly from her heart. She saw the

abject manikin before her cowering, silent, in his chair. Had his fears

left him sense enough to perceive the change in her voice? No: _his_

face spoke the truth—his fears had bewildered him. This time the chance

of the moment had befriended her. The door behind her chair had not

opened again yet. “No ears but his have heard me,” she thought, with a

sense of unutterable relief. “I have escaped Mrs. Lecount.”

She had done nothing of the kind. Mrs. Lecount had never left the room.

After opening the door and closing it again, without going out, the

housekeeper had noiselessly knelt down behind Magdalen’s chair.

Steadying herself against the post of the folding-door, she took a pair

of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Vanstone (from whose

view she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen’s attention by

speaking to her, and then bent forward, with the scissors ready in her

hand. The skirt of the false Miss Garth’s gown—the brown alpaca dress,

with the white spots on it—touched the floor, within the housekeeper’s

reach. Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran

round the bottom of the dress one over the other, softly cut away a

little irregular fragment of stuff from the inner flounce, and neatly

smoothed the outer one over it again, so as to hide the gap. By the

time she had put the scissors back in her pocket, and had risen to her

feet (sheltering herself behind the post of the folding-door), Magdalen

had spoken her last words. Mrs. Lecount quietly repeated the ceremony

of opening and shutting the back parlor door; and returned to her

place.

“What has happened, sir, in my absence?” she inquired, addressing her

master with a look of alarm. “You are pale; you are agitated! Oh, Miss

Garth, have you forgotten the caution I gave you in the other room?”

“Miss Garth has forgotten everything,” cried Noel Vanstone, recovering

his lost composure on the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount. “Miss Garth

has threatened me in the most outrageous manner. I forbid you to pity

either of those two girls any more, Lecount—especially the younger one.

She is the most desperate wretch I ever heard of! If she can’t get my

money by fair means, she threatens to have it by foul. Miss Garth has

told me that to my face. To my face!” he repeated, folding his arms,

and looking mortally insulted.

“Compose yourself, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “Pray compose yourself, and

leave me to speak to Miss Garth. I regret to hear, ma’am, that you have

forgotten what I said to you in the next room. You have agitated Mr.

Noel; you have compromised the interests you came here to plead; and

you have only repeated what we knew before. The language you have

allowed yourself to use in my absence is the same language which your

pupil was foolish enough to employ when she wrote for the second time

to my late master. How can a lady of your years and experience

seriously repeat such nonsense? This girl boasts and threatens. She

will do this; she will do that. You have her confidence, ma’am. Tell

me, if you please, in plain words, what can she do?”

Sharply as the taunt was pointed, it glanced off harmless. Mrs. Lecount

had planted her sting once too often. Magdalen rose in complete

possession of her assumed character and composedly terminated the

interview. Ignorant as she was of what had happened behind her chair,

she saw a change in Mrs. Lecount’s look and manner which warned her to

run no more risks, and to trust herself no longer in the house.

“I am not in my pupil’s confidence,” she said. “Her own acts will

answer your question when the time comes. I can only tell you, from my

own knowledge of her, that she is no boaster. What she wrote to Mr.

Michael Vanstone was what she was prepared to do—-what, I have reason

to think, she was actually on the point of doing, when her plans were

overthrown by his death. Mr. Michael Vanstone’s son has only to persist

in following his father’s course to find, before long, that I am not

mistaken in my pupil, and that I have not come here to intimidate him

by empty threats. My errand is done. I leave Mr. Noel Vanstone with two

alternatives to choose from. I leave him to share Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s

fortune with Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s daughters—or to persist in his

present refusal and face the consequences.” She bowed, and walked to

the door.

Noel Vanstone started to his feet, with anger and alarm struggling

which should express itself first in his blank white face. Before he

could open his lips, Mrs. Lecount’s plump hands descended on his

shoulders, put him softly back in his chair, and restored the plate of

strawberries to its former position on his lap.

“Refresh yourself, Mr. Noel, with a few more strawberries,” she said,

“and leave Miss Garth to me.”

She followed Magdalen into the passage, and closed the door of the room

after her.

“Are you residing in London, ma’am?” asked Mrs. Lecount.

“No,” replied Magdalen. “I reside in the country.”

“If I want to write to you, where can I address my letter?”

“To the post-office, Birmingham,” said Magdalen, mentioning the place

which she had last left, and at which all letters were still addressed

to her.

Mrs. Lecount repeated the direction to fix it in her memory, advanced

two steps in the passage, and quietly laid her right hand on Magdalen’s

arm.

“A word of advice, ma’am,” she said; “one word at parting. You are a

bold woman and a clever woman. Don’t be too bold; don’t be too clever.

You are risking more than you think for.” She suddenly raised herself

on tiptoe and whispered the next words in Magdalen’s ear. “_I hold you

in the hollow of my hand!_” said Mrs. Lecount, with a fierce hissing

emphasis on every syllable. Her left hand clinched itself stealthily as

she spoke. It was the hand in which she had concealed the fragment of

stuff from Magdalen’s gown—the hand which held it fast at that moment.

“What do you mean?” asked Magdalen, pushing her back.

Mrs. Lecount glided away politely to open the house door.

“I mean nothing now,” she said; “wait a little, and time may show. One

last question, ma’am, before I bid you good-by. When your pupil was a

little innocent child, did she ever amuse herself by building a house

of cards?”

Magdalen impatiently answered by a gesture in the affirmative.

“Did you ever see her build up the house higher and higher,” proceeded

Mrs. Lecount, “till it was quite a pagoda of cards? Did you ever see

her open her little child’s eyes wide and look at it, and feel so proud

of what she had done already that she wanted to do more? Did you ever

see her steady her pretty little hand, and hold her innocent breath,

and put one other card on the top, and lay the whole house, the instant

afterward, a heap of ruins on the table? Ah, you have seen that. Give

her, if you please, a friendly message from me. I venture to say she

has built the house high enough already; and I recommend her to be

careful before she puts on that other card.”

“She shall have your message,” said Magdalen, with Miss Garth’s

bluntness, and Miss Garth’s emphatic nod of the head. “But I doubt her

minding it. Her hand is rather steadier than you suppose, and I think

she will put on the other card.”

“And bring the house down,” said Mrs. Lecount.

“And build it up again,” rejoined Magdalen. “I wish you good-morning.”

“Good-morning,” said Mrs. Lecount, opening the door. “One last word,

Miss Garth. Do think of what I said in the back room! Do try the Golden

Ointment for that sad affliction in your eyes!”

As Magdalen crossed the threshold of the door she was met by the

postman ascending the house steps with a letter picked out from the

bundle in his hand. “Noel Vanstone, Esquire?” she heard the man say,

interrogatively, as she made her way down the front garden to the

street.

She passed through the garden gates little thinking from what new

difficulty and new danger her timely departure had saved her. The

letter which the postman had just delivered into the housekeeper’s

hands was no other than the anonymous letter addressed to Noel Vanstone

by Captain Wragge.

CHAPTER IV.

Mrs. Lecount returned to the parlor, with the fragment of Magdalen’s

dress in one hand, and with Captain Wragge’s letter in the other.

“Have you got rid of her?” asked Noel Vanstone. “Have you shut the door

at last on Miss Garth?”

“Don’t call her Miss Garth, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, smiling

contemptuously. “She is as much Miss Garth as you are. We have been

favored by the performance of a clever masquerade; and if we had taken

the disguise off our visitor, I think we should have found under it

Miss Vanstone herself.—Here is a letter for you, sir, which the postman

has just left.”

She put the letter on the table within her master’s reach. Noel

Vanstone’s amazement at the discovery just communicated to him kept his

whole attention concentrated on the housekeeper’s face. He never so

much as looked at the letter when she placed it before him.

