“So much for the past,” said Captain Wragge, when his narrative of the

expedition to London by way of St. Crux had come to an end. “Now for

the present. The bridegroom—”

“If it makes no difference,” she interposed, “call him Mr. Noel

Vanstone.”

“With all my heart. Mr. Noel Vanstone is coming here this afternoon to

dine and spend the evening. He will be tiresome in the last degree;

but, like all tiresome people, he is not to be got rid of on any terms.

Before he comes, I have a last word or two of caution for your private

ear. By this time to-morrow we shall have parted—without any certain

knowledge, on either side, of our ever meeting again. I am anxious to

serve your interests faithfully to the last; I am anxious you should

feel that I have done all I could for your future security when we say

good-by.”

Magdalen looked at him in surprise. He spoke in altered tones. He was

agitated; he was strangely in earnest. Something in his look and manner

took her memory back to the first night at Aldborough, when she had

opened her mind to him in the darkening solitude—when they two had sat

together alone on the slope of the martello tower. “I have no reason to

think otherwise than kindly of you,” she said.

Captain Wragge suddenly left his chair, and took a turn backward and

forward in the room. Magdalen’s last words seemed to have produced some

extraordinary disturbance in him.

“Damn it!” he broke out; “I can’t let you say that. You have reason to

think ill of me. I have cheated you. You never got your fair share of

profit from the Entertainment, from first to last. There! now the

murder’s out!”

Magdalen smiled, and signed to him to come back to his chair.

“I know you cheated me,” she said, quietly. “You were in the exercise

of your profession, Captain Wragge. I expected it when I joined you. I

made no complaint at the time, and I make none now. If the money you

took is any recompense for all the trouble I have given you, you are

heartily welcome to it.”

“Will you shake hands on that?” asked the captain, with an awkwardness

and hesitation strongly at variance with his customary ease of manner.

Magdalen gave him her hand. He wrung it hard. “You are a strange girl,”

he said, trying to speak lightly. “You have laid a hold on me that I

don’t quite understand. I’m half uncomfortable at taking the money from

you now; and yet you don’t want it, do you?” He hesitated. “I almost

wish,” he said, “I had never met you on the Walls of York.”

“It is too late to wish that, Captain Wragge. Say no more. You only

distress me—say no more. We have other subjects to talk about. What

were those words of caution which you had for my private ear?”

The captain took another turn in the room, and struggled back again

into his every-day character. He produced from his pocketbook Mrs.

Lecount’s letter to her master, and handed it to Magdalen.

“There is the letter that might have ruined us if it had ever reached

its address,” he said. “Read it carefully. I have a question to ask you

when you have done.”

Magdalen read the letter. “What is this proof,” she inquired, “which

Mrs. Lecount relies on so confidently!”

“The very question I was going to ask you,” said Captain Wragge.

“Consult your memory of what happened when you tried that experiment in

Vauxhall Walk. Did Mrs. Lecount get no other chance against you than

the chances you have told me of already?”

“She discovered that my face was disguised, and she heard me speak in

my own voice.”

“And nothing more?”

“Nothing more.”

“Very good. Then my interpretation of the letter is clearly the right

one. The proof Mrs. Lecount relies on is my wife’s infernal ghost

story—which is, in plain English, the story of Miss Bygrave having been

seen in Miss Vanstone’s disguise; the witness being the very person who

is afterward presented at Aldborough in the character of Miss Bygrave’s

aunt. An excellent chance for Mrs. Lecount, if she can only lay her

hand at the right time on Mrs. Wragge, and no chance at all, if she

can’t. Make your mind easy on that point. Mrs. Lecount and my wife have

seen the last of each other. In the meantime, don’t neglect the warning

I give you, in giving you this letter. Tear it up, for fear of

accidents, but don’t forget it.”

“Trust me to remember it,” replied Magdalen, destroying the letter

while she spoke. “Have you anything more to tell me?”

“I have some information to give you,” said Captain Wragge, “which may

be useful, because it relates to your future security. Mind, I want to

know nothing about your proceedings when to-morrow is over; we settled

that when we first discussed this matter. I ask no questions, and I

make no guesses. All I want to do now is to warn you of your legal

position after your marriage, and to leave you to make what use you

please of your knowledge, at your own sole discretion. I took a

lawyer’s opinion on the point when I was in London, thinking it might

be useful to you.”

