It was only when the carriage stopped at North Shingles, and when

Captain Wragge was handing Magdalen out, that the housekeeper at last

condescended to notice him. As he smiled and took off his hat at the

carriage door, the strong restraint she had laid on herself suddenly

gave way, and she flashed one look at him which scorched up the

captain’s politeness on the spot. He turned at once, with a hasty

acknowledgment of Noel Vanstone’s last sympathetic inquiries, and took

Magdalen into the house. “I told you she would show her claws,” he

said. “It is not my fault that she scratched you before I could stop

her. She hasn’t hurt you, has she?”

“She has hurt me, to some purpose,” said Magdalen—“she has given me the

courage to go on. Say what must be done to-morrow, and trust me to do

it.” She sighed heavily as she said those words, and went up to her

room.

Captain Wragge walked meditatively into the parlor, and sat down to

consider. He felt by no means so certain as he could have wished of the

next proceeding on the part of the enemy after the defeat of that day.

The housekeeper’s farewell look had plainly informed him that she was

not at the end of her resources yet, and the old militia-man felt the

full importance of preparing himself in good time to meet the next step

which she took in advance. He lit a cigar, and bent his wary mind on

the dangers of the future.

While Captain Wragge was considering in the parlor at North Shingles,

Mrs. Lecount was meditating in her bedroom at Sea View. Her

exasperation at the failure of her first attempt to expose the

conspiracy had not blinded her to the instant necessity of making a

second effort before Noel Vanstone’s growing infatuation got beyond her

control. The snare set for Magdalen having failed, the chance of

entrapping Magdalen’s sister was the next chance to try. Mrs. Lecount

ordered a cup of tea, opened her writing-case, and began the rough

draft of a letter to be sent to Miss Vanstone, the elder, by the

morrow’s post.

So the day’s skirmish ended. The heat of the battle was yet to come.

CHAPTER VI.

All human penetration has its limits. Accurately as Captain Wragge had

seen his way hitherto, even his sharp insight was now at fault. He

finished his cigar with the mortifying conviction that he was totally

unprepared for Mrs. Lecount’s next proceeding. In this emergency, his

experience warned him that there was one safe course, and one only,

which he could take. He resolved to try the confusing effect on the

housekeeper of a complete change of tactics before she had time to

press her advantage and attack him in the dark. With this view he sent

the servant upstairs to request that Miss Bygrave would come down and

speak to him.

“I hope I don’t disturb you,” said the captain, when Magdalen entered

the room. “Allow me to apologize for the smell of tobacco, and to say

two words on the subject of our next proceedings. To put it with my

customary frankness, Mrs. Lecount puzzles me, and I propose to return

the compliment by puzzling her. The course of action which I have to

suggest is a very simple one. I have had the honor of giving you a

severe neuralgic attack already, and I beg your permission (when Mr.

Noel Vanstone sends to inquire to-morrow morning) to take the further

liberty of laying you up altogether. Question from Sea-view Cottage:

‘How is Miss Bygrave this morning?’ Answer from North Shingles: ‘Much

worse: Miss Bygrave is confined to her room.’ Question repeated every

day, say for a fortnight: ‘How is Miss Bygrave?’ Answer repeated, if

necessary, for the same time: ‘No better.’ Can you bear the

imprisonment? I see no objection to your getting a breath of fresh air

the first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night. But for the

whole of the day, there is no disguising it, you must put yourself in

the same category with Mrs. Wragge—you must keep your room.”

“What is your object in wishing me to do this?” inquired Magdalen.

“My object is twofold,” replied the captain. “I blush for my own

stupidity; but the fact is, I can’t see my way plainly to Mrs.

Lecount’s next move. All I feel sure of is, that she means to make

another attempt at opening her master’s eyes to the truth. Whatever

means she may employ to discover your identity, personal communication

with you _must_ be necessary to the accomplishment of her object. Very

good. If I stop that communication, I put an obstacle in her way at

starting—or, as we say at cards, I force her hand. Do you see the

point?”

Magdalen saw it plainly. The captain went on.

“My second reason for shutting you up,” he said, “refers entirely to

Mrs. Lecount’s master. The growth of love, my dear girl, is, in one

respect, unlike all other growths—it flourishes under adverse

circumstances. Our first course of action is to make Mr. Noel Vanstone

feel the charm of your society. Our next is to drive him distracted by

the loss of it. I should have proposed a few more meetings, with a view

to furthering this end, but for our present critical position toward

Mrs. Lecount. As it is, we must trust to the effect you produced

yesterday, and try the experiment of a sudden separation rather sooner

than I could have otherwise wished. I shall see Mr. Noel Vanstone,

though you don’t; and if there _is_ a raw place established anywhere

about the region of that gentleman’s heart, trust me to hit him on it!

You are now in full possession of my views. Take your time to consider,

and give me your answer—Yes or no.”

“Any change is for the better,” said Magdalen “which keeps me out of

the company of Mrs. Lecount and her master! Let it be as you wish.”

She had hitherto answered faintly and wearily; but she spoke those last

words with a heightened tone and a rising color—signs which warned

Captain Wragge not to press her further.

“Very good,” said the captain. “As usual, we understand each other. I

see you are tired; and I won’t detain you any longer.”

He rose to open the door, stopped half-way to it, and came back again.

“Leave me to arrange matters with the servant downstairs,” he

continued. “You can’t absolutely keep your bed, and we must purchase

the girl’s discretion when she answers the door, without taking her

into our confidence, of course. I will make her understand that she is

to say you are ill, just as she might say you are not at home, as a way

of keeping unwelcome acquaintances out of the house. Allow me to open

the door for you—I beg your pardon, you are going into Mrs. Wragge’s

work-room instead of going to your own.”

“I know I am,” said Magdalen. “I wish to remove Mrs. Wragge from the

miserable room she is in now, and to take her upstairs with me.”

“For the evening?”

“For the whole fortnight.”

Captain Wragge followed her into the dining-room, and wisely closed the

door before he spoke again.

“Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife’s society on yourself for a

fortnight?” he asked, in great surprise.

“Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house,” she

burst out vehemently. “I must and will have her with me!”

“Pray don’t agitate yourself,” said the captain. “Take Mrs. Wragge, by

all means. I don’t want her.” Having resigned the partner of his

existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the parlor. “The

weakness of the sex!” thought the captain, tapping his sagacious head.

“Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the female temper gives way

directly.”

The strain to which the captain alluded was not confined that evening

to the female intellect at North Shingles: it extended to the female

intellect at Sea View. For nearly two hours Mrs. Lecount sat at her

desk writing, correcting, and writing again, before she could produce a

letter to Miss Vanstone, the elder, which exactly accomplished the

object she wanted to attain. At last the rough draft was completed to

her satisfaction; and she made a fair copy of it forthwith, to be

posted the next day.

Her letter thus produced was a masterpiece of ingenuity. After the

first preliminary sentences, the housekeeper plainly informed Norah of

the appearance of the visitor in disguise at Vauxhall Walk; of the

conversation which passed at the interview; and of her own suspicion

that the person claiming to be Miss Garth was, in all probability, the

younger Miss Vanstone herself. Having told the truth thus far, Mrs.

Lecount next proceeded to say that her master was in possession of

evidence which would justify him in putting the law in force; that he

knew the conspiracy with which he was threatened to be then in process

of direction against him at Aldborough; and that he only hesitated to

protect himself in deference to family considerations, and in the hope

that the elder Miss Vanstone might so influence her sister as to render

it unnecessary to proceed to extremities.

Under these circumstances (the letter continued) it was plainly

necessary that the disguised visitor to Vauxhall Walk should be

properly identified; for if Mrs. Lecount’s guess proved to be wrong,

and if the person turned out to be a stranger, Mr. Noel Vanstone was

positively resolved to prosecute in his own defense. Events at

Aldborough, on which it was not necessary to dwell, would enable Mrs.

Lecount in a few days to gain sight of the suspected person in her own

character. But as the housekeeper was entirely unacquainted with the

younger Miss Vanstone, it was obviously desirable that some better

informed person should, in this particular, take the matter in hand. If

the elder Miss Vanstone happened to be at liberty to come to Aldborough

herself, would she kindly write and say so? and Mrs. Lecount would

write back again to appoint a day. If, on the other hand, Miss Vanstone

was prevented from taking the journey, Mrs. Lecount suggested that her

reply should contain the fullest description of her sister’s personal

appearance—should mention any little peculiarities which might exist in

the way of marks on her face or her hands—and should state (in case she

had written lately) what the address was in her last letter, and

failing that, what the post-mark was on the envelope. With this

information to help her, Mrs. Lecount would, in the interest of the

misguided young lady herself, accept the responsibility of privately

identifying her, and would write back immediately to acquaint the elder

Miss Vanstone with the result.

The difficulty of sending this letter to the right address gave Mrs.

Lecount very little trouble. Remembering the name of the lawyer who had

pleaded the cause of the two sisters in Michael Vanstone’s time, she

directed her letter to “Miss Vanstone, care of——Pendril, Esquire,

London.” This she inclosed in a second envelope, addressed to Mr. Noel

Vanstone’s solicitor, with a line inside, requesting that gentleman to

send it at once to the office of Mr. Pendril.

“Now,” thought Mrs. Lecount, as she locked the letter up in her desk,

preparatory to posting it the next day with her own hand, “now I have

got her!”

The next morning the servant from Sea View came, with her master’s

compliments, to make inquiries after Miss Bygrave’s health. Captain

Wragge’s bulletin was duly announced—Miss Bygrave was so ill as to be

confined to her room.

On the reception of this intelligence, Noel Vanstone’s anxiety led him

to call at North Shingles himself when he went out for his afternoon

walk. Miss Bygrave was no better. He inquired if he could see Mr.

Bygrave. The worthy captain was prepared to meet this emergency. He

thought a little irritating suspense would do Noel Vanstone no harm,

and he had carefully charged the servant, in case of necessity, with

her answer: “Mr. Bygrave begged to be excused; he was not able to see

any one.”

On the second day inquiries were made as before, by message in the

morning, and by Noel Vanstone himself in the afternoon. The morning

answer (relating to Magdalen) was, “a shade better.” The afternoon

answer (relating to Captain Wragge) was, “Mr. Bygrave has just gone

out.” That evening Noel Vanstone’s temper was very uncertain, and Mrs.

Lecount’s patience and tact were sorely tried in the effort to avoid

offending him.

On the third morning the report of the suffering young lady was less

favorable—“Miss Bygrave was still very poorly, and not able to leave

her bed.” The servant returning to Sea View with this message, met the

postman, and took into the breakfast-room with her two letters

addressed to Mrs. Lecount.

The first letter was in a handwriting familiar to the housekeeper. It

was from the medical attendant on her invalid brother at Zurich; and it

announced that the patient’s malady had latterly altered in so marked a

manner for the better that there was every hope now of preserving his

life.

The address on the second letter was in a strange handwriting. Mrs.

Lecount, concluding that it was the answer from Miss Vanstone, waited

to read it until breakfast was over, and she could retire to her own

room.

She opened the letter, looked at once for the name at the end, and

started a little as she read it. The signature was not “Norah

Vanstone,” but “Harriet Garth.”

Miss Garth announced that the elder Miss Vanstone had, a week since,

accepted an engagement as governess, subject to the condition of

joining the family of her employer at their temporary residence in the

south of France, and of returning with them when they came back to

England, probably in a month or six weeks’ time. During the interval of

this necessary absence Miss Vanstone had requested Miss Garth to open

all her letters, her main object in making that arrangement being to

provide for the speedy answering of any communication which might

arrive for her from her sister. Miss Magdalen Vanstone had not written

since the middle of July—on which occasion the postmark on the letter

showed that it must have been posted in London, in the district of

Lambeth—and her elder sister had left England in a state of the most

distressing anxiety on her account.

Having completed this explanation, Miss Garth then mentioned that

family circumstances prevented her from traveling personally to

Aldborough to assist Mrs. Lecount’s object, but that she was provided

with a substitute; in every way fitter for the purpose, in the person

of Mr. Pendril. That gentleman was well acquainted with Miss Magdalen

Vanstone, and his professional experience and discretion would render

his assistance doubly valuable. He had kindly consented to travel to

Aldborough whenever it might be thought necessary. But as his time was

very valuable, Miss Garth specially requested that he might not be sent

for until Mrs. Lecount was quite sure of the day on which his services

might be required.