“Take my word for it, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, composedly taking a

chair. “When our visitor gets home she will put her gray hair away in a

box, and will cure that sad affliction in her eyes with warm water and

a sponge. If she had painted the marks on her face, as well as she

painted the inflammation in her eyes, the light would have shown me

nothing, and I should certainly have been deceived. But I saw the

marks; I saw a young woman’s skin under that dirty complexion of hers;

I heard in this room a true voice in a passion, as well as a false

voice talking with an accent, and I don’t believe in one morsel of that

lady’s personal appearance from top to toe. The girl herself, in my

opinion, Mr. Noel—and a bold girl too.”

“Why didn’t you lock the door and send for the police?” asked Mr. Noel.

“My father would have sent for the police. You know, as well as I do,

Lecount, my father would have sent for the police.”

“Pardon me, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “I think your father would have

waited until he had got something more for the police to do than we

have got for them yet. We shall see this lady again, sir. Perhaps she

will come here next time with her own face and her own voice. I am

curious to see what her own face is like. I am curious to know whether

what I have heard of her voice in a passion is enough to make me

recognize her voice when she is calm. I possess a little memorial of

her visit of which she is not aware, and she will not escape me so

easily as she thinks. If it turns out a useful memorial, you shall know

what it is. If not, I will abstain from troubling you on so trifling a

subject.—Allow me to remind you, sir, of the letter under your hand.

You have not looked at it yet.”

Noel Vanstone opened the letter. He started as his eye fell on the

first lines—hesitated—and then hurriedly read it through. The paper

dropped from his hand, and he sank back in his chair. Mrs. Lecount

sprang to her feet with the alacrity of a young woman and picked up the

letter.

“What has happened, sir?” she asked. Her face altered as she put the

question, and her large black eyes hardened fiercely, in genuine

astonishment and alarm.

“Send for the police,” exclaimed her master. “Lecount, I insist on

being protected. Send for the police!”

“May I read the letter, sir?”

He feebly waved his hand. Mrs. Lecount read the letter attentively, and

put it aside on the table, without a word, when she had done.

“Have you nothing to say to me?” asked Noel Vanstone, staring at his

housekeeper in blank dismay. “Lecount, I’m to be robbed! The scoundrel

who wrote that letter knows all about it, and won’t tell me anything

unless I pay him. I’m to be robbed! Here’s property on this table worth

thousands of pounds—property that can never be replaced—property that

all the crowned heads in Europe could not produce if they tried. Lock

me in, Lecount, and send for the police!”

Instead of sending for the police, Mrs. Lecount took a large green

paper fan from the chimney-piece, and seated herself opposite her

master.

“You are agitated, Mr. Noel,” she said, “you are heated. Let me cool

you.”

With her face as hard as ever—with less tenderness of look and manner

than most women would have shown if they had been rescuing a

half-drowned fly from a milk-jug—she silently and patiently fanned him

for five minutes or more. No practiced eye observing the peculiar

bluish pallor of his complexion, and the marked difficulty with which

he drew his breath, could have failed to perceive that the great organ

of life was in this man, what the housekeeper had stated it to be, too

weak for the function which it was called on to perform. The heart

labored over its work as if it had been the heart of a worn-out old

man.

“Are you relieved, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “Can you think a little?

Can you exercise your better judgment?”

She rose and put her hand over his heart with as much mechanical

attention and as little genuine interest as if she had been feeling the

plates at dinner to ascertain if they had been properly warmed. “Yes,”

she went on, seating herself again, and resuming the exercise of the

fan; “you are getting better already, Mr. Noel.—Don’t ask me about this

anonymous letter until you have thought for yourself, and have given

your own opinion first.” She went on with the fanning, and looked him

hard in the face all the time. “Think,” she said; “think, sir, without

troubling yourself to express your thoughts. Trust to my intimate

sympathy with you to read them. Yes, Mr. Noel, this letter is a paltry

attempt to frighten you. What does it say? It says you are the object

of a conspiracy directed by Miss Vanstone. We know that already—the

lady of the inflamed eyes has told us. We snap our fingers at the

conspiracy. What does the letter say next? It says the writer has

valuable information to give you if you will pay for it. What did you

call this person yourself just now, sir?”

“I called him a scoundrel,” said Noel Vanstone, recovering his

self-importance, and raising himself gradually in his chair.

“I agree with you in that, sir, as I agree in everything else,”

proceeded Mrs. Lecount. “He is a scoundrel who really has this

information and who means what he says, or he is a mouthpiece of Miss

Vanstone’s, and she has caused this letter to be written for the

purpose of puzzling us by another form of disguise. Whether the letter

is true, or whether the letter is false—am I not reading your own wiser

thoughts now, Mr. Noel?—you know better than to put your enemies on

their guard by employing the police in this matter too soon. I quite

agree with you—no police just yet. You will allow this anonymous man,

or anonymous woman, to suppose you are easily frightened; you will lay

a trap for the information in return for the trap laid for your money;

you will answer the letter, and see what comes of the answer; and you

will only pay the expense of employing the police when you know the

expense is necessary. I agree with you again—no expense, if we can help

it. In every particular, Mr. Noel, my mind and your mind in this matter

are one.”

“It strikes you in that light, Lecount—does it?” said Noel Vanstone. “I

think so myself; I certainly think so. I won’t pay the police a

farthing if I can possibly help it.” He took up the letter again, and

became fretfully perplexed over a second reading of it. “But the man

wants money!” he broke out, impatiently. “You seem to forget, Lecount,

that the man wants money.”

“Money which you offer him, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount; “but—as your

thoughts have already anticipated—money which you don’t give him. No!

no! you say to this man: ‘Hold out your hand, sir;’ and when he has

held it, you give him a smack for his pains, and put your own hand back

in your pocket.—I am so glad to see you laughing, Mr. Noel! so glad to

see you getting back your good spirits. We will answer the letter by

advertisement, as the writer directs—advertisement is so cheap! Your

poor hand is trembling a little—shall I hold the pen for you? I am not

fit to do more; but I can always promise to hold the pen.”

Without waiting for his reply she went into the back parlor, and

returned with pen, ink, and paper. Arranging a blotting-book on her

knees, and looking a model of cheerful submission, she placed herself

once more in front of her master’s chair.

“Shall I write from your dictation, sir?” she inquired. “Or shall I

make a little sketch, and will you correct it afterward? I will make a

little sketch. Let me see the letter. We are to advertise in the

_Times_, and we are to address ‘An Unknown Friend.’ What shall I say,

Mr. Noel? Stay; I will write it, and then you can see for yourself: ‘An

Unknown Friend is requested to mention (by advertisement) an address at

which a letter can reach him. The receipt of the information which he

offers will be acknowledged by a reward of—’ What sum of money do you

wish me to set down, sir?”

“Set down nothing,” said Noel Vanstone, with a sudden outbreak of

impatience. “Money matters are my business—I say money matters are my

business, Lecount. Leave it to me.”

“Certainly, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount, handing her master the

blotting-book. “You will not forget to be liberal in offering money

when you know beforehand you don’t mean to part with it?”

“Don’t dictate, Lecount! I won’t submit to dictation!” said Noel

Vanstone, asserting his own independence more and more impatiently. “I

mean to conduct this business for myself. I am master, Lecount!”

“You are master, sir.”

“My father was master before me. And I am my father’s son. I tell you,

Lecount, I am my father’s son!”

Mrs. Lecount bowed submissively.

“I mean to set down any sum of money I think right,” pursued Noel

Vanstone, nodding his little flaxen head vehemently. “I mean to send

this advertisement myself. The servant shall take it to the stationer’s

to be put into the _Times_. When I ring the bell twice, send the

servant. You understand, Lecount? Send the servant.”

Mrs. Lecount bowed again and walked slowly to the door. She knew to a

nicety when to lead her master and when to let him go alone. Experience

had taught her to govern him in all essential points by giving way to

him afterward on all points of minor detail. It was a characteristic of

his weak nature—as it is of all weak natures—to assert itself

obstinately on trifles. The filling in of the blank in the

advertisement was the trifle in this case; and Mrs. Lecount quieted her

master’s suspicions that she was leading him by instantly conceding it.