“It is sure to be useful. What did the lawyer say?”

“To put it plainly, this is what he said. If Mr. Noel Vanstone ever

discovers that you have knowingly married him under a false name, he

can apply to the Ecclesiastical Court to have his marriage declared

null and void. The issue of the application would rest with the judges.

But if he could prove that he had been intentionally deceived, the

legal opinion is that his case would be a strong one.”

“Suppose I chose to apply on my side?” said Magdalen, eagerly. “What

then?”

“You might make the application,” replied the captain. “But remember

one thing—you would come into Court with the acknowledgment of your own

deception. I leave you to imagine what the judges would think of that.”

“Did the lawyer tell you anything else?”

“One thing besides,” said Captain Wragge. “Whatever the law might do

with the marriage in the lifetime of both the parties to it—on the

death of either one of them, no application made by the survivor would

avail; and, as to the case of that survivor, the marriage would remain

valid. You understand? If he dies, or if you die—and if no application

has been made to the Court—he the survivor, or you the survivor, would

have no power of disputing the marriage. But in the lifetime of both of

you, if he claimed to have the marriage dissolved, the chances are all

in favor of his carrying his point.”

He looked at Magdalen with a furtive curiosity as he said those words.

She turned her head aside, absently tying her watch-chain into a loop

and untying it again, evidently thinking with the closest attention

over what he had last said to her. Captain Wragge walked uneasily to

the window and looked out. The first object that caught his eye was Mr.

Noel Vanstone approaching from Sea View. He returned instantly to his

former place in the room, and addressed himself to Magdalen once more.

“Here is Mr. Noel Vanstone,” he said. “One last caution before he comes

in. Be on your guard with him about your age. He put the question to me

before he got the License. I took the shortest way out of the

difficulty, and told him you were twenty-one, and he made the

declaration accordingly. Never mind about _me_; after to-morrow I am

invisible. But, in your own interests, don’t forget, if the subject

turns up, that you were of age when you were married. There is nothing

more. You are provided with every necessary warning that I can give

you. Whatever happens in the future, remember I have done my best.”

He hurried to the door without waiting for an answer, and went out into

the garden to receive his guest.

Noel Vanstone made his appearance at the gate, solemnly carrying his

bridal offering to North Shingles with both hands. The object in

question was an ancient casket (one of his father’s bargains); inside

the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch, set in silver

(another of his father’s bargains)—bridal presents both, possessing the

inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in his pocket. He

shook his head portentously when the captain inquired after his health

and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night; ungovernable apprehensions

of Lecount’s sudden re-appearance had beset him as soon as he found

himself alone at Sea View. Sea View was redolent of Lecount: Sea View

(though built on piles, and the strongest house in England) was

henceforth odious to him. He had felt this all night; he had also felt

his responsibilities. There was the lady’s maid, to begin with. Now he

had hired her, he began to think she wouldn’t do. She might fall sick

on his hands; she might have deceived him by a false character; she and

the landlady of the hotel might have been in league together. Horrible!

Really horrible to think of. Then there was the other

responsibility—perhaps the heavier of the two—the responsibility of

deciding where he was to go and spend his honeymoon to-morrow. He would

have preferred one of his father’s empty houses: But except at Vauxhall

Walk (which he supposed would be objected to), and at Aldborough (which

was of course out of the question) all the houses were let. He would

put himself in Mr. Bygrave’s hands. Where had Mr. Bygrave spent his own

honeymoon? Given the British Islands to choose from, where would Mr.

Bygrave pitch his tent, on a careful review of all the circumstances?

At this point the bridegroom’s questions suddenly came to an end, and

the bridegroom’s face exhibited an expression of ungovernable

astonishment. His judicious friend, whose advice had been at his

disposal in every other emergency, suddenly turned round on him, in the

emergency of the honeymoon, and flatly declined discussing the subject.