While proposing this arrangement, Miss Garth added that she thought it

right to furnish her correspondent with a written description of the

younger Miss Vanstone as well. An emergency might happen which would

allow Mrs. Lecount no time for securing Mr. Pendril’s services; and the

execution of Mr. Noel Vanstone’s intentions toward the unhappy girl who

was the object of his forbearance might be fatally delayed by an

unforeseen difficulty in establishing her identity. The personal

description, transmitted under these circumstances, then followed. It

omitted no personal peculiarity by which Magdalen could be recognized,

and it included the “two little moles close together on the left side

of the neck,” which had been formerly mentioned in the printed

handbills sent to York.

In conclusion, Miss Garth expressed her fears that Mrs. Lecount’s

suspicions were only too likely to be proved true. While, however,

there was the faintest chance that the conspiracy might turn out to be

directed by a stranger, Miss Garth felt bound, in gratitude toward Mr.

Noel Vanstone, to assist the legal proceedings which would in that case

be instituted. She accordingly appended her own formal denial—which she

would personally repeat if necessary—of any identity between herself

and the person in disguise who had made use of her name. She was the

Miss Garth who had filled the situation of the late Mr. Andrew

Vanstone’s governess, and she had never in her life been in, or near,

the neighborhood of Vauxhall Wall.

With this disclaimer, and with the writer’s fervent assurances that she

would do all for Magdalen’s advantage which her sister might have done

if her sister had been in England, the letter concluded. It was signed

in full, and was dated with the business-like accuracy in such matters

which had always distinguished Miss Garth’s character.

This letter placed a formidable weapon in the housekeeper’s hands.

It provided a means of establishing Magdalen’s identity through the

intervention of a lawyer by profession. It contained a personal

description minute enough to be used to advantage, if necessary, before

Mr. Pendril’s appearance. It presented a signed exposure of the false

Miss Garth under the hand of the true Miss Garth; and it established

the fact that the last letter received by the elder Miss Vanstone from

the younger had been posted (and therefore probably written) in the

neighborhood of Vauxhall Walk. If any later letter had been received

with the Aldborough postmark, the chain of evidence, so far as the

question of localities was concerned, might doubtless have been more

complete. But as it was, there was testimony enough (aided as that

testimony might be by the fragment of the brown alpaca dress still in

Mrs. Lecount’s possession) to raise the veil which hung over the

conspiracy, and to place Mr. Noel Vanstone face to face with the plain

and startling truth.

The one obstacle which now stood in the way of immediate action on the

housekeeper’s part was the obstacle of Miss Bygrave’s present seclusion

within the limits of her own room. The question of gaining personal

access to her was a question which must be decided before any

communication could be opened with Mr. Pendril. Mrs. Lecount put on her

bonnet at once, and called at North Shingles to try what discoveries

she could make for herself before post-time.

On this occasion Mr. Bygrave was at home, and she was admitted without

the least difficulty.

Careful consideration that morning had decided Captain Wragge on

advancing matters a little nearer to the crisis. The means by which he

proposed achieving this result made it necessary for him to see the

housekeeper and her master separately, and to set them at variance by

producing two totally opposite impressions relating to himself on their

minds. Mrs. Lecount’s visit, therefore, instead of causing him any

embarrassment, was the most welcome occurrence he could have wished

for. He received her in the parlor with a marked restraint of manner

for which she was quite unprepared. His ingratiating smile was gone,

and an impenetrable solemnity of countenance appeared in its stead.

“I have ventured to intrude on you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “to

express the regret with which both my master and I have heard of Miss

Bygrave’s illness. Is there no improvement?”

“No, ma’am,” replied the captain, as briefly as possible. “My niece is

no better.”

“I have had some experience, Mr. Bygrave, in nursing. If I could be of

any use—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lecount. There is no necessity for our taking

advantage of your kindness.”

This plain answer was followed by a moment’s silence. The housekeeper

felt some little perplexity. What had become of Mr. Bygrave’s elaborate

courtesy, and Mr. Bygrave’s many words? Did he want to offend her? If

he did, Mrs. Lecount then and there determined that he should not gain

his object.

“May I inquire the nature of the illness?” she persisted. “It is not

connected, I hope, with our excursion to Dunwich?”

“I regret to say, ma’am,” replied the captain, “it began with that

neuralgic attack in the carriage.”

“So! so!” thought Mrs. Lecount. “He doesn’t even _try_ to make me think

the illness a real one; he throws off the mask at starting.—Is it a

nervous illness, sir?” she added, aloud.

The captain answered by a solemn affirmative inclination of the head.

“Then you have _two_ nervous sufferers in the house, Mr. Bygrave?”

“Yes, ma’am—two. My wife and my niece.”

“That is rather a strange coincidence of misfortunes.”

“It is, ma’am. Very strange.”

In spite of Mrs. Lecount’s resolution not to be offended, Captain

Wragge’s exasperating insensibility to every stroke she aimed at him

began to ruffle her. She was conscious of some little difficulty in

securing her self-possession before she could say anything more.

“Is there no immediate hope,” she resumed, “of Miss Bygrave being able

to leave her room?”

“None whatever, ma’am.”

“You are satisfied, I suppose, with the medical attendance?”

“I have no medical attendance,” said the captain, composedly. “I watch

the case myself.”

The gathering venom in Mrs. Lecount swelled up at that reply, and

overflowed at her lips.

“Your smattering of science, sir,” she said, with a malicious smile,

“includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine as well?”

“It does, ma’am,” answered the captain, without the slightest

disturbance of face or manner. “I know as much of one as I do of the

other.”

The tone in which he spoke those words left Mrs. Lecount but one

dignified alternative. She rose to terminate the interview. The

temptation of the moment proved too much for her, and she could not

resist casting the shadow of a threat over Captain Wragge at parting.

“I defer thanking you, sir, for the manner in which you have received

me,” she said, “until I can pay my debt of obligation to some purpose.

In the meantime I am glad to infer, from the absence of a medical

attendant in the house, that Miss Bygrave’s illness is much less

serious than I had supposed it to be when I came here.”

“I never contradict a lady, ma’am,” rejoined the incorrigible captain.

“If it is your pleasure, when we next meet to think my niece quite

well, I shall bow resignedly to the expression of your opinion.” With

those words, he followed the housekeeper into the passage, and politely

opened the door for her. “I mark the trick, ma’am!” he said to himself,

as he closed it again. “The trump-card in your hand is a sight of my

niece, and I’ll take care you don’t play it!”

He returned to the parlor, and composedly awaited the next event which

was likely to happen—a visit from Mrs. Lecount’s master. In less than

an hour results justified Captain Wragge’s anticipations, and Noel

Vanstone walked in.

“My dear sir!” cried the captain, cordially seizing his visitor’s

reluctant hand, “I know what you have come for. Mrs. Lecount has told

you of her visit here, and has no doubt declared that my niece’s

illness is a mere subterfuge. You feel surprised—you feel hurt—you

suspect me of trifling with your kind sympathies—in short, you require

an explanation. That explanation you shall have. Take a seat. Mr.

Vanstone. I am about to throw myself on your sense and judgment as a

man of the world. I acknowledge that we are in a false position, sir;

and I tell you plainly at the outset—your housekeeper is the cause of

it.”

For once in his life, Noel Vanstone opened his eyes. “Lecount!” he

exclaimed, in the utmost bewilderment.

“The same, sir,” replied Captain Wragge. “I am afraid I offended Mrs.

Lecount, when she came here this morning, by a want of cordiality in my

manner. I am a plain man, and I can’t assume what I don’t feel. Far be

it from me to breathe a word against your housekeeper’s character. She

is, no doubt, a most excellent and trustworthy woman, but she has one

serious failing common to persons at her time of life who occupy her

situation—she is jealous of her influence over her master, although you

may not have observed it.”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Noel Vanstone; “my observation is

remarkably quick. Nothing escapes me.”

“In that case, sir,” resumed the captain, “you cannot fail to have

noticed that Mrs. Lecount has allowed her jealousy to affect her

conduct toward my niece?”

Noel Vanstone thought of the domestic passage at arms between Mrs.

Lecount and himself when his guests of the evening had left Sea View,

and failed to see his way to any direct reply. He expressed the utmost

surprise and distress—he thought Lecount had done her best to be

agreeable on the drive to Dunwich—he hoped and trusted there was some

unfortunate mistake.

“Do you mean to say, sir,” pursued the captain, severely, “that you

have not noticed the circumstance yourself? As a man of honor and a man

of observation, you can’t tell me that! Your housekeeper’s superficial

civility has not hidden your housekeeper’s real feeling. My niece has

seen it, and so have you, and so have I. My niece, Mr. Vanstone, is a

sensitive, high-spirited girl; and she has positively declined to

cultivate Mrs. Lecount’s society for the future. Don’t misunderstand

me! To my niece as well as to myself, the attraction of _your_ society,

Mr. Vanstone, remains the same. Miss Bygrave simply declines to be an

apple of discord (if you will permit the classical allusion) cast into

your household. I think she is right so far, and I frankly confess that

I have exaggerated a nervous indisposition, from which she is really

suffering, into a serious illness—purely and entirely to prevent these

two ladies for the present from meeting every day on the Parade, and

from carrying unpleasant impressions of each other into your domestic

establishment and mine.”

“I allow nothing unpleasant in _my_ establishment,” remarked Noel

Vanstone. “I’m master—you must have noticed that already, Mr.

Bygrave—I’m master.”

“No doubt of it, my dear sir. But to live morning, noon, and night in

the perpetual exercise of your authority is more like the life of a

governor of a prison than the life of a master of a household. The wear

and tear—consider the wear and tear.”

“It strikes you in that light, does it?” said Noel Vanstone, soothed by

Captain Wragge’s ready recognition of his authority. “I don’t know that

you’re not right. But I must take some steps directly. I won’t be made

ridiculous—I’ll send Lecount away altogether, sooner than be made

ridiculous.” His color rose, and he folded his little arms fiercely.

Captain Wragge’s artfully irritating explanation had awakened that

dormant suspicion of his housekeeper’s influence over him which

habitually lay hidden in his mind, and which Mrs. Lecount was now not

present to charm back to repose as usual. “What must Miss Bygrave think

of me!” he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of vexation. “I’ll send

Lecount away. Damme, I’ll send Lecount away on the spot!”

“No, no, no!” said the captain, whose interest it was to avoid driving

Mrs. Lecount to any desperate extremities. “Why take strong measures

when mild measures will do? Mrs. Lecount is an old servant; Mrs.

Lecount is attached and useful. She has this little drawback of

jealousy—jealousy of her domestic position with her bachelor master.

She sees you paying courteous attention to a handsome young lady; she

sees that young lady properly sensible of your politeness; and, poor

soul, she loses her temper! What is the obvious remedy? Humor her—make

a manly concession to the weaker sex. If Mrs. Lecount is with you, the

next time we meet on the Parade, walk the other way. If Mrs. Lecount is

not with you, give us the pleasure of your company by all means. In

short, my dear sir, try the _suaviter in modo_ (as we classical men

say) before you commit yourself to the _fortiter in re!”_

There was one excellent reason why Noel Vanstone should take Captain

Wragge’s conciliatory advice. An open rupture with Mrs. Lecount—even if

he could have summoned the courage to face it—would imply the

recognition of her claims to a provision, in acknowledgment of the

services she had rendered to his father and to himself. His sordid

nature quailed within him at the bare prospect of expressing the

emotion of gratitude in a pecuniary form; and, after first consulting

appearances by a show of hesitation, he consented to adopt the

captain’s suggestion, and to humor Mrs. Lecount.

“But I must be considered in this matter,” proceeded Noel Vanstone. “My

concession to Lecount’s weakness must not be misunderstood. Miss

Bygrave must not be allowed to suppose I am afraid of my housekeeper.”

The captain declared that no such idea ever had entered, or ever could

enter, Miss Bygrave’s mind. Noel Vanstone returned to the subject

nevertheless, again and again, with his customary pertinacity. Would it

be indiscreet if he asked leave to set himself right personally with

Miss Bygrave? Was there any hope that he might have the happiness of

seeing her on that day? or, if not, on the next day? or if not, on the

day after? Captain Wragge answered cautiously: he felt the importance

of not rousing Noel Vanstone’s distrust by too great an alacrity in

complying with his wishes.

“An interview to-day, my dear sir, is out of the question,” he said.

“She is not well enough; she wants repose. To-morrow I propose taking

her out before the heat of the day begins—not merely to avoid

embarrassment, after what has happened with Mrs. Lecount, but because

the morning air and the morning quiet are essential in these nervous

cases. We are early people here—we shall start at seven o’clock. If you

are early, too, and if you would like to join us, I need hardly say

that we can feel no objection to your company on our morning walk. The

hour, I am aware, is an unusual one—but later in the day my niece may

be resting on the sofa, and may not be able to see visitors.”