“My mule has kicked,” she thought to herself, in her own language, as

she opened the door. “I can do no more with him to-day.”

“Lecount!” cried her master, as she stepped into the passage. “Come

back.”

Mrs. Lecount came back.

“You’re not offended with me, are you?” asked Noel Vanstone, uneasily.

“Certainly not, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount. “As you said just now—you

are master.”

“Good creature! Give me your hand.” He kissed her hand, and smiled in

high approval of his own affectionate proceeding. “Lecount, you are a

worthy creature!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. She courtesied and went out. “If

he had any brains in that monkey head of his,” she said to herself in

the passage, “what a rascal he would be!”

Left by himself, Noel Vanstone became absorbed in anxious reflection

over the blank space in the advertisement. Mrs. Lecount’s apparently

superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money when he knew he

had no intention of parting with it, had been founded on an intimate

knowledge of his character. He had inherited his father’s sordid love

of money, without inheriting his father’s hard-headed capacity for

seeing the uses to which money can be put. His one idea in connection

with his wealth was the idea of keeping it. He was such an inborn miser

that the bare prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him. He

took up the pen; laid it down again; and read the anonymous letter for

the third time, shaking his head over it suspiciously. “If I offer this

man a large sum of money,” he thought, on a sudden, “how do I know he

may not find a means of actually making me pay it? Women are always in

a hurry. Lecount is always in a hurry. I have got the afternoon before

me—I’ll take the afternoon to consider it.”

He fretfully put away the blotting-book and the sketch of the

advertisement on the chair which Mrs. Lecount had just left. As he

returned to his own seat, he shook his little head solemnly, and

arranged his white dressing-gown over his knees with the air of a man

absorbed in anxious thought. Minute after minute passed away; the

quarters and the half-hours succeeded each other on the dial of Mrs.

Lecount’s watch, and still Noel Vanstone remained lost in doubt; still

no summons for the servants disturbed the tranquillity of the parlor

bell.

Meanwhile, after parting with Mrs. Lecount, Magdalen had cautiously

abstained from crossing the road to her lodgings, and had only ventured

to return after making a circuit in the neighborhood. When she found

herself once more in Vauxhall Walk, the first object which attracted

her attention was a cab drawn up before the door of the lodgings. A few

steps more in advance showed her the landlady’s daughter standing at

the cab door engaged in a dispute with the driver on the subject of his

fare. Noticing that the girl’s back was turned toward her, Magdalen

instantly profited by that circumstance and slipped unobserved into the

house.

She glided along the passage, ascended the stairs, and found herself,

on the first landing, face to face with her traveling companion! There

stood Mrs. Wragge, with a pile of small parcels hugged up in her arms,

anxiously waiting the issue of the dispute with the cabman in the

street. To return was impossible—the sound of the angry voices below

was advancing into the passage. To hesitate was worse than useless. But

one choice was left—the choice of going on—and Magdalen desperately

took it. She pushed by Mrs. Wragge without a word, ran into her own

room, tore off her cloak, bonnet and wig, and threw them down out of

sight in the blank space between the sofa-bedstead and the wall.

For the first few moments, astonishment bereft Mrs. Wragge of the power

of speech, and rooted her to the spot where she stood. Two out of the

collection of parcels in her arms fell from them on the stairs. The

sight of that catastrophe roused her. “Thieves!” cried Mrs. Wragge,

suddenly struck by an idea. “Thieves!”

Magdalen heard her through the room door, which she had not had time to

close completely. “Is that you, Mrs. Wragge?” she called out in her own

voice. “What is the matter?” She snatched up a towel while she spoke,

dipped it in water, and passed it rapidly over the lower part of her

face. At the sound of the familiar voice Mrs. Wragge turned

round—dropped a third parcel—and, forgetting it in her astonishment,

ascended the second flight of stairs. Magdalen stepped out on the

first-floor landing, with the towel held over her forehead as if she

was suffering from headache. Her false eyebrows required time for their

removal, and a headache assumed for the occasion suggested the most

convenient pretext she could devise for hiding them as they were hidden

now.

“What are you disturbing the house for?” she asked. “Pray be quiet; I

am half blind with the headache.”

“Anything wrong, ma’am?” inquired the landlady from the passage.

“Nothing whatever,” replied Magdalen. “My friend is timid; and the

dispute with the cabman has frightened her. Pay the man what he wants,

and let him go.”

“Where is She?” asked Mrs. Wragge, in a tremulous whisper. “Where’s the

woman who scuttled by me into your room?”

“Pooh!” said Magdalen. “No woman scuttled by you—as you call it. Look

in and see for yourself.”

She threw open the door. Mrs. Wragge walked into the room—looked all

over it—saw nobody—and indicated her astonishment at the result by

dropping a fourth parcel, and trembling helplessly from head to foot.

“I saw her go in here,” said Mrs. Wragge, in awestruck accents. “A

woman in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. A rude woman. She scuttled by

me on the stairs—she did. Here’s the room, and no woman in it. Give us

a Prayer-book!” cried Mrs. Wragge, turning deadly pale, and letting her

whole remaining collection of parcels fall about her in a little

cascade of commodities. “I want to read something Good. I want to think

of my latter end. I’ve seen a Ghost!”

“Nonsense!” said Magdalen. “You’re dreaming; the shopping has been too

much for you. Go into your own room and take your bonnet off.”

“I’ve heard tell of ghosts in night-gowns, ghosts in sheets, and ghosts

in chains,” proceeded Mrs. Wragge, standing petrified in her own magic

circle of linen-drapers’ parcels. “Here’s a worse ghost than any of

’em—a ghost in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. I know what it is,”

continued Mrs. Wragge, melting into penitent tears. “It’s a judgment on

me for being so happy away from the captain. It’s a judgment on me for

having been down at heel in half the shops in London, first with one

shoe and then with the other, all the time I’ve been out. I’m a sinful

creature. Don’t let go of me—whatever you do, my dear, don’t let go of

me!” She caught Magdalen fast by the arm and fell into another

trembling fit at the bare idea of being left by herself.

The one remaining chance in such an emergency as this was to submit to

circumstances. Magdalen took Mrs. Wragge to a chair; having first

placed it in such a position as might enable her to turn her back on

her traveling-companion, while she removed the false eyebrows by the

help of a little water. “Wait a minute there,” she said, “and try if

you can compose yourself while I bathe my head.”

“Compose myself?” repeated Mrs. Wragge. “How am I to compose myself

when my head feels off my shoulders? The worst Buzzing I ever had with

the Cookery-book was nothing to the Buzzing I’ve got now with the

Ghost. Here’s a miserable end to a holiday! You may take me back again,

my dear, whenever you like—I’ve had enough of it already!”

Having at last succeeded in removing the eyebrows, Magdalen was free to

combat the unfortunate impression produced on her companion’s mind by

every weapon of persuasion which her ingenuity could employ.

The attempt proved useless. Mrs. Wragge persisted—on evidence which, it

may be remarked in parenthesis, would have satisfied many wiser

ghost-seers than herself—in believing that she had been supernaturally

favored by a visitor from the world of spirits. All that Magdalen could

do was to ascertain, by cautious investigation, that Mrs. Wragge had

not been quick enough to identify the supposed ghost with the character

of the old North-country lady in the Entertainment. Having satisfied

herself on this point, she had no resource but to leave the rest to the

natural incapability of retaining impressions—unless those impressions

were perpetually renewed—which was one of the characteristic

infirmities of her companion’s weak mind. After fortifying Mrs. Wragge

by reiterated assurances that one appearance (according to all the laws

and regulations of ghosts) meant nothing unless it was immediately

followed by two more—after patiently leading back her attention to the

parcels dropped on the floor and on the stairs—and after promising to

keep the door of communication ajar between the two rooms if Mrs.