“No!” said the captain, as Noel Vanstone opened his lips to plead for a

hearing, “you must really excuse me. My point of view in this matter

is, as usual, a peculiar one. For some time past I have been living in

an atmosphere of deception, to suit your convenience. That atmosphere,

my good sir, is getting close; my Moral Being requires ventilation.

Settle the choice of a locality with my niece, and leave me, at my

particular request, in total ignorance of the subject. Mrs. Lecount is

certain to come here on her return from Zurich, and is certain to ask

me where you are gone. You may think it strange, Mr. Vanstone; but when

I tell her I don’t know, I wish to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of

feeling, for once in a way, that I am speaking the truth!”

With those words, he opened the sitting-room door, introduced Noel

Vanstone to Magdalen’s presence, bowed himself out of the room again,

and set forth alone to while away the rest of the afternoon by taking a

walk. His face showed plain tokens of anxiety, and his party-colored

eyes looked hither and thither distrustfully, as he sauntered along the

shore. “The time hangs heavy on our hands,” thought the captain. “I

wish to-morrow was come and gone.”

The day passed and nothing happened; the evening and the night

followed, placidly and uneventfully. Monday came, a cloudless, lovely

day; Monday confirmed the captain’s assertion that the marriage was a

certainty. Toward ten o’clock, the clerk, ascending the church steps

quoted the old proverb to the pew-opener, meeting him under the porch:

“Happy the bride on whom the sun shines!”

In a quarter of an hour more the wedding-party was in the vestry, and

the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret of the

marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the morning had

been enough to betray it. A small congregation, almost entirely

composed of women, were scattered here and there among the pews.

Kirke’s sister and her children were staying with a friend at

Aldborough, and Kirke’s sister was one of the congregation.

As the wedding-party entered the church, the haunting terror of Mrs.

Lecount spread from Noel Vanstone to the captain. For the first few

minutes, the eyes of both of them looked among the women in the pews

with the same searching scrutiny, and looked away again with the same

sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that look, and investigated the

License more closely than usual. The clerk began to doubt privately

whether the old proverb about the bride was a proverb to be always

depended on. The female members of the congregation murmured among

themselves at the inexcusable disregard of appearances implied in the

bride’s dress. Kirke’s sister whispered venomously in her friend’s ear,

“Thank God for to-day for Robert’s sake.” Mrs. Wragge cried silently,

with the dread of some threatening calamity she knew not what. The one

person present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalen herself.

She stood, with tearless resignation, in her place before the

altar—stood, as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up

within her.

The clergyman opened the Book.

It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to Heaven were

pronounced. The children of the two dead brothers—inheritors of the

implacable enmity which had parted their parents—were Man and Wife.

From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting

scene. They were back at the house while the words of the Marriage

Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five

minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the garden gate. In a minute

more the opportunity came for which Magdalen and the captain had been

on the watch—the opportunity of speaking together in private for the

last time. She still preserved her icy resignation; she seemed beyond

all reach now of the fear that had once mastered her, of the remorse

that had once tortured her soul. With a firm hand she gave him the

promised money. With a firm face she looked her last at him. “I’m not

to blame,” he whispered, eagerly; “I have only done what you asked me.”

She bowed her head; she bent it toward him kindly and let him touch her

fore-head with his lips. “Take care!” he said. “My last words are—for

God’s sake take care when I’m gone!” She turned from him with a smile,

and spoke her farewell words to his wife. Mrs. Wragge tried hard to

face her loss bravely—the loss of the friend whose presence had fallen

like light from Heaven over the dim pathway of her life. “You have been

very good to me, my dear; I thank you kindly; I thank you with all my

heart.” She could say no more; she clung to Magdalen in a passion of

tears, as her mother might have clung to her, if her mother had lived

to see that horrible day. “I’m frightened for you!” cried the poor

creature, in a wild, wailing voice. “Oh, my darling, I’m frightened for

you!” Magdalen desperately drew herself free—kissed her—and hurried out

to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, the cry of that

guileless love, shook her as nothing else had shaken her that day. It

was a refuge to get to the carriage—a refuge, though the man she had

married stood there waiting for her at the door.