Having made this proposal purely for the purpose of enabling Noel

Vanstone to escape to North Shingles at an hour in the morning when his

housekeeper would be probably in bed, Captain Wragge left him to take

the hint, if he could, as indirectly as it had been given. He proved

sharp enough (the case being one in which his own interests were

concerned) to close with the proposal on the spot. Politely declaring

that he was always an early man when the morning presented any special

attraction to him, he accepted the appointment for seven o’clock, and

rose soon afterward to take his leave.

“One word at parting,” said Captain Wragge. “This conversation is

entirely between ourselves. Mrs. Lecount must know nothing of the

impression she has produced on my niece. I have only mentioned it to

you to account for my apparently churlish conduct and to satisfy your

own mind. In confidence, Mr. Vanstone—strictly in confidence.

Good-morning!”

With these parting words, the captain bowed his visitor out. Unless

some unexpected disaster occurred, he now saw his way safely to the end

of the enterprise. He had gained two important steps in advance that

morning. He had sown the seeds of variance between the housekeeper and

her master, and he had given Noel Vanstone a common interest with

Magdalen and himself, in keeping a secret from Mrs. Lecount. “We have

caught our man,” thought Captain Wragge, cheerfully rubbing his

hands—“we have caught our man at last!”

On leaving North Shingles Noel Vanstone walked straight home, fully

restored to his place in his own estimation, and sternly determined to

carry matters with a high hand if he found himself in collision with

Mrs. Lecount.

The housekeeper received her master at the door with her mildest manner

and her gentlest smile. She addressed him with downcast eyes; she

opposed to his contemplated assertion of independence a barrier of

impenetrable respect.

“May I venture to ask, sir,” she began, “if your visit to North

Shingles has led you to form the same conclusion as mine on the subject

of Miss Bygrave’s illness?”

“Certainly not, Lecount. I consider your conclusion to have been both

hasty and prejudiced.”

“I am sorry to hear it, sir. I felt hurt by Mr. Bygrave’s rude

reception of me, but I was not aware that my judgment was prejudiced by

it. Perhaps he received _you_, sir, with a warmer welcome?”

“He received me like a gentleman—that is all I think it necessary to

say, Lecount—he received me like a gentleman.”

This answer satisfied Mrs. Lecount on the one doubtful point that had

perplexed her. Whatever Mr. Bygrave’s sudden coolness toward herself

might mean, his polite reception of her master implied that the risk of

detection had not daunted him, and that the plot was still in full

progress. The housekeeper’s eyes brightened; she had expressly

calculated on this result. After a moment’s thinking, she addressed her

master with another question: “You will probably visit Mr. Bygrave

again, sir?”

“Of course I shall visit him—if I please.”

“And perhaps see Miss Bygrave, if she gets better?”

“Why not? I should be glad to know why not? Is it necessary to ask your

leave first, Lecount?”

“By no means, sir. As you have often said (and as I have often agreed

with you), you are master. It may surprise you to hear it, Mr. Noel,

but I have a private reason for wishing that you should see Miss

Bygrave again.”

Mr. Noel started a little, and looked at his housekeeper with some

curiosity.

“I have a strange fancy of my own, sir, about that young lady,”

proceeded Mrs. Lecount. “If you will excuse my fancy, and indulge it,

you will do me a favor for which I shall be very grateful.”

“A fancy?” repeated her master, in growing surprise. “What fancy?”

“Only this, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.

She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel of

note-paper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, and

respectfully placed it in Noel Vanstone’s hands.

“If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. Noel,”

she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, “you will kindly

put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat pocket; you will open and

read it, for the first time, _when you are next in Miss Bygrave’s

company_, and you will say nothing of what has now passed between us to

any living creature, from this time to that. I promise to explain my

strange request, sir, when you have done what I ask, and when your next

interview with Miss Bygrave has come to an end.”

She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room.

Noel Vanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and from the

door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonishment. A mystery

in his own house! under his own nose! What did it mean?

It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning. While

the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North Shingles, the

housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under his feet. The folded

paper contained nothing less than a carefully written extract from the

personal description of Magdalen in Miss Garth’s letter. With a daring

ingenuity which even Captain Wragge might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had

found her instrument for exposing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting

person of the victim himself!

CHAPTER VII.

Late that evening, when Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge came back from their

walk in the dark, the captain stopped Magdalen on her way upstairs to

inform her of the proceedings of the day. He added the expression of

his opinion that the time had come for bringing Noel Vanstone, with the

least possible delay, to the point of making a proposal. She merely

answered that she understood him, and that she would do what was

required of her. Captain Wragge requested her in that case to oblige

him by joining a walking excursion in Mr. Noel Vanstone’s company at

seven o’clock the next morning. “I will be ready,” she replied. “Is

there anything more?” There was nothing more. Magdalen bade him

good-night and returned to her own room.

She had shown the same disinclination to remain any longer than was

necessary in the captain’s company throughout the three days of her

seclusion in the house.

During all that time, instead of appearing to weary of Mrs. Wragge’s

society, she had patiently, almost eagerly, associated herself with her

companion’s one absorbing pursuit. She who had often chafed and fretted

in past days under the monotony of her life in the freedom of

Combe-Raven, now accepted without a murmur the monotony of her life at

Mrs. Wragge’s work-table. She who had hated the sight of her needle and

thread in old times—who had never yet worn an article of dress of her

own making—now toiled as anxiously over the making of Mrs. Wragge’s

gown, and bore as patiently with Mrs. Wragge’s blunders, as if the sole

object of her existence had been the successful completion of that one

dress. Anything was welcome to her—the trivial difficulties of fitting

a gown: the small, ceaseless chatter of the poor half-witted creature

who was so proud of her assistance, and so happy in her

company—anything was welcome that shut her out from the coming future,

from the destiny to which she stood self-condemned. That sorely-wounded

nature was soothed by such a trifle now as the grasp of her companion’s

rough and friendly hand—that desolate heart was cheered, when night

parted them, by Mrs. Wragge’s kiss.

The captain’s isolated position in the house produced no depressing

effect on the captain’s easy and equal spirits. Instead of resenting

Magdalen’s systematic avoidance of his society, he looked to results,

and highly approved of it. The more she neglected him for his wife the

more directly useful she became in the character of Mrs. Wragge’s

self-appointed guardian. He had more than once seriously contemplated

revoking the concession which had been extorted from him, and removing

his wife, at his own sole responsibility, out of harm’s way; and he had

only abandoned the idea on discovering that Magdalen’s resolution to

keep Mrs. Wragge in her own company was really serious. While the two

were together, his main anxiety was set at rest. They kept their door

locked by his own desire while he was out of the house, and, whatever

Mrs. Wragge might do, Magdalen was to be trusted not to open it until

he came back. That night Captain Wragge enjoyed his cigar with a mind

at ease, and sipped his brandy-and-water in happy ignorance of the

pitfall which Mrs. Lecount had prepared for him in the morning.

Punctually at seven o’clock Noel Vanstone made his appearance. The

moment he entered the room Captain Wragge detected a change in his

visitor’s look and manner. “Something wrong!” thought the captain. “We

have not done with Mrs. Lecount yet.”

“How is Miss Bygrave this morning?” asked Noel Vanstone. “Well enough,

I hope, for our early walk?” His half-closed eyes, weak and watery with

the morning light and the morning air, looked about the room furtively,

and he shifted his place in a restless manner from one chair to

another, as he made those polite inquiries.

“My niece is better—she is dressing for the walk,” replied the captain,

steadily observing his restless little friend while he spoke. “Mr.

Vanstone!” he added, on a sudden, “I am a plain Englishman—excuse my

blunt way of speaking my mind. You don’t meet me this morning as

cordially as you met me yesterday. There is something unsettled in your

face. I distrust that housekeeper of yours, sir! Has she been presuming

on your forbearance? Has she been trying to poison your mind against me

or my niece?”

If Noel Vanstone had obeyed Mrs. Lecount’s injunctions, and had kept

her little morsel of note-paper folded in his pocket until the time

came to use it, Captain Wragge’s designedly blunt appeal might not have

found him unprepared with an answer. But curiosity had got the better

of him; he had opened the note at night, and again in the morning; it

had seriously perplexed and startled him; and it had left his mind far

too disturbed to allow him the possession of his ordinary resources. He

hesitated; and his answer, when he succeeded in making it, began with a

prevarication.

Captain Wragge stopped him before he had got beyond his first sentence.

“Pardon me, sir,” said the captain, in his loftiest manner. “If you

have secrets to keep, you have only to say so, and I have done. I

intrude on no man’s secrets. At the same time, Mr. Vanstone, you must

allow me to recall to your memory that I met you yesterday without any

reserves on my side. I admitted you to my frankest and fullest

confidence, sir—and, highly as I prize the advantages of your society,

I can’t consent to cultivate your friendship on any other than equal

terms.” He threw open his respectable frock-coat and surveyed his

visitor with a manly and virtuous severity.

“I mean no offense!” cried Noel Vanstone, piteously. “Why do you

interrupt me, Mr. Bygrave? Why don’t you let me explain? I mean no

offense.”

“No offense is taken, sir,” said the captain. “You have a perfect right

to the exercise of your own discretion. I am not offended—I only claim

for myself the same privilege which I accord to you.” He rose with

great dignity and rang the bell. “Tell Miss Bygrave,” he said to the

servant, “that our walk this morning is put off until another

opportunity, and that I won’t trouble her to come downstairs.”

This strong proceeding had the desired effect. Noel Vanstone vehemently

pleaded for a moment’s private conversation before the message was

delivered. Captain Wragge’s severity partially relaxed. He sent the

servant downstairs again, and, resuming his chair, waited confidently

for results. In calculating the facilities for practicing on his

visitor’s weakness, he had one great superiority over Mrs. Lecount. His

judgment was not warped by latent female jealousies, and he avoided the

error into which the housekeeper had fallen, self-deluded—the error of

underrating the impression on Noel Vanstone that Magdalen had produced.

One of the forces in this world which no middle-aged woman is capable

of estimating at its full value, when it acts against her, is the force

of beauty in a woman younger than herself.

“You are so hasty, Mr. Bygrave—you won’t give me time—you won’t wait

and hear what I have to say!” cried Noel Vanstone, piteously, when the

servant had closed the parlor door.

“My family failing, sir—the blood of the Bygraves. Accept my excuses.

We are alone, as you wished; pray proceed.”

Placed between the alternatives of losing Magdalen’s society or

betraying Mrs. Lecount, unenlightened by any suspicion of the

housekeeper’s ultimate object, cowed by the immovable scrutiny of

Captain Wragge’s inquiring eye, Noel Vanstone was not long in making

his choice. He confusedly described his singular interview of the

previous evening with Mrs. Lecount, and, taking the folded paper from

his pocket, placed it in the captain’s hand.

A suspicion of the truth dawned on Captain Wragge’s mind the moment he

saw the mysterious note. He withdrew to the window before he opened it.

The first lines that attracted his attention were these: “Oblige me,

Mr. Noel, by comparing the young lady who is now in your company with

the personal description which follows these lines, and which has been

communicated to me by a friend. You shall know the name of the person

described—which I have left a blank—as soon as the evidence of your own

eyes has forced you to believe what you would refuse to credit on the

unsupported testimony of Virginie Lecount.”

That was enough for the captain. Before he had read a word of the

description itself, he knew what Mrs. Lecount had done, and felt, with

a profound sense of humiliation, that his female enemy had taken him by

surprise.

There was no time to think; the whole enterprise was threatened with

irrevocable overthrow. The one resource in Captain Wragge’s present

situation was to act instantly on the first impulse of his own

audacity. Line by line he read on, and still the ready inventiveness

which had never deserted him yet failed to answer the call made on it

now. He came to the closing sentence—to the last words which mentioned

the two little moles on Magdalen’s neck. At that crowning point of the

description, an idea crossed his mind; his party-colored eyes twinkled;

his curly lips twisted up at the corners; Wragge was himself again. He

wheeled round suddenly from the window, and looked Noel Vanstone

straight in the face with a grimly-quiet suggestiveness of something

serious to come.

“Pray, sir, do you happen to know anything of Mrs. Lecount’s family?”

he inquired.

“A respectable family,” said Noel Vanstone—“that’s all I know. Why do

you ask?”

“I am not usually a betting man,” pursued Captain Wragge. “But on this

occasion I will lay you any wager you like there is madness in your

housekeeper’s family.”

“Madness!” repeated Noel Vanstone, amazedly

“Madness!” reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with his

forefinger. “I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity,

the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable

document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed

for Mrs. Lecount’s behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss

Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your

housekeeper—who has been formerly connected, perhaps, with an outbreak

of insanity in your housekeeper—and who is now evidently confused with

my niece in your housekeeper’s wandering mind. That is my conviction,

Mr. Vanstone. I may be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is

this—neither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the

production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you

are requested to make of it.”