Wragge would engage on her side to retire to her own chamber, and to

say no more on the terrible subject of the ghost—Magdalen at last

secured the privilege of reflecting uninterruptedly on the events of

that memorable day.

Two serious consequences had followed her first step forward. Mrs.

Lecount had entrapped her into speaking in her own voice, and accident

had confronted her with Mrs. Wragge in disguise.

What advantage had she gained to set against these disasters? The

advantage of knowing more of Noel Vanstone and of Mrs. Lecount than she

might have discovered in months if she had trusted to inquiries made

for her by others. One uncertainty which had hitherto perplexed her was

set at rest already. The scheme she had privately devised against

Michael Vanstone—which Captain Wragge’s sharp insight had partially

penetrated when she first warned him that their partnership must be

dissolved—was a scheme which she could now plainly see must be

abandoned as hopeless, in the case of Michael Vanstone’s son. The

father’s habits of speculation had been the pivot on which the whole

machinery of her meditated conspiracy had been constructed to turn. No

such vantage-ground was discoverable in the doubly sordid character of

the son. Noel Vanstone was invulnerable on the very point which had

presented itself in his father as open to attack.

Having reached this conclusion, how was she to shape her future course?

What new means could she discover which would lead her secretly to her

end, in defiance of Mrs. Lecount’s malicious vigilance and Noel

Vanstone’s miserly distrust?

She was seated before the looking-glass, mechanically combing out her

hair, while that all-important consideration occupied her mind. The

agitation of the moment had raised a feverish color in her cheeks, and

had brightened the light in her large gray eyes. She was conscious of

looking her best; conscious how her beauty gained by contrast, after

the removal of the disguise. Her lovely light brown hair looked thicker

and softer than ever, now that it had escaped from its imprisonment

under the gray wig. She twisted it this way and that, with quick,

dexterous fingers; she laid it in masses on her shoulders; she threw it

back from them in a heap and turned sidewise to see how it fell—to see

her back and shoulders freed from the artificial deformities of the

padded cloak. After a moment she faced the looking-glass once more;

plunged both hands deep in her hair; and, resting her elbows on the

table, looked closer and closer at the reflection of herself, until her

breath began to dim the glass. “I can twist any man alive round my

finger,” she thought, with a smile of superb triumph, “as long as I

keep my looks! If that contemptible wretch saw me now—” She shrank from

following that thought to its end, with a sudden horror of herself: she

drew back from the glass, shuddering, and put her hands over her face.

“Oh, Frank!” she murmured, “but for you, what a wretch I might be!” Her

eager fingers snatched the little white silk bag from its hiding-place

in her bosom; her lips devoured it with silent kisses. “My darling! my

angel! Oh, Frank, how I love you!” The tears gushed into her eyes. She

passionately dried them, restored the bag to its place, and turned her

back on the looking-glass. “No more of myself,” she thought; “no more

of my mad, miserable self for to-day!”

Shrinking from all further contemplation of her next step in

advance—shrinking from the fast-darkening future, with which Noel

Vanstone was now associated in her inmost thoughts—she looked

impatiently about the room for some homely occupation which might take

her out of herself. The disguise which she had flung down between the

wall and the bed recurred to her memory. It was impossible to leave it

there. Mrs. Wragge (now occupied in sorting her parcels) might weary of

her employment, might come in again at a moment’s notice, might pass

near the bed, and see the gray cloak. What was to be done?

Her first thought was to put the disguise back in her trunk. But after

what had happened, there was danger in trusting it so near to herself

while she and Mrs. Wragge were together under the same roof. She

resolved to be rid of it that evening, and boldly determined on sending

it back to Birmingham. Her bonnet-box fitted into her trunk. She took

the box out, thrust in the wig and cloak, and remorselessly flattened

down the bonnet at the top. The gown (which she had not yet taken off)

was her own; Mrs. Wragge had been accustomed to see her in it—there was

no need to send the gown back. Before closing the box, she hastily

traced these lines on a sheet of paper: “I took the inclosed things

away by mistake. Please keep them for me, with the rest of my luggage

in your possession, until you hear from me again.” Putting the paper on

the top of the bonnet, she directed the box to Captain Wragge at

Birmingham, took it downstairs immediately, and sent the landlady’s

daughter away with it to the nearest Receiving-house. “That difficulty

is disposed of,” she thought, as she went back to her own room again.

Mrs. Wragge was still occupied in sorting her parcels on her narrow

little bed. She turned round with a faint scream when Magdalen looked

in at her. “I thought it was the ghost again,” said Mrs. Wragge. “I’m

trying to take warning, my dear, by what’s happened to me. I’ve put all

my parcels straight, just as the captain would like to see ’em. I’m up

at heel with both shoes. If I close my eyes to-night—which I don’t

think I shall—I’ll go to sleep as straight as my legs will let me. And

I’ll never have another holiday as long as I live. I hope I shall be

forgiven,” said Mrs. Wragge, mournfully shaking her head. “I humbly

hope I shall be forgiven.”

“Forgiven!” repeated Magdalen. “If other women wanted as little

forgiving as you do—Well! well! Suppose you open some of these parcels.

Come! I want to see what you have been buying to-day.”

Mrs. Wragge hesitated, sighed penitently, considered a little,

stretched out her hand timidly toward one of the parcels, thought of

the supernatural warning, and shrank back from her own purchases with a

desperate exertion of self-control.

“Open this one.” said Magdalen, to encourage her: “what is it?”

Mrs. Wragge’s faded blue eyes began to brighten dimly, in spite of her

remorse; but she self-denyingly shook her head. The master-passion of

shopping might claim his own again—but the ghost was not laid yet.

“Did you get it at a bargain?” asked Magdalen, confidentially.

“Dirt cheap!” cried poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the snare,

and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing had happened.

Magdalen kept her gossiping over her purchases for an hour or more, and

then wisely determined to distract her attention from all ghostly

recollections in another way by taking her out for a walk.

As they left the lodgings, the door of Noel Vanstone’s house opened,

and the woman-servant appeared, bent on another errand. She was

apparently charged with a letter on this occasion which she carried

carefully in her hand. Conscious of having formed no plan yet either

for attack or defense, Magdalen wondered, with a momentary dread,

whether Mrs. Lecount had decided already on opening fresh

communications, and whether the letter was directed to “Miss Garth.”

The letter bore no such address. Noel Vanstone had solved his pecuniary

problem at last. The blank space in the advertisement was filled up,

and Mrs. Lecount’s acknowledgment of the captain’s anonymous warning

was now on its way to insertion in the _Times_.

THE END OF THE THIRD SCENE.

BETWEEN THE SCENES.

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.

I.

Extract from the Advertising Columns of “The Times.”

“An unknown friend is requested to mention (by advertisement) an

address at which a letter can reach him. The receipt of the information

which he offers will be acknowledged by a reward of Five Pounds.”

II.

From Captain Wragge to Magdalen.

“Birmingham, July 2d, 1847.

“MY DEAR GIRL,

“The box containing the articles of costumes which you took away by

mistake has come safely to hand. Consider it under my special

protection until I hear from you again.

“I embrace this opportunity to assure you once more of my unalterable

fidelity to your interests. Without attempting to intrude myself into

your confidence, may I inquire whether Mr. Noel Vanstone has consented

to do you justice? I greatly fear he has declined—in which case I can

lay my hand on my heart, and solemnly declare that his meanness revolts

me. Why do I feel a foreboding that you have appealed to him in vain?

Why do I find myself viewing this fellow in the light of a noxious

insect? We are total strangers to each other; I have no sort of

knowledge of him, except the knowledge I picked up in making your

inquiries. Has my intense sympathy with your interests made my

perceptions prophetic? or, to put it fancifully, is there really such a

thing as a former state of existence? and has Mr. Noel Vanstone

mortally insulted me—say, in some other planet?