Mrs. Wragge tried to follow her into the garden. But the captain had

seen Magdalen’s face as she ran out, and he steadily held his wife back

in the passage. From that distance the last farewells were exchanged.

As long as the carriage was in sight, Magdalen looked back at them; she

waved her handkerchief as she turned the corner. In a moment more the

last thread which bound her to them was broken; the familiar

companionship of many months was a thing of the past already!

Captain Wragge closed the house door on the idlers who were looking in

from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room, and spoke

to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him.

“She has gone her way,” he said, “and in another hour we shall have

gone ours. Cry your cry out—I don’t deny she’s worth crying for.”

Even then—even when the dread of Magdalen’s future was at its darkest

in his mind—the ruling habit of the man’s life clung to him.

Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch-box. Mechanically he opened his

Book of Accounts, and made the closing entry—the entry of his last

transaction with Magdalen—in black and white. “By Rec’d from Miss

Vanstone,” wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, “Two hundred pounds.”

“You won’t be angry with me?” said Mrs. Wragge, looking timidly at her

husband through her tears. “I want a word of comfort, captain. Oh, do

tell me, when shall I see her again?”

The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable word:

“Never!”

Between eleven and twelve o’clock that night Mrs. Lecount drove into

Zurich.

Her brother’s house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some

difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in

speechless amazement when she opened the door and saw who the visitor

was.

“Is my brother alive?” asked Mrs. Lecount, entering the house.

“Alive!” echoed the servant. “He has gone holiday-making into the

country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air.”

The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The

coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid, and

her teeth chattered in her head.

“Send for my brother’s doctor,” she said, as soon as she could speak.

The doctor came. She handed him a letter before he could say a word.

“Did you write that letter?”

He looked it over rapidly, and answered her without hesitation,

“Certainly not!”

“It is your handwriting.”

“It is a forgery of my handwriting.”

She rose from the chair with a new strength in her.

“When does the return mail start for Paris?” she asked.

“In half an hour.”

“Send instantly and take me a place in it!”

The servant hesitated, the doctor protested. She turned a deaf ear to

them both.

“Send!” she reiterated, “or I will go myself.”

They obeyed. The servant went to take the place: the doctor remained

and held a conversation with Mrs. Lecount. When the half-hour had

passed, he helped her into her place in the mail, and charged the

conductor privately to take care of his passenger.

“She has traveled from England without stopping,” said the doctor; “and

she is traveling back again without rest. Be careful of her, or she

will break down under the double journey.”

The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an end

Mrs. Lecount was on her way back to England.

THE END OF THE FOURTH SCENE.

BETWEEN THE SCENES.

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.

I.

From George Bartram to Noel Vanstone.

“St. Crux, September 4th, 1847.

“My dear Noel,

“Here are two plain questions at starting. In the name of all that is

mysterious, what are you hiding for? And why is everything relating to

your marriage kept an impenetrable secret from your oldest friends?

“I have been to Aldborough to try if I could trace you from that place,

and have come back as wise as I went. I have applied to your lawyer in

London, and have been told, in reply, that you have forbidden him to

disclose the place of your retreat to any one without first receiving

your permission to do so. All I could prevail on him to say was, that

he would forward any letter which might be sent to his care. I write

accordingly, and mind this, I expect an answer.

“You may ask, in your ill-tempered way, what business I have to meddle

with affairs of yours which it is your pleasure to keep private. My

dear Noel, there is a serious reason for our opening communications

with you from this house. You don’t know what events have taken place

at St. Crux since you ran away to get married; and though I detest

writing letters, I must lose an hour’s shooting to-day in trying to

enlighten you.

“On the twenty-third of last month, the admiral and I were disturbed

over our wine after dinner by the announcement that a visitor had

unexpectedly arrived at St. Crux. Who do you think the visitor was?

Mrs. Lecount!

“My uncle, with that old-fashioned bachelor gallantry of his which pays

equal respect to all wearers of petticoats, left the table directly to

welcome Mrs. Lecount. While I was debating whether I should follow him

or not, my meditations were suddenly brought to an end by a loud call

from the admiral. I ran into the morning-room, and there was your

unfortunate housekeeper on the sofa, with all the women servants about

her, more dead than alive. She had traveled from England to Zurich, and

from Zurich back again to England, without stopping; and she looked,

seriously and literally, at death’s door. I immediately agreed with my

uncle that the first thing to be done was to send for medical help. We

dispatched a groom on the spot, and, at Mrs. Lecount’s own request,

sent all the servants in a body out of the room.