“I don’t think Lecount’s mad,” said Noel Vanstone, with a very blank

look, and a very discomposed manner. “It couldn’t have escaped me, with

my habits of observation; it couldn’t possibly have escaped me if

Lecount had been mad.”

“Very good, my dear sir. In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane

delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has

some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way,

there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount’s description to the test,

not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction

on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell my niece that she is

to be made the subject of such a preposterous experiment as that note

of yours suggests. But you can use your own eyes, Mr. Vanstone; you can

keep your own counsel; and—mad or not—you can at least tell your

housekeeper, on the testimony of your own senses, that she is wrong.

Let me look at the description again. The greater part of it is not

worth two straws for any purpose of identification; hundreds of young

ladies have tall figures, fair complexions, light brown hair, and light

gray eyes. You will say, on the other hand, hundreds of young ladies

have not got two little moles close together on the left side of the

neck. Quite true. The moles supply us with what we scientific men call

a Crucial Test. When my niece comes downstairs, sir, you have my full

permission to take the liberty of looking at her neck.”

Noel Vanstone expressed his high approval of the Crucial Test by

smirking and simpering for the first time that morning.

“Of looking at her neck,” repeated the captain, returning the note to

his visitor, and then making for the door. “I will go upstairs myself,

Mr. Vanstone,” he continued, “and inspect Miss Bygrave’s walking-dress.

If she has innocently placed any obstacles in your way, if her hair is

a little too low, or her frill is a little too high, I will exert my

authority, on the first harmless pretext I can think of, to have those

obstacles removed. All I ask is, that you will choose your opportunity

discreetly, and that you will not allow my niece to suppose that her

neck is the object of a gentleman’s inspection.”

The moment he was out of the parlor Captain Wragge ascended the stairs

at the top of his speed and knocked at Magdalen’s door. She opened it

to him in her walking-dress, obedient to the signal agreed on between

them which summoned her downstairs.

“What have you done with your paints and powders?” asked the captain,

without wasting a word in preliminary explanations. “They were not in

the box of costumes which I sold for you at Birmingham. Where are

they?”

“I have got them here,” replied Magdalen. “What can you possibly mean

by wanting them now?”

“Bring them instantly into my dressing-room—the whole collection,

brushes, palette, and everything. Don’t waste time in asking questions;

I’ll tell you what has happened as we go on. Every moment is precious

to us. Follow me instantly!”

His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his strange

proposal. Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics and followed him

into the dressing-room. He locked the door, placed her on a chair close

to the light, and then told her what had happened.

“We are on the brink of detection,” proceeded the captain, carefully

mixing his colors with liquid glue, and with a strong “drier” added

from a bottle in his own possession. “There is only one chance for us

(lift up your hair from the left side of your neck)—I have told Mr.

Noel Vanstone to take a private opportunity of looking at you; and I am

going to give the lie direct to that she-devil Lecount by painting out

your moles.”

“They can’t be painted out,” said Magdalen. “No color will stop on

them.”

“_My_ color will,” remarked Captain Wragge. “I have tried a variety of

professions in my time—the profession of painting among the rest. Did

you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye? I lived some months once

in the neighborhood of Drury Lane entirely on Black Eyes. My

flesh-color stood on bruises of all sorts, shades, and sizes, and it

will stand, I promise you, on your moles.”

With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump of

opaque color which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had graduated

as nearly as the materials would permit to the color of Magdalen’s

skin. After first passing a cambric handkerchief, with some white

powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he designed to

operate, he placed two layers of color on the moles with the tip of the

brush. The process was performed in a few moments, and the moles, as if

by magic, disappeared from view. Nothing but the closest inspection

could have discovered the artifice by which they had been concealed; at

the distance of two or three feet only, it was perfectly invisible.

“Wait here five minutes,” said Captain Wragge, “to let the paint

dry—and then join us in the parlor. Mrs. Lecount herself would be

puzzled if she looked at you now.”

“Stop!” said Magdalen. “There is one thing you have not told me yet.

How did Mrs. Lecount get the description which you read downstairs?

Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen the mark on my

neck—it is too far back, and too high up; my hair hides it.”

“Who knows of the mark?” asked Captain Wragge.

She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollection of

Frank.

“My sister knows it,” she said, faintly.

“Mrs. Lecount may have written to your sister,” suggested the captain:

“Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger has a

right to know? Never! never!”

“Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs. Lecount? The mark was

mentioned in the handbills at York. Who put it there?”

“Not Norah! Perhaps Mr. Pendril. Perhaps Miss Garth.”

“Then Mrs. Lecount has written to Mr. Pendril or Miss Garth—more likely

to Miss Garth. The governess would be easier to deal with than the

lawyer.”

“What can she have said to Miss Garth?”

Captain Wragge considered a little.

“I can’t say what Mrs. Lecount may have written,” he said, “but I can

tell you what I should have written in Mrs. Lecount’s place. I should

have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to begin with,

and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to help a

benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends.” The angry

glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen’s eyes.

“What _you_ would have done is what Mrs. Lecount has done,” she said,

indignantly. “Neither lawyer nor governess shall dispute my right to my

own will and my own way. If Miss Garth thinks she can control my

actions by corresponding with Mrs. Lecount, I will show Miss Garth she

is mistaken! It is high time, Captain Wragge, to have done with these

wretched risks of discovery. We will take the short way to the end we

have in view sooner than Mrs. Lecount or Miss Garth think for. How long

can you give me to wring an offer of marriage out of that creature

downstairs?”

“I dare not give you long,” replied Captain Wragge. “Now your friends

know where you are, they may come down on us at a day’s notice. Could

you manage it in a week?”

“I’ll manage it in half the time,” she said, with a hard, defiant

laugh. “Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich, and

take Mrs. Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company. Is the

paint dry yet? Go downstairs and tell him I am coming directly.”

So, for the second time, Miss Garth’s well-meant efforts defeated their

own end. So the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that would

fain have held Magdalen back into the hand that drove her on.

The captain returned to his visitor in the parlor, after first stopping

on his way to issue his orders for the walking excursion to Mrs.

Wragge.

“I am shocked to have kept you waiting,” he said, sitting down again

confidentially by Noel Vanstone’s side. “My only excuse is, that my

niece had accidentally dressed her hair so as to defeat our object. I

have been persuading her to alter it, and young ladies are apt to be a

little obstinate on questions relating to their toilet. Give her a

chair on that side of you when she comes in, and take your look at her

neck comfortably before we start for our walk.”

Magdalen entered the room as he said those words, and after the first

greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with the most

unsuspicious readiness. Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial Test on the

spot, with the highest appreciation of the fair material which was the

subject of experiment. Not the vestige of a mole was visible on any

part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave’s neck. It mutely

answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone’s half-closed eyes by

the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs. Lecount. That one central

incident in the events of the morning was of all the incidents that had

hitherto occurred, the most important in its results. That one

discovery shook the housekeeper’s hold on her master as nothing had

shaken it yet.

In a few minutes Mrs. Wragge made her appearance, and excited as much

surprise in Noel Vanstone’s mind as he was capable of feeling while

absorbed in the enjoyment of Magdalen’s society. The walking-party left

the house at once, directing their steps northward, so as not to pass

the windows of Sea-view Cottage. To Mrs. Wragge’s unutterable

astonishment, her husband, for the first time in the course of their

married life, politely offered her his arm, and led her on in advance

of the young people, as if the privilege of walking alone with her

presented some special attraction to him! “Step out!” whispered the

captain, fiercely. “Leave your niece and Mr. Vanstone alone! If I catch

you looking back at them, I’ll put the Oriental Cashmere Robe on the

top of the kitchen fire! Turn your toes out, and keep step—confound

you, keep step!” Mrs. Wragge kept step to the best of her limited

ability. Her sturdy knees trembled under her. She firmly believed the

captain was intoxicated.

The walk lasted for rather more than an hour. Before nine o’clock they

were all back again at North Shingles. The ladies went at once into the

house. Noel Vanstone remained with Captain Wragge in the garden.

“Well,” said the captain, “what do you think now of Mrs. Lecount?”

“Damn Lecount!” replied Noel Vanstone, in great agitation. “I’m half

inclined to agree with you. I’m half inclined to think my infernal

housekeeper is mad.”

He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the merest allusion to Mrs.

Lecount was distasteful to him. His color came and went; his manner was

absent and undecided; he fidgeted restlessly about the garden walk. It

would have been plain to a far less acute observation than Captain

Wragge’s, that Magdalen had met his advances by an unexpected grace and

readiness of encouragement which had entirely overthrown his

self-control.

“I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life!” he exclaimed, with a

sudden outburst of enthusiasm. “I hope Miss Bygrave feels all the

better, for it. Do you go out at the same time to-morrow morning? May I

join you again?”

“By all means, Mr. Vanstone,” said the Captain, cordially. “Excuse me

for returning to the subject—but what do you propose saying to Mrs.

Lecount?”

“I don’t know. Lecount is a perfect nuisance! What would you do, Mr.

Bygrave, if you were in my place?”

“Allow me to ask a question, my dear sir, before I tell you. What is

your breakfast-hour?”

“Half-past nine.”

“Is Mrs. Lecount an early riser?”

“No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I hate lazy women! If you were in

my place, what should you say to her?”

“I should say nothing,” replied Captain Wragge. “I should return at

once by the back way; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in the front

garden as if I was taking a turn before breakfast; and I should leave

her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. If she asks you

whether you mean to come here today, say No. Secure a quiet life until

circumstances force you to give her an answer. Then tell the plain

truth—say that Mr. Bygrave’s niece and Mrs. Lecount’s description are

at variance with each other in the most important particular, and beg

that the subject may not be mentioned again. There is my advice. What

do you think of it?”

If Noel Vanstone could have looked into his counselor’s mind, he might

have thought the captain’s advice excellently adapted to serve the

captain’s interests. As long as Mrs. Lecount could be kept in ignorance

of her master’s visits to North Shingles, so long she would wait until

the opportunity came for trying her experiment, and so long she might

be trusted not to endanger the conspiracy by any further proceedings.

Necessarily incapable of viewing Captain Wragge’s advice under this

aspect, Noel Vanstone simply looked at it as offering him a temporary

means of escape from an explanation with his housekeeper. He eagerly

declared that the course of action suggested to him should be followed

to the letter, and returned to Sea View without further delay.

On this occasion Captain Wragge’s anticipations were in no respect

falsified by Mrs. Lecount’s conduct. She had no suspicion of her

master’s visit to North Shingles: she had made up her mind, if

necessary, to wait patiently for his interview with Miss Bygrave until

the end of the week; and she did not embarrass him by any unexpected

questions when he announced his intention of holding no personal

communication with the Bygraves on that day. All she said was, “Don’t

you feel well enough, Mr. Noel? or don’t you feel inclined?” He

answered, shortly, “I don’t feel well enough”; and there the

conversation ended.

The next day the proceedings of the previous morning were exactly

repeated. This time Noel Vanstone went home rapturously with a keepsake

in his breast-pocket; he had taken tender possession of one of Miss

Bygrave’s gloves. At intervals during the day, whenever he was alone,

he took out the glove and kissed it with a devotion which was almost

passionate in its fervor. The miserable little creature luxuriated in

his moments of stolen happiness with a speechless and stealthy delight

which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met

with, in his father’s narrow circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous

pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest

impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which

their lap-dogs might have rivaled him; the deepest interest he could

create in them was the interest they might have felt in a new trinket

or a new dress. The only women who had hitherto invited his admiration,

and taken his compliments seriously had been women whose charms were on

the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. For the

first time in his life he had now passed hours of happiness in the

society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her afterward

without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him in his own

esteem.

Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change produced in his look and

manner by the new feeling awakened in him was not a change which could

be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the second day she pointedly asked

him whether he had not made an arrangement to call on the Bygraves. He

denied it as before. “Perhaps you are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?”

persisted the housekeeper. He was at the end of his resources; he was

impatient to be rid of her inquiries; he trusted to his friend at North

Shingles to help him; and this time he answered Yes. “If you see the

young lady,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, “don’t forget that note of mine,

sir, which you have in your waistcoat-pocket.” No more was said on

either side, but by that night’s post the housekeeper wrote to Miss

Garth. The letter merely acknowledged, with thanks, the receipt of Miss

Garth’s communication, and informed her that in a few days Mrs. Lecount

hoped to be in a position to write again and summon Mr. Pendril to

Aldborough.