“I write, my dear Magdalen, as you see, with my customary dash of

humor. But I am serious in placing my services at your disposal. Don’t

let the question of terms cause you an instant’s hesitation. I accept

beforehand any terms you like to mention. If your present plans point

that way, I am ready to squeeze Mr. Noel Vanstone, in your interests,

till the gold oozes out of him at every pore. Pardon the coarseness of

this metaphor. My anxiety to be of service to you rushes into words;

lays my meaning, in the rough, at your feet; and leaves your taste to

polish it with the choicest ornaments of the English language.

“How is my unfortunate wife? I am afraid you find it quite impossible

to keep her up at heel, or to mold her personal appearance into harmony

with the eternal laws of symmetry and order. Does she attempt to be too

familiar with you? I have always been accustomed to check her, in this

respect. She has never been permitted to call me anything but Captain;

and on the rare occasions since our union, when circumstances may have

obliged her to address me by letter, her opening form of salutation has

been rigidly restricted to ‘Dear Sir.’ Accept these trifling domestic

particulars as suggesting hints which may be useful to you in managing

Mrs. Wragge; and believe me, in anxious expectation of hearing from you

again,

“Devotedly yours,

“HORATIO WRAGGE.”

III.

From Norah to Magdalen.

_Forwarded, with the Two Letters that follow it, from the Post Office,

Birmingham._

“Westmoreland House, Kensington,

“July 1st.

“MY DEAREST MAGDALEN,

“When you write next (and pray write soon!) address your letter to me

at Miss Garth’s. I have left my situation; and some little time may

elapse before I find another.

“Now it is all over I may acknowledge to you, my darling, that I was

not happy. I tried hard to win the affection of the two little girls I

had to teach; but they seemed, I am sure I can’t tell why, to dislike

me from the first. Their mother I have no reason to complain of. But

their grandmother, who was really the ruling power in the house, made

my life very hard to me. My inexperience in teaching was a constant

subject of remark with her; and my difficulties with the children were

always visited on me as if they had been entirely of my own making. I

tell you this, so that you may not suppose I regret having left my

situation. Far from it, my love—I am glad to be out of the house.

“I have saved a little money, Magdalen; and I should so like to spend

it in staying a few days with you. My heart aches for a sight of my

sister; my ears are weary for the sound of her voice. A word from you

telling me where we can meet, is all I want. Think of it—pray think of

it.

“Don’t suppose I am discouraged by this first check. There are many

kind people in the world; and some of them may employ me next time. The

way to happiness is often very hard to find; harder, I almost think,

for women than for men. But if we only try patiently, and try long

enough, we reach it at last—in heaven, if not on earth. I think _my_

way now is the way which leads to seeing you again. Don’t forget that,

my love, the next time you think of

“NORAH.”

IV.

From Miss Garth to Magdalen.

“Westmoreland House, July 1st.

“MY DEAR MAGDALEN,

“You have no useless remonstrances to apprehend at the sight of my

handwriting. My only object in this letter is to tell you something

which I know your sister will not tell you of her own accord. She is

entirely ignorant that I am writing to you. Keep her in ignorance, if

you wish to spare her unnecessary anxiety, and me unnecessary distress.

“Norah’s letter, no doubt, tells you that she has left her situation. I

feel it my painful duty to add that she has left it on your account.

“The matter occurred in this manner. Messrs. Wyatt, Pendril, and Gwilt

are the solicitors of the gentleman in whose family Norah was employed.

The life which you have chosen for yourself was known as long ago as

December last to all the partners. You were discovered performing in

public at Derby by the person who had been employed to trace you at

York; and that discovery was communicated by Mr. Wyatt to Norah’s

employer a few days since, in reply to direct inquiries about you on

that gentleman’s part. His wife and his mother (who lives with him) had

expressly desired that he would make those inquiries; their doubts

having been aroused by Norah’s evasive answers when they questioned her

about her sister. You know Norah too well to blame her for this.

Evasion was the only escape your present life had left her, from

telling a downright falsehood.

“That same day, the two ladies of the family, the elder and the

younger, sent for your sister, and told her they had discovered that

you were a public performer, roaming from place to place in the country

under an assumed name. They were just enough not to blame Norah for

this; they were just enough to acknowledge that her conduct had been as

irreproachable as I had guaranteed it should be when I got her the

situation. But, at the same time, they made it a positive condition of

her continuing in their employment that she should never permit you to

visit her at their house, or to meet her and walk out with her when she

was in attendance on the children. Your sister—who has patiently borne

all hardships that fell on herself—instantly resented the slur cast on

_you_. She gave her employers warning on the spot. High words followed,

and she left the house that evening.

“I have no wish to distress you by representing the loss of this

situation in the light of a disaster. Norah was not so happy in it as I

had hoped and believed she would be. It was impossible for me to know

beforehand that the children were sullen and intractable, or that the

husband’s mother was accustomed to make her domineering disposition

felt by every one in the house. I will readily admit that Norah is well

out of this situation. But the harm does not stop here. For all you and

I know to the contrary, the harm may go on. What has happened in this

situation may happen in another. Your way of life, however pure your

conduct may be—and I will do you the justice to believe it pure—is a

suspicious way of life to all respectable people. I have lived long

enough in this world to know that the sense of Propriety, in nine

Englishwomen out of ten, makes no allowances and feels no pity. Norah’s

next employers may discover you; and Norah may throw up a situation

next time which we may never be able to find for her again.

“I leave you to consider this. My child, don’t think I am hard on you.

I am jealous for your sister’s tranquillity. If you will forget the

past, Magdalen, and come back, trust to your old governess to forget it

too, and to give you the home which your father and mother once gave

her. Your friend, my dear, always,

“HARRIET GARTH.”

V.

From Francis Clare, Jun., to Magdalen.

“Shanghai, China,

“April 23d, 1847.

“MY DEAR MAGDALEN,

“I have deferred answering your letter, in consequence of the

distracted state of my mind, which made me unfit to write to you. I am

still unfit, but I feel I ought to delay no longer. My sense of honor

fortifies me, and I undergo the pain of writing this letter.

“My prospects in China are all at an end. The Firm to which I was

brutally consigned, as if I was a bale of merchandise, has worn out my

patience by a series of petty insults; and I have felt compelled, from

motives of self-respect, to withdraw my services, which were

undervalued from the first. My returning to England under these

circumstances is out of the question. I have been too cruelly used in

my own country to wish to go back to it, even if I could. I propose

embarking on board a private trading-vessel in these seas in a

mercantile capacity, to make my way, if I can, for myself. How it will

end, or what will happen to me next, is more than I can say. It matters

little what becomes of me. I am a wanderer and an exile, entirely

through the fault of others. The unfeeling desire at home to get rid of

me has accomplished its object. I am got rid of for good.

“There is only one more sacrifice left for me to make—the sacrifice of

my heart’s dearest feelings. With no prospects before me, with no

chance of coming home, what hope can I feel of performing my engagement

to yourself? None! A more selfish man than I am might hold you to that

engagement; a less considerate man than I am might keep you waiting for

years—and to no purpose after all. Cruelly as they have been trampled

on, my feelings are too sensitive to allow me to do this. I write it

with the tears in my eyes—you shall not link your fate to an outcast.

Accept these heart-broken lines as releasing you from your promise. Our

engagement is at an end.

“The one consolation which supports me in bidding you farewell is, that

neither of us is to blame. You may have acted weakly, under my father’s

influence, but I am sure you acted for the best. Nobody knew what the

fatal consequences of driving me out of England would be but myself—and

I was not listened to. I yielded to my father, I yielded to you; and

this is the end of it!

“I am suffering too acutely to write more. May you never know what my

withdrawal from our engagement has cost me! I beg you will not blame

yourself. It is not your fault that I have had all my energies

misdirected by others—it is not your fault that I have never had a fair

chance of getting on in life. Forget the deserted wretch who breathes

his heartfelt prayers for your happiness, and who will ever remain your

friend and well-wisher.

“FRANCIS CLARE, Jun.”

VI.

From Francis Clare, Sen., to Magdalen.