Late in the evening, when the parlor at North Shingles began to get

dark, and when the captain rang the bell for candles as usual, he was

surprised by hearing Magdalen’s voice in the passage telling the

servant to take the lights downstairs again. She knocked at the door

immediately afterward, and glided into the obscurity of the room like a

ghost.

“I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow,” she

said. “My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you will not

object to dispense with the candles for a few minutes.”

She spoke in low, stifled tones, and felt her way noiselessly to a

chair far removed from the captain in the darkest part of the room.

Sitting near the window, he could just discern the dim outline of her

dress, he could just hear the faint accents of her voice. For the last

two days he had seen nothing of her except during their morning walk.

On that afternoon he had found his wife crying in the little backroom

down-stairs. She could only tell him that Magdalen had frightened

her—that Magdalen was going the way again which she had gone when the

letter came from China in the terrible past time at Vauxhall Walk.

“I was sorry to hear that you were ill to-day, from Mrs. Wragge,” said

the captain, unconsciously dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he

spoke.

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered quietly, out of the darkness. “I am

strong enough to suffer, and live. Other girls in my place would have

been happier—they would have suffered, and died. It doesn’t matter; it

will be all the same a hundred years hence. Is he coming again tomorrow

morning at seven o’clock?”

“He is coming, if you feel no objection to it.”

“I have no objection to make; I have done with objecting. But I should

like to have the time altered. I don’t look my best in the early

morning—-I have bad nights, and I rise haggard and worn. Write him a

note this evening, and tell him to come at twelve o’clock.”

“Twelve is rather late, under the circumstances, for you to be seen out

walking.”

“I have no intention of walking. Let him be shown into the parlor—”

Her voice died away in silence before she ended the sentence.

“Yes?” said Captain Wragge.

“And leave me alone in the parlor to receive him.”

“I understand,” said the captain. “An admirable idea. I’ll be out of

the way in the dining-room while he is here, and you can come and tell

me about it when he has gone.”

There was another moment of silence.

“Is there no way but telling you?” she asked, suddenly. “I can control

myself while he is with me, but I can’t answer for what I may say or do

afterward. Is there no other way?”

“Plenty of ways,” said the captain. “Here is the first that occurs to

me. Leave the blind down over the window of your room upstairs before

he comes. I will go out on the beach, and wait there within sight of

the house. When I see him come out again, I will look at the window. If

he has said nothing, leave the blind down. If he has made you an offer,

draw the blind up. The signal is simplicity itself; we can’t

misunderstand each other. Look your best to-morrow! Make sure of him,

my dear girl—make sure of him, if you possibly can.”

He had spoken loud enough to feel certain that she had heard him, but

no answering word came from her. The dead silence was only disturbed by

the rustling of her dress, which told him she had risen from her chair.

Her shadowy presence crossed the room again; the door shut softly; she

was gone. He rang the bell hurriedly for the lights. The servant found

him standing close at the window, looking less self-possessed than

usual. He told her he felt a little poorly, and sent her to the

cupboard for the brandy.

At a few minutes before twelve the next day Captain Wragge withdrew to

his post of observation, concealing himself behind a fishing-boat drawn

up on the beach. Punctually as the hour struck, he saw Noel Vanstone

approach North Shingles and open the garden gate. When the house door

had closed on the visitor, Captain Wragge settled himself comfortably

against the side of the boat and lit his cigar.

He smoked for half an hour—for ten minutes over the half-hour, by his

watch. He finished the cigar down to the last morsel of it that he

could hold in his lips. Just as he had thrown away the end, the door

opened again and Noel Vanstone came out.

The captain looked up instantly at Magdalen’s window. In the absorbing

excitement of the moment, he counted the seconds. She might get from

the parlor to her own room in less than a minute. He counted to thirty,

and nothing happened. He counted to fifty, and nothing happened. He

gave up counting, and left the boat impatiently, to return to the

house.

As he took his first step forward he saw the signal.

The blind was drawn up.

Cautiously ascending the eminence of the beach, Captain Wragge looked

toward Sea-view Cottage before he showed himself on the Parade. Noel

Vanstone had reached home again; he was just entering his own door.

“If all your money was offered me to stand in your shoes,” said the

captain, looking after him—“rich as you are, I wouldn’t take it!”

CHAPTER VIII.

On returning to the house, Captain Wragge received a significant

message from the servant. “Mr. Noel Vanstone would call again at two

o’clock that afternoon, when he hoped to have the pleasure of finding

Mr. Bygrave at home.”

The captain’s first inquiry after hearing this message referred to

Magdalen. “Where was Miss Bygrave?” “In her own room.” “Where was Mrs.

Bygrave?” “In the back parlor.” Captain Wragge turned his steps at once

in the latter direction, and found his wife, for the second time, in

tears. She had been sent out of Magdalen’s room for the whole day, and

she was at her wits’ end to know what she had done to deserve it.

Shortening her lamentations without ceremony, her husband sent her

upstairs on the spot, with instructions to knock at the door, and to

inquire whether Magdalen could give five minutes’ attention to a

question of importance which must be settled before two o’clock.

The answer returned was in the negative. Magdalen requested that the

subject on which she was asked to decide might be mentioned to her in

writing. She engaged to reply in the same way, on the understanding

that Mrs. Wragge, and not the servant, should be employed to deliver

the note and to take back the answer.

Captain Wragge forthwith opened his paper-case and wrote these lines:

“Accept my warmest congratulations on the result of your interview with

Mr. N. V. He is coming again at two o’clock—no doubt to make his

proposals in due form. The question to decide is, whether I shall press

him or not on the subject of settlements. The considerations for your

own mind are two in number. First, whether the said pressure (without

at all underrating your influence over him) may not squeeze for a long

time before it squeezes money out of Mr. N. V. Secondly, whether we are

altogether justified—considering our present position toward a certain

sharp practitioner in petticoats—in running the risk of delay. Consider

these points, and let me have your decision as soon as convenient.”

The answer returned to this note was written in crooked, blotted

characters, strangely unlike Magdalen’s usually firm and clear

handwriting. It only contained these words: “Give yourself no trouble

about settlements. Leave the use to which he is to put his money for

the future in my hands.”

“Did you see her?” asked the captain, when his wife had delivered the

answer.

“I tried,” said Mrs. Wragge, with a fresh burst of tears—“but she only

opened the door far enough to put out her hand. I took and gave it a

little squeeze—and, oh poor soul, it felt so cold in mine!”

When Mrs. Lecount’s master made his appearance at two o’clock, he stood

alarmingly in need of an anodyne application from Mrs. Lecount’s green

fan. The agitation of making his avowal to Magdalen; the terror of

finding himself discovered by the housekeeper; the tormenting suspicion

of the hard pecuniary conditions which Magdalen’s relative and guardian

might impose on him—all these emotions, stirring in conflict together,

had overpowered his feebly-working heart with a trial that strained it

sorely. He gasped for breath as he sat down in the parlor at North

Shingles, and that ominous bluish pallor which always overspread his

face in moments of agitation now made its warning appearance again.

Captain Wragge seized the brandy bottle in genuine alarm, and forced

his visitor to drink a wine-glassful of the spirit before a word was

said between them on either side.

Restored by the stimulant, and encouraged by the readiness with which

the captain anticipated everything that he had to say, Noel Vanstone

contrived to state the serious object of his visit in tolerably plain

terms. All the conventional preliminaries proper to the occasion were

easily disposed of. The suitor’s family was respectable; his position

in life was undeniably satisfactory; his attachment, though hasty, was

evidently disinterested and sincere. All that Captain Wragge had to do

was to refer to these various considerations with a happy choice of

language in a voice that trembled with manly emotion, and this he did

to perfection. For the first half-hour of the interview, no allusion

whatever was made to the delicate and dangerous part of the subject.

The captain waited until he had composed his visitor, and when that

result was achieved came smoothly to the point in these terms:

“There is one little difficulty, Mr. Vanstone, which I think we have

both overlooked. Your housekeeper’s recent conduct inclines me to fear

that she will view the approaching change in your life with anything

but a friendly eye. Probably you have not thought it necessary yet to

inform her of the new tie which you propose to form?”

Noel Vanstone turned pale at the bare idea of explaining himself to

Mrs. Lecount.

“I can’t tell what I’m to do,” he said, glancing aside nervously at the

window, as if he expected to see the housekeeper peeping in. “I hate

all awkward positions, and this is the most unpleasant position I ever

was placed in. You don’t know what a terrible woman Lecount is. I’m not

afraid of her; pray don’t suppose I’m afraid of her—”

At those words his fears rose in his throat, and gave him the lie

direct by stopping his utterance.

“Pray don’t trouble yourself to explain,” said Captain Wragge, coming

to the rescue. “This is the common story, Mr. Vanstone. Here is a woman

who has grown old in your service, and in your father’s service before

you; a woman who has contrived, in all sorts of small, underhand ways,

to presume systematically on her position for years and years past; a

woman, in short, whom your inconsiderate but perfectly natural kindness

has allowed to claim a right of property in you—”

“Property!” cried Noel Vanstone, mistaking the captain, and letting the

truth escape him through sheer inability to conceal his fears any

longer. “I don’t know what amount of property she won’t claim. She’ll

make me pay for my father as well as for myself. Thousands, Mr.

Bygrave—thousands of pounds sterling out of my pocket!!!” He clasped

his hands in despair at the picture of pecuniary compulsion which his

fancy had conjured up—his own golden life-blood spouting from him in

great jets of prodigality, under the lancet of Mrs. Lecount.

“Gently, Mr. Vanstone—gently! The woman knows nothing so far, and the

money is not gone yet.”

“No, no; the money is not gone, as you say. I’m only nervous about it;

I can’t help being nervous. You were saying something just now; you

were going to give me advice. I value your advice; you don’t know how

highly I value your advice.” He said those words with a conciliatory

smile which was more than helpless; it was absolutely servile in its

dependence on his judicious friend.

“I was only assuring you, my dear sir, that I understood your

position,” said the captain. “I see your difficulty as plainly as you

can see it yourself. Tell a woman like Mrs. Lecount that she must come

off her domestic throne, to make way for a young and beautiful

successor, armed with the authority of a wife, and an unpleasant scene

must be the inevitable result. An unpleasant scene, Mr. Vanstone, if

your opinion of your housekeeper’s sanity is well founded. Something

far more serious, if my opinion that her intellect is unsettled happens

to turn out the right one.”

“I don’t say it isn’t my opinion, too,” rejoined Noel Vanstone.

“Especially after what has happened to-day.”

Captain Wragge immediately begged to know what the event alluded to

might be.

Noel Vanstone thereupon explained—with an infinite number of

parentheses all referring to himself—that Mrs. Lecount had put the

dreaded question relating to the little note in her master’s pocket

barely an hour since. He had answered her inquiry as Mr. Bygrave had

advised him. On hearing that the accuracy of the personal description

had been fairly put to the test, and had failed in the one important

particular of the moles on the neck, Mrs. Lecount had considered a

little, and had then asked him whether he had shown her note to Mr.

Bygrave before the experiment was tried. He had answered in the

negative, as the only safe form of reply that he could think of on the

spur of the moment, and the housekeeper had then addressed him in these

strange and startling words: “You are keeping the truth from me, Mr.

Noel. You are trusting strangers, and doubting your old servant and

your old friend. Every time you go to Mr. Bygrave’s house, every time

you see Miss Bygrave, you are drawing nearer and nearer to your

destruction. They have got the bandage over your eyes in spite of me;

but I tell them, and tell you, before many days are over I will take it

off!” To this extraordinary outbreak—accompanied as it was by an

expression in Mrs. Lecount’s face which he had never seen there

before—Noel Vanstone had made no reply. Mr. Bygrave’s conviction that

there was a lurking taint of insanity in the housekeeper’s blood had

recurred to his memory, and he had left the room at the first

opportunity.

Captain Wragge listened with the closest attention to the narrative

thus presented to him. But one conclusion could be drawn from it—it was

a plain warning to him to hasten the end.

“I am not surprised,” he said, gravely, “to hear that you are inclining

more favorably to my opinion. After what you have just told me, Mr.

Vanstone, no sensible man could do otherwise. This is becoming serious.

I hardly know what results may not be expected to follow the

communication of your approaching change in life to Mrs. Lecount. My

niece may be involved in those results. She is nervous; she is

sensitive in the highest degree; she is the innocent object of this

woman’s unreasoning hatred and distrust. You alarm me, sir! I am not

easily thrown off my balance, but I acknowledge you alarm me for the

future.” He frowned, shook his head, and looked at his visitor

despondently.