_Enclosing the preceding Letter._

“I always told your poor father my son was a Fool, but I never knew he

was a Scoundrel until the mail came in from China. I have every reason

to believe that he has left his employers under the most disgraceful

circumstances. Forget him from this time forth, as I do. When you and I

last set eyes on each other, you behaved well to me in this business.

All I can now say in return, I do say. My girl, I am sorry for you,

“F. C.”

VII.

From Mrs. Wragge to her Husband.

“Dear sir for mercy’s sake come here and help us She had a dreadful

letter I don’t know what yesterday but she read it in bed and when I

went in with her breakfast I found her dead and if the doctor had not

been two doors off nobody else could have brought her to life again and

she sits and looks dreadful and won’t speak a word her eyes frighten me

so I shake from head to foot oh please do come I keep things as tidy as

I can and I do like her so and she used to be so kind to me and the

landlord says he’s afraid she’ll destroy herself I wish I could write

straight but I do shake so your dutiful wife matilda wragge excuse

faults and beg you on my knees come and help us the Doctor good man

will put some of his own writing into this for fear you can’t make out

mine and remain once more your dutiful wife matilda wragge.”

_Added by the Doctor._

“SIR,—I beg to inform you that I was yesterday called into a neighbor’s

in Vauxhall Walk to attend a young lady who had been suddenly taken

ill. I recovered her with great difficulty from one of the most

obstinate fainting-fits I ever remember to have met with. Since that

time she has had no relapse, but there is apparently some heavy

distress weighing on her mind which it has hitherto been found

impossible to remove. She sits, as I am informed, perfectly silent, and

perfectly unconscious of what goes on about her, for hours together,

with a letter in her hand which she will allow nobody to take from her.

If this state of depression continues, very distressing mental

consequences may follow; and I only do my duty in suggesting that some

relative or friend should interfere who has influence enough to rouse

her.

“Your obedient servant,

“RICHARD JARVIS, M.R.C.S.”

VIII.

From Norah to Magdalen.

“July 5th.

“For God’s sake, write me one line to say if you are still at

Birmingham, and where I can find you there! I have just heard from old

Mr. Clare. Oh, Magdalen, if you have no pity on yourself, have some

pity on me! The thought of you alone among strangers, the thought of

you heart-broken under this dreadful blow, never leaves me for an

instant. No words can tell how I feel for you! My own love, remember

the better days at home before that cowardly villain stole his way into

your heart; remember the happy time at Combe-Raven when we were always

together. Oh, don’t, don’t treat me like a stranger! We are alone in

the world now—let me come and comfort you, let me be more than a sister

to you, if I can. One line—only one line to tell me where I can find

you!”

IX.

From Magdalen to Norah.

“July 7th.

“MY DEAREST NORAH,

“All that your love for me can wish your letter has done. You, and you

alone, have found your way to my heart. I could think again, I could

feel again, after reading what you have written to me. Let this

assurance quiet your anxieties. My mind lives and breathes once more—it

was dead until I got your letter.

“The shock I have suffered has left a strange quietness in me. I feel

as if I had parted from my former self—as if the hopes once so dear to

me had all gone back to some past time from which I am now far removed.

I can look at the wreck of my life more calmly, Norah, than you could

look at it if we were both together again. I can trust myself already

to write to Frank.

“My darling, I think no woman ever knows how utterly she has given

herself up to the man she loves—until that man has ill-treated her. Can

you pity my weakness if I confess to having felt a pang at my heart

when I read that part of your letter which calls Frank a coward and a

villain? Nobody can despise me for this as I despise myself. I am like

a dog who crawls back and licks the master’s hand that has beaten him.

But it is so—I would confess it to nobody but you—indeed, indeed it is

so. He has deceived and deserted me; he has written me a cruel farewell

—but don’t call him a villain! If he repented and came back to me, I

would die rather than marry him now—but it grates on me to see that

word coward written against him in your hand! If he is weak of purpose,

who tried his weakness beyond what it could bear? Do you think this

would have happened if Michael Vanstone had not robbed us of our own,

and forced Frank away from me to China? In a week from to-day the year

of waiting would have come to an end, and I should have been Frank’s

wife, if my marriage portion had not been taken from me.

“You will say, after what has happened, it is well that I have escaped.

My love! there is something perverse in my heart which answers, No!

Better have been Frank’s wretched wife than the free woman I am now.

“I have not written to him. He sends me no address at which I could

write, even if I would. But I have not the wish. I will wait before I

send him _my_ farewell. If a day ever comes when I have the fortune

which my father once promised I should bring to him, do you know what I

would do with it? I would send it all to Frank, as my revenge on him

for his letter; as the last farewell word on my side to the man who has

deserted me. Let me live for that day! Let me live, Norah, in the hope

of better times for _you_, which is all the hope I have left. When I

think of your hard life, I can almost feel the tears once more in my

weary eyes. I can almost think I have come back again to my former

self.

“You will not think me hard-hearted and ungrateful if I say that we

must wait a little yet before we meet. I want to be more fit to see you

than I am now. I want to put Frank further away from me, and to bring

you nearer still. Are these good reasons? I don’t know—don’t ask me for

reasons. Take the kiss I have put for you here, where the little circle

is drawn on the paper; and let that bring us together for the present

till I write again. Good-by, my love. My heart is true to you, Norah,

but I dare not see you yet.

“MAGDALEN.”

X. From Magdalen to Miss Garth.

“MY DEAR MISS GARTH,

“I have been long in answering your letter; but you know what has

happened, and you will forgive me.

“All that I have to say may be said in a few words. You may depend on

my never making the general Sense of Propriety my enemy again: I am

getting knowledge enough of the world to make it my accomplice next

time. Norah will never leave another situation on my account—my life as

a public performer is at an end. It was harmless enough, God knows—I

may live, and so may you, to mourn the day when I parted from it—but I

shall never return to it again. It has left me, as Frank has left me,

as all my better thoughts have left me except my thoughts of Norah.

“Enough of myself! Shall I tell you some news to brighten this dull

letter? Mr. Michael Vanstone is dead, and Mr. Noel Vanstone has

succeeded to the possession of my fortune and Norah’s. He is quite

worthy of his inheritance. In his father’s place, he would have ruined

us as his father did.

“I have no more to say that you would care to know. Don’t be distressed

about me. I am trying to recover my spirits—I am trying to forget the

poor deluded girl who was foolish enough to be fond of Frank in the old

days at Combe-Raven. Sometimes a pang comes which tells me the girl

won’t be forgotten—but not often.

“It was very kind of you, when you wrote to such a lost creature as I

am, to sign yourself—_always my friend._ ‘Always’ is a bold word, my

dear old governess! I wonder whether you will ever want to recall it?

It will make no difference if you do, in the gratitude I shall always

feel for the trouble you took with me when I was a little girl. I have

ill repaid that trouble—ill repaid your kindness to me in after life. I

ask your pardon and your pity. The best thing you can do for both of us

is to forget me. Affectionately yours,

“MAGDALEN.”

“P.S.—I open the envelope to add one line. For God’s sake, don’t show

this letter to Norah!”

XI.

From Magdalen to Captain Wragge.

“Vauxhall Walk, July 17th.

“If I am not mistaken, it was arranged that I should write to you at

Birmingham as soon as I felt myself composed enough to think of the

future. My mind is settled at last, and I am now able to accept the

services which you have so unreservedly offered to me.

“I beg you will forgive the manner in which I received you on your

arrival in this house, after hearing the news of my sudden illness. I

was quite incapable of controlling myself—I was suffering an agony of

mind which for the time deprived me of my senses. It is only your due

that I should now thank you for treating me with great forbearance at a

time when forbearance was mercy.

“I will mention what I wish you to do as plainly and briefly as I can.

“In the first place, I request you to dispose (as privately as

possible) of every article of costume used in the dramatic

Entertainment. I have done with our performances forever; and I wish to

be set free from everything which might accidentally connect me with

them in the future. The key of my box is inclosed in this letter.