Noel Vanstone began to feel uneasy. The change in Mr. Bygrave’s manner

seemed ominous of a reconsideration of his proposals from a new and

unfavorable point of view. He took counsel of his inborn cowardice and

his inborn cunning, and proposed a solution of the difficulty

discovered by himself.

“Why should we tell Lecount at all?” he asked. “What right has Lecount

to know? Can’t we be married without letting her into the secret? And

can’t somebody tell her afterward when we are both out of her reach?”

Captain Wragge received this proposal with an expression of surprise

which did infinite credit to his power of control over his own

countenance. His foremost object throughout the interview had been to

conduct it to this point, or, in other words, to make the first idea of

keeping the marriage a secret from Mrs. Lecount emanate from Noel

Vanstone instead of from himself. No one knew better than the captain

that the only responsibilities which a weak man ever accepts are

responsibilities which can be perpetually pointed out to him as resting

exclusively on his own shoulders.

“I am accustomed to set my face against clandestine proceedings of all

kinds,” said Captain Wragge. “But there are exceptions to the strictest

rules; and I am bound to admit, Mr. Vanstone, that your position in

this matter is an exceptional position, if ever there was one yet. The

course you have just proposed—however unbecoming I may think it,

however distasteful it may be to myself—would not only spare you a very

serious embarrassment (to say the least of it), but would also protect

you from the personal assertion of those pecuniary claims on the part

of your housekeeper to which you have already adverted. These are both

desirable results to achieve—to say nothing of the removal, on my side,

of all apprehension of annoyance to my niece. On the other hand,

however, a marriage solemnized with such privacy as you propose must be

a hasty marriage; for, as we are situated, the longer the delay the

greater will be the risk that our secret may escape our keeping. I am

not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an

adequate income. My own was a love-match contracted in a hurry. There

are plenty of instances in the experience of every one, of short

courtships and speedy marriages, which have turned up trumps—I beg your

pardon—which have turned out well after all. But if you and my niece,

Mr. Vanstone, are to add one to the number of these eases, the usual

preliminaries of marriage among the higher classes must be hastened by

some means. You doubtless understand me as now referring to the subject

of settlements.”

“I’ll take another teaspoonful of brandy,” said Noel Vanstone, holding

out his glass with a trembling hand as the word “settlements” passed

Captain Wragge’s lips.

“I’ll take a teaspoonful with you,” said the captain, nimbly

dismounting from the pedestal of his respectability, and sipping his

brandy with the highest relish. Noel Vanstone, after nervously

following his host’s example, composed himself to meet the coming

ordeal, with reclining head and grasping hands, in the position

familiarly associated to all civilized humanity with a seat in a

dentist’s chair.

The captain put down his empty glass and got up again on his pedestal.

“We were talking of settlements,” he resumed. “I have already

mentioned, Mr. Vanstone, at an early period of our conversation, that

my niece presents the man of her choice with no other dowry than the

most inestimable of all gifts—the gift of herself. This circumstance,

however (as you are no doubt aware), does not disentitle me to make the

customary stipulations with her future husband. According to the usual

course in this matter, my lawyer would see yours—consultations would

take place—delays would occur—strangers would be in possession of your

intentions—and Mrs. Lecount would, sooner or later, arrive at that

knowledge of the truth which you are anxious to keep from her. Do you

agree with me so far?”

Unutterable apprehension closed Noel Vanstone’s lips. He could only

reply by an inclination of the head.

“Very good,” said the captain. “Now, sir, you may possibly have

observed that I am a man of a very original turn of mind. If I have not

hitherto struck you in that light, it may then be necessary to mention

that there are some subjects on which I persist in thinking for myself.

The subject of marriage settlements is one of them. What, let me ask

you, does a parent or guardian in my present condition usually do?

After having trusted the man whom he has chosen for his son-in-law with

the sacred deposit of a woman’s happiness, he turns round on that man,

and declines to trust him with the infinitely inferior responsibility

of providing for her pecuniary future. He fetters his son-in-law with

the most binding document the law can produce, and employs with the

husband of his own child the same precautions which he would use if he

were dealing with a stranger and a rogue. I call such conduct as this

inconsistent and unbecoming in the last degree. You will not find it my

course of conduct, Mr. Vanstone—you will not find me preaching what I

don’t practice. If I trust you with my niece, I trust you with every

inferior responsibility toward her and toward me. Give me your hand,

sir; tell me, on your word of honor, that you will provide for your

wife as becomes her position and your means, and the question of

settlements is decided between us from this moment at once and

forever!” Having carried out Magdalen’s instructions in this lofty

tone, he threw open his respectable frockcoat, and sat with head erect

and hand extended, the model of parental feeling and the picture of

human integrity.

For one moment Noel Vanstone remained literally petrified by

astonishment. The next, he started from his chair and wrung the hand of

his magnanimous friend in a perfect transport of admiration. Never yet,

throughout his long and varied career, had Captain Wragge felt such

difficulty in keeping his countenance as he felt now. Contempt for the

outburst of miserly gratitude of which he was the object; triumph in

the sense of successful conspiracy against a man who had rated the

offer of his protection at five pounds; regret at the lost opportunity

of effecting a fine stroke of moral agriculture, which his dread of

involving himself in coming consequences had forced him to let slip—all

these varied emotions agitated the captain’s mind; all strove together

to find their way to the surface through the outlets of his face or his

tongue. He allowed Noel Vanstone to keep possession of his hand, and to

heap one series of shrill protestations and promises on another, until

he had regained his usual mastery over himself. That result achieved,

he put the little man back in his chair, and returned forthwith to the

subject of Mrs. Lecount.

“Suppose we now revert to the difficulty which we have not conquered

yet,” said the captain. “Let us say that I do violence to my own habits

and feelings; that I allow the considerations I have already mentioned

to weigh with me; and that I sanction your wish to be united to my

niece without the knowledge of Mrs. Lecount. Allow me to inquire in

that case what means you can suggest for the accomplishment of your

end?”

“I can’t suggest anything,” replied Noel Vanstone, helplessly. “Would

you object to suggest for me?”

“You are making a bolder request than you think, Mr. Vanstone. I never

do things by halves. When I am acting with my customary candor, I am

frank (as you know already) to the utmost verge of imprudence. When

exceptional circumstances compel me to take an opposite course, there

isn’t a slyer fox alive than I am. If, at your express request, I take

off my honest English coat here and put on a Jesuit’s gown—if, purely

out of sympathy for your awkward position, I consent to keep your

secret for you from Mrs. Lecount—I must have no unseasonable scruples

to contend with on your part. If it is neck or nothing on my side, sir,

it must be neck or nothing on yours also.”

“Neck or nothing, by all means,” said Noel Vanstone, briskly—“on the

understanding that you go first. I have no scruples about keeping

Lecount in the dark. But she is devilish cunning, Mr. Bygrave. How is

it to be done?”

“You shall hear directly,” replied the captain. “Before I develop my

views, I should like to have your opinion on an abstract question of

morality. What do you think, my dear sir, of pious frauds in general?”

Noel Vanstone looked a little embarrassed by the question.

“Shall I put it more plainly?” continued Captain Wragge. “What do you

say to the universally-accepted maxim that ‘all stratagems are fair in

love and war’?—Yes or No?”

“Yes!” answered Noel Vanstone, with the utmost readiness.

“One more question and I have done,” said the captain. “Do you see any

particular objection to practicing a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount?”

Noel Vanstone’s resolution began to falter a little.

“Is Lecount likely to find it out?” he asked cautiously.

“She can’t possibly discover it until you are married and out of her

reach.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Quite sure.”

“Play any trick you like on Lecount,” said Noel Vanstone, with an air

of unutterable relief. “I have had my suspicions lately that she is

trying to domineer over me; I am beginning to feel that I have borne

with Lecount long enough. I wish I was well rid of her.”

“You shall have your wish,” said Captain Wragge. “You shall be rid of

her in a week or ten days.”

Noel Vanstone rose eagerly and approached the captain’s chair.

“You don’t say so!” he exclaimed. “How do you mean to send her away?”

“I mean to send her on a journey,” replied Captain Wragge.

“Where?”

“From your house at Aldborough to her brother’s bedside at Zurich.”

Noel Vanstone started back at the answer, and returned suddenly to his

chair.

“How can you do that?” he inquired, in the greatest perplexity. “Her

brother (hang him!) is much better. She had another letter from Zurich

to say so, this morning.”

“Did you see the letter?”

“Yes. She always worries about her brother—she _would_ show it to me.”

“Who was it from? and what did it say?”

“It was from the doctor—he always writes to her. I don’t care two

straws about her brother, and I don’t remember much of the letter,

except that it was a short one. The fellow was much better; and if the

doctor didn’t write again, she might take it for granted that he was

getting well. That was the substance of it.”

“Did you notice where she put the letter when you gave it her back

again?”

“Yes. She put it in the drawer where she keeps her account-books.”

“Can you get at that drawer?”

“Of course I can. I have got a duplicate key—I always insist on a

duplicate key of the place where she keeps her account books. I never

allow the account-books to be locked up from my inspection: it’s a rule

of the house.”

“Be so good as to get that letter to-day, Mr. Vanstone, without your

housekeeper’s knowledge, and add to the favor by letting me have it

here privately for an hour or two.”

“What do you want it for?”

“I have some more questions to ask before I tell you. Have you any

intimate friend at Zurich whom you could trust to help you in playing a

trick on Mrs. Lecount?”

“What sort of help do you mean?” asked Noel Vanstone.

“Suppose,” said the captain, “you were to send a letter addressed to

Mrs. Lecount at Aldborough, inclosed in another letter addressed to one

of your friends abroad? And suppose you were to instruct that friend to

help a harmless practical joke by posting Mrs. Lecount’s letter at

Zurich? Do you know any one who could be trusted to do that?”

“I know two people who could be trusted!” cried Noel Vanstone. “Both

ladies—both spinsters—both bitter enemies of Lecount’s. But what is

your drift, Mr. Bygrave? Though I am not usually wanting in

penetration, I don’t altogether see your drift.”

“You shall see it directly, Mr. Vanstone.”

With those words he rose, withdrew to his desk in the corner of the

room, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper. After first

reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to come

and read them too.

“A few minutes since,” said the captain, pointing complacently to his

own composition with the feather end of his pen, “I had the honor of

suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. There it is!”

He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor. Noel

Vanstone sat down, and read these lines:

“MY DEAR MADAM—Since I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform you that

your brother has suffered a relapse. The symptoms are so serious, that

it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his bedside. I am

making every effort to resist the renewed progress of the malady, and I

have not yet lost all hope of success. But I cannot reconcile it to my

conscience to leave you in ignorance of a serious change in my patient

for the worse, which _may_ be attended by fatal results. With much

sympathy, I remain, etc. etc.”

Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which this

letter might produce. Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, even Noel

Vanstone might feel some compunction at practicing such a deception as

was here suggested on a woman who stood toward him in the position of

Mrs. Lecount. She had served him faithfully, however interested her

motives might be—she had lived since he was a lad in the full

possession of his father’s confidence—she was living now under the

protection of his own roof. Could he fail to remember this; and,

remembering it, could he lend his aid without hesitation to the scheme

which was now proposed to him? Captain Wragge unconsciously retained

belief enough in human nature to doubt it. To his surprise, and, it

must be added, to his relief, also, his apprehensions proved to be

groundless. The only emotions aroused in Noel Vanstone’s mind by a

perusal of the letter were a hearty admiration of his friend’s idea,

and a vainglorious anxiety to claim the credit to himself of being the

person who carried it out. Examples may be found every day of a fool

who is no coward; examples may be found occasionally of a fool who is

not cunning; but it may reasonably be doubted whether there is a

producible instance anywhere of a fool who is not cruel.

“Perfect!” cried Noel Vanstone, clapping his hands. “Mr. Bygrave, you

are as good as Figaro in the French comedy. Talking of French, there is

one serious mistake in this clever letter of yours—it is written in the

wrong language. When the doctor writes to Lecount, he writes in French.

Perhaps you meant me to translate it? You can’t manage without my help,

can you? I write French as fluently as I write English. Just look at

me! I’ll translate it, while I sit here, in two strokes of the pen.”

He completed the translation almost as rapidly as Captain Wragge had

produced the original. “Wait a minute!” he cried, in high critical

triumph at discovering another defect in the composition of his

ingenious friend. “The doctor always dates his letters. Here is no date

to yours.”

“I leave the date to you,” said the captain, with a sardonic smile.

“You have discovered the fault, my dear sir—pray correct it!”

Noel Vanstone mentally looked into the great gulf which separates the

faculty that can discover a defect, from the faculty that can apply a

remedy, and, following the example of many a wiser man, declined to

cross over it.

“I couldn’t think of taking the liberty,” he said, politely. “Perhaps

you had a motive for leaving the date out?”

“Perhaps I had,” replied Captain Wragge, with his easiest good-humor.

“The date must depend on the time a letter takes to get to Zurich. _I_

have had no experience on that point—_you_ must have had plenty of

experience in your father’s time. Give me the benefit of your

information, and we will add the date before you leave the

writing-table.”

Noel Vanstone’s experience was, as Captain Wragge had anticipated,

perfectly competent to settle the question of time. The railway

resources of the Continent (in the year eighteen hundred and

forty-seven) were but scanty; and a letter sent at that period from

England to Zurich, and from Zurich back again to England, occupied ten

days in making the double journey by post.

“Date the letter in French five days on from to-morrow,” said the

captain, when he had got his information. “Very good. The next thing is

to let me have the doctor’s note as soon as you can. I may be obliged

to practice some hours before I can copy your translation in an exact

imitation of the doctor’s handwriting. Have you got any foreign

note-paper? Let me have a few sheets, and send, at the same time, an

envelope addressed to one of those lady-friends of yours at Zurich,

accompanied by the necessary request to post the inclosure. This is all

I need trouble you to do, Mr. Vanstone. Don’t let me seem inhospitable;

but the sooner you can supply me with my materials, the better I shall

be pleased. We entirely understand each other, I suppose? Having

accepted your proposal for my niece’s hand, I sanction a private

marriage in consideration of the circumstances on your side. A little

harmless stratagem is necessary to forward your views. I invent the

stratagem at your request, and you make use of it without the least

hesitation. The result is, that in ten days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount

will be on her way to Switzerland; in fifteen days from to-morrow Mrs.

Lecount will reach Zurich, and discover the trick we have played her;

in twenty days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be back at Aldborough,

and will find her master’s wedding-cards on the table, and her master

himself away on his honey-moon trip. I put it arithmetically, for the

sake of putting it plain. God bless you. Good-morning!”

“I suppose I may have the happiness of seeing Miss Bygrave to-morrow?”

said Noel Vanstone, turning round at the door.

“We must be careful,” replied Captain Wragge. “I don’t forbid

to-morrow, but I make no promise beyond that. Permit me to remind you

that we have got Mrs. Lecount to manage for the next ten days.”

“I wish Lecount was at the bottom of the German Ocean!” exclaimed Noel

Vanstone, fervently. “It’s all very well for you to manage her—you

don’t live in the house. What am I to do?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow,” said the captain. “Go out for your walk

alone, and drop in here, as you dropped in to-day, at two o’clock. In

the meantime, don’t forget those things I want you to send me. Seal

them up together in a large envelope. When you have done that, ask Mrs.

Lecount to walk out with you as usual; and while she is upstairs

putting her bonnet on, send the servant across to me. You understand?

Good-morning.”

An hour afterward, the sealed envelope, with its inclosures, reached

Captain Wragge in perfect safety. The double task of exactly imitating

a strange handwriting, and accurately copying words written in a

language with which he was but slightly acquainted, presented more

difficulties to be overcome than the captain had anticipated. It was

eleven o’clock before the employment which he had undertaken was

successfully completed, and the letter to Zurich ready for the post.

Before going to bed, he walked out on the deserted Parade to breathe

the cool night air. All the lights were extinguished in Sea-view

Cottage, when he looked that way, except the light in the housekeeper’s

window. Captain Wragge shook his head suspiciously. He had gained

experience enough by this time to distrust the wakefulness of Mrs.

Lecount.

CHAPTER IX.

If Captain Wragge could have looked into Mrs. Lecount’s room while he

stood on the Parade watching the light in her window, he would have

seen the housekeeper sitting absorbed in meditation over a worthless

little morsel of brown stuff which lay on her toilet-table.

However exasperating to herself the conclusion might be, Mrs. Lecount

could not fail to see that she had been thus far met and baffled

successfully at every point. What was she to do next? If she sent for

Mr. Pendril when he came to Aldborough (with only a few hours spared

from his business at her disposal), what definite course would there be

for him to follow? If she showed Noel Vanstone the original letter from

which her note had been copied, he would apply instantly to the writer

for an explanation: would expose the fabricated story by which Mrs.

Lecount had succeeded in imposing on Miss Garth; and would, in any

event, still declare, on the evidence of his own eyes, that the test by

the marks on the neck had utterly failed. Miss Vanstone, the elder,

whose unexpected presence at Aldborough might have done wonders—whose

voice in the hall at North Shingles, even if she had been admitted no

further, might have reached her sister’s ears and led to instant

results—Miss Vanstone, the elder, was out of the country, and was not

likely to return for a month at least. Look as anxiously as Mrs.

Lecount might along the course which she had hitherto followed, she

failed to see her way through the accumulated obstacles which now

barred her advance.

Other women in this position might have waited until circumstances

altered, and helped them. Mrs. Lecount boldly retraced her steps, and

determined to find her way to her end in a new direction. Resigning for

the present all further attempt to prove that the false Miss Bygrave

was the true Magdalen Vanstone, she resolved to narrow the range of her

next efforts; to leave the actual question of Magdalen’s identity

untouched; and to rest satisfied with convincing her master of this

simple fact—that the young lady who was charming him at North Shingles,

and the disguised woman who had terrified him in Vauxhall Walk, were

one and the same person.

The means of effecting this new object were, to all appearance, far

less easy of attainment than the means of effecting the object which

Mrs. Lecount had just resigned. Here no help was to be expected from

others, no ostensibly benevolent motives could be put forward as a

blind—no appeal could be made to Mr. Pendril or to Miss Garth. Here the

housekeeper’s only chance of success depended, in the first place, on

her being able to effect a stolen entrance into Mr. Bygrave’s house,

and, in the second place, on her ability to discover whether that

memorable alpaca dress from which she had secretly cut the fragment of

stuff happened to form part of Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe.

Taking the difficulties now before her in their order as they occurred,

Mrs. Lecount first resolved to devote the next few days to watching the

habits of the inmates of North Shingles, from early in the morning to

late at night, and to testing the capacity of the one servant in the

house to resist the temptation of a bribe. Assuming that results proved

successful, and that, either by money or by stratagem, she gained

admission to North Shingles (without the knowledge of Mr. Bygrave or

his niece), she turned next to the second difficulty of the two—the

difficulty of obtaining access to Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe.

If the servant proved corruptible, all obstacles in this direction

might be considered as removed beforehand. But if the servant proved

honest, the new problem was no easy one to solve.

Long and careful consideration of the question led the housekeeper at

last to the bold resolution of obtaining an interview—if the servant

failed her—with Mrs. Bygrave herself. What was the true cause of this

lady’s mysterious seclusion? Was she a person of the strictest and the

most inconvenient integrity? or a person who could not be depended on

to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave

himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new

deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount

could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results

which they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was

gained), it might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy

hidden in the dark. In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of

the three chances in her favor on which she had reckoned at the outset

of the struggle—the chance of entrapping Magdalen by word of mouth, the

chance of entrapping her by the help of her friends, and the chance of

entrapping her by means of Mrs. Bygrave—two had been tried, and two had

failed. The third remained to be tested yet; and the third might

succeed.

So, the captain’s enemy plotted against him in the privacy of her own

chamber, while the captain watched the light in her window from the

beach outside.

Before breakfast the next morning, Captain Wragge posted the forged

letter to Zurich with his own hand. He went back to North Shingles with

his mind not quite decided on the course to take with Mrs. Lecount

during the all-important interval of the next ten days.

Greatly to his surprise, his doubts on this point were abruptly decided

by Magdalen herself.

He found her waiting for him in the room where the breakfast was laid.

She was walking restlessly to and fro, with her head drooping on her

bosom and her hair hanging disordered over her shoulders. The moment

she looked up on his entrance, the captain felt the fear which Mrs.

Wragge had felt before him—the fear that her mind would be struck

prostrate again, as it had been struck once already, when Frank’s

letter reached her in Vauxhall Walk.

“Is he coming again to-day?” she asked, pushing away from her the chair

which Captain Wragge offered, with such violence that she threw it on

the floor.

“Yes,” said the captain, wisely answering her in the fewest words. “He

is coming at two o’clock.”

“Take me away!” she exclaimed, tossing her hair back wildly from her

face. “Take me away before he comes. I can’t get over the horror of

marrying him while I am in this hateful place; take me somewhere where

I can forget it, or I shall go mad! Give me two days’ rest—two days out

of sight of that horrible sea—two days out of prison in this horrible

house—two days anywhere in the wide world away from Aldborough. I’ll

come back with you! I’ll go through with it to the end! Only give me

two days’ escape from that man and everything belonging to him! Do you

hear, you villain?” she cried, seizing his arm and shaking it in a

frenzy of passion; “I have been tortured enough—I can bear it no

longer!”

There was but one way of quieting her, and the captain instantly took

it.

“If you will try to control yourself,” he said, “you shall leave

Aldborough in an hour’s time.”

She dropped his arm, and leaned back heavily against the wall behind

her.

“I’ll try,” she answered, struggling for breath, but looking at him

less wildly. “You shan’t complain of me, if I can help it.” She

attempted confusedly to take her handkerchief from her apron pocket,

and failed to find it. The captain took it out for her. Her eyes

softened, and she drew her breath more freely as she received the

handkerchief from him. “You are a kinder man than I thought you were,”

she said; “I am sorry I spoke so passionately to you just now—I am

very, very sorry.” The tears stole into her eyes, and she offered him

her hand with the native grace and gentleness of happier days. “Be

friends with me again,” she said, pleadingly. “I’m only a girl, Captain

Wragge—I’m only a girl!”

He took her hand in silence, patted it for a moment, and then opened

the door for her to go back to her own room again. There was genuine

regret in his face as he showed her that trifling attention. He was a

vagabond and a cheat; he had lived a mean, shuffling, degraded life,

but he was human; and she had found her way to the lost sympathies in

him which not even the self-profanation of a swindler’s existence could

wholly destroy. “Damn the breakfast!” he said, when the servant came in

for her orders. “Go to the inn directly, and say I want a carriage and

pair at the door in an hour’s time.” He went out into the passage,

still chafing under a sense of mental disturbance which was new to him,

and shouted to his wife more fiercely than ever—“Pack up what we want

for a week’s absence, and be ready in half an hour!” Having issued

those directions, he returned to the breakfast-room, and looked at the

half-spread table with an impatient wonder at his disinclination to do

justice to his own meal. “She has rubbed off the edge of my appetite,”

he said to himself, with a forced laugh. “I’ll try a cigar, and a turn

in the fresh air.”

If he had been twenty years younger, those remedies might have failed

him. But where is the man to be found whose internal policy succumbs to

revolution when that man is on the wrong side of fifty? Exercise and

change of place gave the captain back into the possession of himself.

He recovered the lost sense of the flavor of his cigar, and recalled

his wandering attention to the question of his approaching absence from

Aldborough. A few minutes’ consideration satisfied his mind that

Magdalen’s outbreak had forced him to take the course of all others

which, on a fair review of existing emergencies, it was now most

desirable to adopt.

Captain Wragge’s inquiries on the evening when he and Magdalen had

drunk tea at Sea View had certainly informed him that the housekeeper’s

brother possessed a modest competence; that his sister was his nearest

living relative; and that there were some unscrupulous cousins on the

spot who were anxious to usurp the place in his will which properly

belonged to Mrs. Lecount. Here were strong motives to take the

housekeeper to Zurich when the false report of her brother’s relapse

reached England. But if any idea of Noel Vanstone’s true position

dawned on her in the meantime, who could say whether she might not, at

the eleventh hour, prefer asserting her large pecuniary interest in her

master, to defending her small pecuniary interest at her brother’s

bedside? While that question remained undecided, the plain necessity of

checking the growth of Noel Vanstone’s intimacy with the family at

North Shingles did not admit of a doubt; and of all means of effecting

that object, none could be less open to suspicion than the temporary

removal of the household from their residence at Aldborough. Thoroughly

satisfied with the soundness of this conclusion, Captain Wragge made

straight for Sea-view Cottage, to apologize and explain before the

carriage came and the departure took place.

Noel Vanstone was easily accessible to visitors; he was walking in the

garden before breakfast. His disappointment and vexation were freely

expressed when he heard the news which his friend had to communicate.

The captain’s fluent tongue, however, soon impressed on him the

necessity of resignation to present circumstances. The bare hint that

the “pious fraud” might fail after all, if anything happened in the ten

days’ interval to enlighten Mrs. Lecount, had an instant effect in

making Noel Vanstone as patient and as submissive as could be wished.