“The other box, which contains my own dresses, you will be kind enough

to forward to this house. I do not ask you to bring it yourself,

because I have a far more important commission to intrust to you.

“Referring to the note which you left for me at your departure, I

conclude that you have by this time traced Mr. Noel Vanstone from

Vauxhall Walk to the residence which he is now occupying. If you have

made the discovery—and if you are quite sure of not having drawn the

attention either of Mrs. Lecount or her master to yourself—I wish you

to arrange immediately for my residing (with you and Mrs. Wragge) in

the same town or village in which Mr. Noel Vanstone has taken up his

abode. I write this, it is hardly necessary to say, under the

impression that, wherever he may now be living, he is settled in the

place for some little time.

“If you can find a small furnished house for me on these conditions

which is to be let by the month, take it for a month certain to begin

with. Say that it is for your wife, your niece, and yourself, and use

any assumed name you please, as long as it is a name that can be

trusted to defeat the most suspicious inquiries. I leave this to your

experience in such matters. The secret of who we really are must be

kept as strictly as if it was a secret on which our lives depend.

“Any expenses to which you may be put in carrying out my wishes I will

immediately repay. If you easily find the sort of house I want, there

is no need for your returning to London to fetch us. We can join you as

soon as we know where to go. The house must be perfectly respectable,

and must be reasonably near to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s present residence,

wherever that is.

“You must allow me to be silent in this letter as to the object which I

have now in view. I am unwilling to risk an explanation in writing.

When all our preparations are made, you shall hear what I propose to do

from my own lips; and I shall expect you to tell me plainly, in return,

whether you will or will not give me the help I want on the best terms

which I am able to offer you.

“One word more before I seal up this letter.

“If any opportunity falls in your way after you have taken the house,

and before we join you, of exchanging a few civil words either with Mr.

Noel Vanstone or Mrs. Lecount, take advantage of it. It is very

important to my present object that we should become acquainted with

each other—as the purely accidental result of our being near neighbors.

I want you to smooth the way toward this end if you can, before Mrs.

Wragge and I come to you. Pray throw away no chance of observing Mrs.

Lecount, in particular, very carefully. Whatever help you can give me

at the outset in blindfolding that woman’s sharp eyes will be the most

precious help I have ever received at your hands.

“There is no need to answer this letter immediately—unless I have

written it under a mistaken impression of what you have accomplished

since leaving London. I have taken our lodgings on for another week;

and I can wait to hear from you until you are able to send me such news

as I wish to receive. You may be quite sure of my patience for the

future, under all possible circumstances. My caprices are at an end,

and my violent temper has tried your forbearance for the last time.

“MAGDALEN.”

XII.

From Captain Wragge to Magdalen.

“North Shingles Villa, Aldborough, Suffolk,

“July 22d.

“MY DEAR GIRL,

“Your letter has charmed and touched me. Your excuses have gone

straight to my heart; and your confidence in my humble abilities has

followed in the same direction. The pulse of the old militia-man throbs

with pride as he thinks of the trust you have placed in him, and vows

to deserve it. Don’t be surprised at this genial outburst. All

enthusiastic natures must explode occasionally; and _my_ form of

explosion is—Words.

“Everything you wanted me to do is done. The house is taken; the name

is found; and I am personally acquainted with Mrs. Lecount. After

reading this general statement, you will naturally be interested in

possessing your mind next of the accompanying details. Here they are,

at your service:

“The day after leaving you in London, I traced Mr. Noel Vanstone to

this curious little seaside snuggery. One of his father’s innumerable

bargains was a house at Aldborough—a rising watering-place, or Mr.

Michael Vanstone would not have invested a farthing in it. In this

house the despicable little miser, who lived rent free in London, now

lives, rent free again, on the coast of Suffolk. He is settled in his

present abode for the summer and autumn; and you and Mrs. Wragge have

only to join me here, to be established five doors away from him in

this elegant villa. I have got the whole house for three guineas a

week, with the option of remaining through the autumn at the same

price. In a fashionable watering-place, such a residence would have

been cheap at double the money.

“Our new name has been chosen with a wary eye to your suggestions. My

books—I hope you have not forgotten my Books?—contain, under the

heading of _Skins To Jump Into,_ a list of individuals retired from

this mortal scene, with whose names, families, and circumstances I am

well acquainted. Into some of those Skins I have been compelled to

Jump, in the exercise of my profession, at former periods of my career.

Others are still in the condition of new dresses and remain to be tried

on. The Skin which will exactly fit us originally clothed the bodies of

a family named Bygrave. I am in Mr. Bygrave’s skin at this moment-and

it fits without a wrinkle. If you will oblige me by slipping into Miss

Bygrave (Christian name, Susan); and if you will afterward push Mrs.

Wragge—anyhow; head foremost if you like—into Mrs. Bygrave (Christian

name, Julia), the transformation will be complete. Permit me to inform

you that I am your paternal uncle. My worthy brother was established

twenty years ago in the mahogany and logwood trade at Belize, Honduras.

He died in that place; and is buried on the south-west side of the

local cemetery, with a neat monument of native wood carved by a

self-taught negro artist. Nineteen months afterward his widow died of

apoplexy at a boarding-house in Cheltenham. She was supposed to be the

most corpulent woman in England, and was accommodated on the

ground-floor of the house in consequence of the difficulty of getting

her up and down stairs. You are her only child; you have been under my

care since the sad event at Cheltenham; you are twenty-one years old on

the second of August next; and, corpulence excepted, you are the living

image of your mother. I trouble you with these specimens of my intimate

knowledge of our new family Skin, to quiet your mind on the subject of

future inquiries. Trust to me and my books to satisfy any amount of

inquiry. In the meantime write down our new name and address, and see

how they strike you: ‘Mr. Bygrave, Mrs. Bygrave, Miss Bygrave; North

Shingles Villa, Aldborough.’ Upon my life, it reads remarkably well!

“The last detail I have to communicate refers to my acquaintance with

Mrs. Lecount.

“We met yesterday, in the grocer’s shop here. Keeping my ears open, I

found that Mrs. Lecount wanted a particular kind of tea which the man

had not got, and which he believed could not be procured any nearer

than Ipswich. I instantly saw my way to beginning an acquaintance, at

the trifling expense of a journey to that flourishing city. ‘I have

business to-day in Ipswich,’ I said, ‘and I propose returning to

Aldborough (if I can get back in time) this evening. Pray allow me to

take your order for the tea, and to bring it back with my own parcels.’

Mrs. Lecount politely declined giving me the trouble—I politely

insisted on taking it. We fell into conversation. There is no need to

trouble you with our talk. The result of it on my mind is—that Mrs.

Lecount’s one weak point, if she has such a thing at all, is a taste

for science, implanted by her deceased husband, the professor. I think

I see a chance here of working my way into her good graces, and casting

a little needful dust into those handsome black eyes of hers. Acting on

this idea when I purchased the lady’s tea at Ipswich, I also bought on

my own account that far-famed pocket-manual of knowledge, ‘Joyce’s

Scientific Dialogues.’ Possessing, as I do, a quick memory and

boundless confidence in myself, I propose privately inflating my new

skin with as much ready-made science as it will hold, and presenting

Mr. Bygrave to Mrs. Lecount’s notice in the character of the most

highly informed man she has met with since the professor’s death. The

necessity of blindfolding that woman (to use your own admirable

expression) is as clear to me as to you. If it is to be done in the way

I propose, make your mind easy—Wragge, inflated by Joyce, is the man to

do it.

“You now have my whole budget of news. Am I, or am I not, worthy of

your confidence in me? I say nothing of my devouring anxiety to know

what your objects really are—that anxiety will be satisfied when we

meet. Never yet, my dear girl, did I long to administer a productive

pecuniary Squeeze to any human creature, as I long to administer it to

Mr. Noel Vanstone. I say no more. _Verbum sap._ Pardon the pedantry of

a Latin quotation, and believe me,

“Entirely yours,

“HORATIO WRAGGE.