“I won’t tell you where we are going, for two good reasons,” said

Captain Wragge, when his preliminary explanations were completed. “In

the first place, I haven’t made up my mind yet; and, in the second

place, if you don’t know where our destination is, Mrs. Lecount can’t

worm it out of you. I have not the least doubt she is watching us at

this moment from behind her window-curtain. When she asks what I wanted

with you this morning, tell her I came to say good-by for a few days,

finding my niece not so well again, and wishing to take her on a short

visit to some friends to try change of air. If you could produce an

impression on Mrs. Lecount’s mind (without overdoing it), that you are

a little disappointed in me, and that you are rather inclined to doubt

my heartiness in cultivating your acquaintance, you will greatly help

our present object. You may depend on our return to North Shingles in

four or five days at furthest. If anything strikes me in the meanwhile,

the post is always at our service, and I won’t fail to write to you.”

“Won’t Miss Bygrave write to me?” inquired Noel Vanstone, piteously.

“Did she know you were coming here? Did she send me no message?”

“Unpardonable on my part to have forgotten it!” cried the captain. “She

sent you her love.”

Noel Vanstone closed his eyes in silent ecstasy.

When he opened them again Captain Wragge had passed through the garden

gate and was on his way back to North Shingles. As soon as his own door

had closed on him, Mrs. Lecount descended from the post of observation

which the captain had rightly suspected her of occupying, and addressed

the inquiry to her master which the captain had rightly foreseen would

follow his departure. The reply she received produced but one

impression on her mind. She at once set it down as a falsehood, and

returned to her own window to keep watch over North Shingles more

vigilantly than ever.

To her utter astonishment, after a lapse of less than half an hour she

saw an empty carriage draw up at Mr. Bygrave’s door. Luggage was

brought out and packed on the vehicle. Miss Bygrave appeared, and took

her seat in it. She was followed into the carriage by a lady of great

size and stature, whom the housekeeper conjectured to be Mrs. Bygrave.

The servant came next, and stood waiting on the path. The last person

to appear was Mr. Bygrave. He locked the house door, and took the key

away with him to a cottage near at hand, which was the residence of the

landlord of North Shingles. On his return, he nodded to the servant,

who walked away by herself toward the humbler quarter of the little

town, and joined the ladies in the carriage. The coachman mounted the

box, and the vehicle disappeared.

Mrs. Lecount laid down the opera-glass, through which she had been

closely investigating these proceedings, with a feeling of helpless

perplexity which she was almost ashamed to acknowledge to herself. The

secret of Mr. Bygrave’s object in suddenly emptying his house at

Aldborough of every living creature in it was an impenetrable mystery

to her.

Submitting herself to circumstances with a ready resignation which

Captain Wragge had not shown, on his side, in a similar situation, Mrs.

Lecount wasted neither time nor temper in unprofitable guess-work. She

left the mystery to thicken or to clear, as the future might decide,

and looked exclusively at the uses to which she might put the morning’s

event in her own interests. Whatever might have become of the family at

North Shingles, the servant was left behind, and the servant was

exactly the person whose assistance might now be of vital importance to

the housekeeper’s projects. Mrs. Lecount put on her bonnet, inspected

the collection of loose silver in her purse, and set forth on the spot

to make the servant’s acquaintance.

She went first to the cottage at which Mr. Bygrave had left the key of

North Shingles, to discover the servant’s present address from the

landlord. So far as this object was concerned, her errand proved

successful. The landlord knew that the girl had been allowed to go home

for a few days to her friends, and knew in what part of Aldborough her

friends lived. But here his sources of information suddenly dried up.

He knew nothing of the destination to which Mr. Bygrave and his family

had betaken themselves, and he was perfectly ignorant of the number of

days over which their absence might be expected to extend. All he could

say was, that he had not received a notice to quit from his tenant, and

that he had been requested to keep the key of the house in his

possession until Mr. Bygrave returned to claim it in his own person.

Baffled, but not discouraged, Mrs. Lecount turned her steps next toward

the back street of Aldborough, and astonished the servant’s relatives

by conferring on them the honor of a morning call.

Easily imposed on at starting by Mrs. Lecount’s pretense of calling to

engage her, under the impression that she had left Mr. Bygrave’s

service, the servant did her best to answer the questions put to her.

But she knew as little as the landlord of her master’s plans. All she

could say about them was, that she had not been dismissed, and that she

was to await the receipt of a note recalling her when necessary to her

situation at North Shingles. Not having expected to find her better

informed on this part of the subject, Mrs. Lecount smoothly shifted her

ground, and led the woman into talking generally of the advantages and

defects of her situation in Mr. Bygrave’s family.

Profiting by the knowledge gained, in this indirect manner, of the

little secrets of the household, Mrs. Lecount made two discoveries. She

found out, in the first place, that the servant (having enough to do in

attending to the coarser part of the domestic work) was in no position

to disclose the secrets of Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe, which were known

only to the young lady herself and to her aunt. In the second place,

the housekeeper ascertained that the true reason of Mrs. Bygrave’s

rigid seclusion was to be found in the simple fact that she was little

better than an idiot, and that her husband was probably ashamed of

allowing her to be seen in public. These apparently trivial discoveries

enlightened Mrs. Lecount on a very important point which had been

previously involved in doubt. She was now satisfied that the likeliest

way to obtaining a private investigation of Magdalen’s wardrobe lay

through deluding the imbecile lady, and not through bribing the

ignorant servant.

Having reached that conclusion—pregnant with coming assaults on the

weakly-fortified discretion of poor Mrs. Wragge—the housekeeper

cautiously abstained from exhibiting herself any longer under an

inquisitive aspect. She changed the conversation to local topics,

waited until she was sure of leaving an excellent impression behind

her, and then took her leave.

Three days passed; and Mrs. Lecount and her master—each with their

widely-different ends in view—watched with equal anxiety for the first

signs of returning life in the direction of North Shingles. In that

interval, no letter either from the uncle or the niece arrived for Noel

Vanstone. His sincere feeling of irritation under this neglectful

treatment greatly assisted the effect of those feigned doubts on the

subject of his absent friends which the captain had recommended him to

express in the housekeeper’s presence. He confessed his apprehensions

of having been mistaken, not in Mr. Bygrave only, but even in his niece

as well, with such a genuine air of annoyance that he actually

contributed a new element of confusion to the existing perplexities of

Mrs. Lecount.

On the morning of the fourth day Noel Vanstone met the postman in the

garden; and, to his great relief, discovered among the letters

delivered to him a note from Mr. Bygrave.

The date of the note was “Woodbridge,” and it contained a few lines

only. Mr. Bygrave mentioned that his niece was better, and that she

sent her love as before. He proposed returning to Aldborough on the

next day, when he would have some new considerations of a strictly

private nature to present to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s mind. In the meantime

he would beg Mr. Vanstone not to call at North Shingles until he

received a special invitation to do so—which invitation should

certainly be given on the day when the family returned. The motive of

this apparently strange request should be explained to Mr. Vanstone’s

perfect satisfaction when he was once more united to his friends. Until

that period arrived, the strictest caution was enjoined on him in all

his communications with Mrs. Lecount; and the instant destruction of

Mr. Bygrave’s letter, after due perusal of it, was (if the classical

phrase might be pardoned) a _sine qua non_.

The fifth day came. Noel Vanstone (after submitting himself to the

_sine qua non_, and destroying the letter) waited anxiously for

results; while Mrs. Lecount, on her side, watched patiently for events.

Toward three o’clock in the afternoon the carriage appeared again at

the gate of North Shingles. Mr. Bygrave got out and tripped away

briskly to the landlord’s cottage for the key. He returned with the

servant at his heels. Miss Bygrave left the carriage; her giant

relative followed her example; the house door was opened; the trunks

were taken off; the carriage disappeared, and the Bygraves were at home

again!

Four o’clock struck, five o’clock, six o’clock, and nothing happened.

In half an hour more, Mr. Bygrave—spruce, speckless, and respectable as

ever—appeared on the Parade, sauntering composedly in the direction of

Sea View.

Instead of at once entering the house, he passed it; stopped, as if

struck by a sudden recollection; and, retracing his steps, asked for

Mr. Vanstone at the door. Mr. Vanstone came out hospitably into the

passage. Pitching his voice to a tone which could be easily heard by

any listening individual through any open door in the bedroom regions,

Mr. Bygrave announced the object of his visit on the door-mat in the

fewest possible words. He had been staying with a distant relative. The

distant relative possessed two pictures—Gems by the Old Masters—which

he was willing to dispose of, and which he had intrusted for that

purpose to Mr. Bygrave’s care. If Mr. Noel Vanstone, as an amateur in

such matters, wished to see the Gems, they would be visible in half an

hour’s time, when Mr. Bygrave would have returned to North Shingles.

Having delivered himself of this incomprehensible announcement, the

arch-conspirator laid his significant forefinger along the side of his

short Roman nose, said, “Fine weather, isn’t it? Good-afternoon!” and

sauntered out inscrutably to continue his walk on the Parade.

On the expiration of the half-hour Noel Vanstone presented himself at

North Shingles, with the ardor of a lover burning inextinguishably in

his bosom, through the superincumbent mental fog of a thoroughly

bewildered man. To his inexpressible happiness, he found Magdalen alone

in the parlor. Never yet had she looked so beautiful in his eyes. The

rest and relief of her four days’ absence from Aldborough had not

failed to produce their results; she had more than recovered her

composure. Vibrating perpetually from one violent extreme to another,

she had now passed from the passionate despair of five days since to a

feverish exaltation of spirits which defied all remorse and confronted

all consequences. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were bright with color;

she talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of

past days; she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing; she

imitated Mrs. Lecount’s smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount’s insinuating

graces of manner with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which

was but the coarse reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of

former times. Noel Vanstone, who had never yet seen her as he saw her

now, was enchanted; his weak head whirled with an intoxication of

enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had caught the infection

from hers. The half-hour during which he was alone with her passed like

five minutes to him. When that time had elapsed, and when she suddenly

left him—to obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt’s

presence—miser as he was, he would have paid at that moment five golden

sovereigns out of his pocket for five golden minutes more passed in her

society.

The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, and the

captain walked in. He entered on the explanations which his visitor

naturally expected from him with the unceremonious abruptness of a man

hard pressed for time, and determined to make the most of every moment

at his disposal.

“Since we last saw each other,” he began, “I have been reckoning up the

chances for and against us as we stand at present. The result on my own

mind is this: If you are still at Aldborough when that letter from

Zurich reaches Mrs. Lecount, all the pains we have taken will have been

pains thrown away. If your housekeeper had fifty brothers all dying

together, she would throw the whole fifty over sooner than leave you

alone at Sea View while we are your neighbors at North Shingles.”

Noel Vanstone’s flushed cheek turned pale with dismay. His own

knowledge of Mrs. Lecount told him that this view of the case was the

right one.

“If _we_ go away again,” proceeded the captain, “nothing will be

gained, for nothing would persuade your housekeeper, in that case, that

we have not left you the means of following us. _You_ must leave

Aldborough this time; and, what is more, you must go without leaving a

single visible trace behind you for us to follow. If we accomplish this

object in the course of the next five days, Mrs. Lecount will take the

journey to Zurich. If we fail, she will be a fixture at Sea View, to a

dead certainty. Don’t ask questions! I have got your instructions ready

for you, and I want your closest attention to them. Your marriage with

my niece depends on your not forgetting a word of what I am now going

to tell you.—One question first. Have you followed my advice? Have you

told Mrs. Lecount you are beginning to think yourself mistaken in me?”

“I did worse than that,” replied Noel Vanstone penitently. “I committed

an outrage on my own feelings. I disgraced myself by saying that I

doubted Miss Bygrave!”

“Go on disgracing yourself, my dear sir! Doubt us both with all your

might, and I’ll help you. One question more. Did I speak loud enough

this afternoon? Did Mrs. Lecount hear me?”

“Yes. Lecount opened her door; Lecount heard you. What made you give me

that message? I see no pictures here. Is this another pious fraud, Mr.

Bygrave?”

“Admirably guessed, Mr. Vanstone! You will see the object of my

imaginary picture-dealing in the very next words which I am now about

to address to you. When you get back to Sea View, this is what you are

to say to Mrs. Lecount. Tell her that my relative’s works of Art are

two worthless pictures—copies from the Old Masters, which I have tried

to sell you as originals at an exorbitant price. Say you suspect me of

being little better than a plausible impostor, and pity my unfortunate

niece for being associated with such a rascal as I am. There is your

text to speak from. Say in many words what I have just said in a few.

You can do that, can’t you?”

“Of course I can do it,” said Noel Vanstone. “But I can tell you one

thing—Lecount won’t believe me.”