“P.S.—I await my instructions, as you requested. You have only to say

whether I shall return to London for the purpose of escorting you to

this place, or whether I shall wait here to receive you. The house is

in perfect order, the weather is charming, and the sea is as smooth as

Mrs. Lecount’s apron. She has just passed the window, and we have

exchanged bows. A sharp woman, my dear Magdalen; but Joyce and I

together may prove a trifle too much for her.”

XIII.

_Extract from the East Suffolk Argus._

“ALDBOROUGH.—We notice with pleasure the arrival of visitors to this

healthful and far-famed watering-place earlier in the season than usual

during the present year. _Esto Perpetua_ is all we have to say.

“VISITORS’ LIST.—Arrivals since our last. North Shingles Villa—Mrs.

Bygrave; Miss Bygrave.”

THE FOURTH SCENE.

ALDBOROUGH, SUFFOLK.

CHAPTER I.

The most striking spectacle presented to a stranger by the shores of

Suffolk is the extraordinary defenselessness of the land against the

encroachments of the sea.

At Aldborough, as elsewhere on this coast, local traditions are, for

the most part, traditions which have been literally drowned. The site

of the old town, once a populous and thriving port, has almost entirely

disappeared in the sea. The German Ocean has swallowed up streets,

market-places, jetties, and public walks; and the merciless waters,

consummating their work of devastation, closed, no longer than eighty

years since, over the salt-master’s cottage at Aldborough, now famous

in memory only as the birthplace of the poet CRABBE.

Thrust back year after year by the advancing waves, the inhabitants

have receded, in the present century, to the last morsel of land which

is firm enough to be built on—a strip of ground hemmed in between a

marsh on one side and the sea on the other. Here, trusting for their

future security to certain sand-hills which the capricious waves have

thrown up to encourage them, the people of Aldborough have boldly

established their quaint little watering-place. The first fragment of

their earthly possessions is a low natural dike of shingle, surmounted

by a public path which runs parallel with the sea. Bordering this path,

in a broken, uneven line, are the villa residences of modern

Aldborough—fanciful little houses, standing mostly in their own

gardens, and possessing here and there, as horticultural ornaments,

staring figure-heads of ships doing duty for statues among the flowers.

Viewed from the low level on which these villas stand, the sea, in

certain conditions of the atmosphere, appears to be higher than the

land: coasting-vessels gliding by assume gigantic proportions, and look

alarmingly near the windows. Intermixed with the houses of the better

sort are buildings of other forms and periods. In one direction the

tiny Gothic town-hall of old Aldborough—once the center of the vanished

port and borough—now stands, fronting the modern villas close on the

margin of the sea. At another point, a wooden tower of observation,

crowned by the figure-head of a wrecked Russian vessel, rises high

above the neighboring houses, and discloses through its scuttle-window

grave men in dark clothing seated on the topmost story, perpetually on

the watch—the pilots of Aldborough looking out from their tower for

ships in want of help. Behind the row of buildings thus curiously

intermingled runs the one straggling street of the town, with its

sturdy pilots’ cottages, its mouldering marine store-houses, and its

composite shops. Toward the northern end this street is bounded by the

one eminence visible over all the marshy flat—a low wooded hill, on

which the church is built. At its opposite extremity the street leads

to a deserted martello tower, and to the forlorn outlying suburb of

Slaughden, between the river Alde and the sea. Such are the main

characteristics of this curious little outpost on the shores of England

as it appears at the present time.

On a hot and cloudy July afternoon, and on the second day which had

elapsed since he had written to Magdalen, Captain Wragge sauntered

through the gate of North Shingles Villa to meet the arrival of the

coach, which then connected Aldborough with the Eastern Counties

Railway. He reached the principal inn as the coach drove up, and was

ready at the door to receive Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge, on their leaving

the vehicle.

The captain’s reception of his wife was not characterized by an

instant’s unnecessary waste of time. He looked distrustfully at her

shoes—raised himself on tiptoe—set her bonnet straight for her with a

sharp tug—-said, in a loud whisper, “hold your tongue”—and left her,

for the time being, without further notice. His welcome to Magdalen,

beginning with the usual flow of words, stopped suddenly in the middle

of the first sentence. Captain Wragge’s eye was a sharp one, and it

instantly showed him something in the look and manner of his old pupil

which denoted a serious change.

There was a settled composure on her face which, except when she spoke,

made it look as still and cold as marble. Her voice was softer and more

equable, her eyes were steadier, her step was slower than of old. When

she smiled, the smile came and went suddenly, and showed a little

nervous contraction on one side of her mouth never visible there

before. She was perfectly patient with Mrs. Wragge; she treated the

captain with a courtesy and consideration entirely new in his

experience of her—but she was interested in nothing. The curious little

shops in the back street; the high impending sea; the old town-hall on

the beach; the pilots, the fishermen, the passing ships—she noticed all

these objects as indifferently as if Aldborough had been familiar to

her from her infancy. Even when the captain drew up at the garden-gate

of North Shingles, and introduced her triumphantly to the new house,

she hardly looked at it. The first question she asked related not to

her own residence, but to Noel Vanstone’s.

“How near to us does he live?” she inquired, with the only betrayal of

emotion which had escaped her yet.

Captain Wragge answered by pointing to the fifth villa from North

Shingles, on the Slaughden side of Aldborough. Magdalen suddenly drew

back from the garden-gate as he indicated the situation, and walked

away by herself to obtain a nearer view of the house. Captain Wragge

looked after her, and shook his head, discontentedly.

“May I speak now?” inquired a meek voice behind him, articulating

respectfully ten inches above the top of his straw hat.

The captain turned round, and confronted his wife. The more than

ordinary bewilderment visible in her face at once suggested to him that

Magdalen had failed to carry out the directions in his letter; and that

Mrs. Wragge had arrived at Aldborough without being properly aware of

the total transformation to be accomplished in her identity and her

name. The necessity of setting this doubt at rest was too serious to be

trifled with; and Captain Wragge instituted the necessary inquiries

without a moment’s delay.

“Stand straight, and listen to me,” he began. “I have a question to ask

you. Do you know whose Skin you are in at this moment? Do you know that

you are dead and buried in London; and that you have risen like a

phoenix from the ashes of Mrs. Wragge? No! you evidently don’t know it.

This is perfectly disgraceful. What is your name?”

“Matilda,” answered Mrs. Wragge, in a state of the densest

bewilderment.

“Nothing of the sort!” cried the captain, fiercely. “How dare you tell

me your name’s Matilda? Your name is Julia. Who am I?—Hold that basket

of sandwiches straight, or I’ll pitch it into the sea!—Who am I?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Wragge, meekly taking refuge in the negative

side of the question this time.

“Sit down!” said her husband, pointing to the low garden wall of North

Shingles Villa. “More to the right! More still! That will do. You don’t

know?” repeated the captain, sternly confronting his wife as soon as he

had contrived, by seating her, to place her face on a level with his

own. “Don’t let me hear you say that a second time. Don’t let me have a

woman who doesn’t know who I am to operate on my beard to-morrow

morning. Look at me! More to the left—more still—that will do. Who am

I? I’m Mr. Bygrave—Christian name, Thomas. Who are you? You’re Mrs.

Bygrave—Christian name, Julia. Who is that young lady who traveled with

you from London? That young lady is Miss Bygrave—Christian name, Susan.

I’m her clever uncle Tom; and you’re her addle-headed aunt Julia. Say

it all over to me instantly, like the Catechism! What is your name?”

“Spare my poor head!” pleaded Mrs. Wragge. “Oh, please spare my poor

head till I’ve got the stage-coach out of it!”

“Don’t distress her,” said Magdalen, joining them at that moment. “She

will learn it in time. Come into the house.”

Captain Wragge shook his wary head once more. “We are beginning badly,”

he said, with less politeness than usual. “My wife’s stupidity stands

in our way already.”