“As soon as we were alone, Mrs. Lecount surprised us by a singular

question. She asked if you had received a letter which she had

addressed to you before leaving England at this house. When we told her

that the letter had been forwarded, under cover to your friend Mr.

Bygrave, by your own particular request, she turned as pale as ashes;

and when we added that you had left us in company with this same Mr.

Bygrave, she clasped her hands and stared at us as if she had taken

leave of her senses. Her next question was, ‘Where is Mr. Noel now?’ We

could only give her one reply—Mr. Noel had not informed us. She looked

perfectly thunderstruck at that answer. ‘He has gone to his ruin!’ she

said. ‘He has gone away in company with the greatest villain in

England. I must find him! I tell you I must find Mr. Noel! If I don’t

find him at once, it will be too late. He will be married!’ she burst

out quite frantically. ‘On my honor and my oath, he will be married!’

The admiral, incautiously perhaps, but with the best intentions, told

her you were married already. She gave a scream that made the windows

ring again and dropped back on the sofa in a fainting-fit. The doctor

came in the nick of time, and soon brought her to. But she was taken

ill the same night; she has grown worse and worse ever since; and the

last medical report is, that the fever from which she has been

suffering is in a fair way to settle on her brain.

“Now, my dear Noel, neither my uncle nor I have any wish to intrude

ourselves on your confidence. We are naturally astonished at the

extraordinary mystery which hangs over you and your marriage, and we

cannot be blind to the fact that your housekeeper has, apparently, some

strong reason of her own for viewing Mrs. Noel Vanstone with an enmity

and distrust which we are quite ready to believe that lady has done

nothing to deserve. Whatever strange misunderstanding there may have

been in your household, is your business (if you choose to keep it to

yourself), and not ours. All we have any right to do is to tell you

what the doctor says. His patient has been delirious; he declines to

answer for her life if she goes on as she is going on now; and he

thinks—finding that she is perpetually talking of her master—that your

presence would be useful in quieting her, if you could come here at

once, and exert your influence before it is too late.

“What do you say? Will you emerge from the darkness that surrounds you

and come to St. Crux? If this was the case of an ordinary servant, I

could understand your hesitating to leave the delights of your

honeymoon for any such object as is here proposed to you. But, my dear

fellow, Mrs. Lecount is not an ordinary servant. You are under

obligations to her fidelity and attachment in your father’s time, as

well as in your own; and if you _can_ quiet the anxieties which seem to

be driving this unfortunate woman mad, I really think you ought to come

here and do so. Your leaving Mrs. Noel Vanstone is of course out of the

question. There is no necessity for any such hard-hearted proceeding.

The admiral desires me to remind you that he is your oldest friend

living, and that his house is at your wife’s disposal, as it has always

been at yours. In this great rambling-place she need dread no near

association with the sick-room; and, with all my uncle’s oddities, I am

sure she will not think the offer of his friendship an offer to be

despised.

“Have I told you already that I went to Aldborough to try and find a

clue to your whereabouts? I can’t be at the trouble of looking back to

see; so, if I have told you, I tell you again. The truth is, I made an

acquaintance at Aldborough of whom you know something—at least by

report.

“After applying vainly at Sea View, I went to the hotel to inquire

about you. The landlady could give me no information; but the moment I

mentioned your name, she asked if I was related to you; and when I told

her I was your cousin, she said there was a young lady then at the

hotel whose name was Vanstone also, who was in great distress about a

missing relative, and who might prove of some use to me—or I to her—if

we knew of each other’s errand at Aldborough. I had not the least idea

who she was, but I sent in my card at a venture; and in five minutes

afterward I found myself in the presence of one of the most charming

women these eyes ever looked on.

“Our first words of explanation informed me that my family name was

known to her by repute. Who do you think she was? The eldest daughter

of my uncle and yours—Andrew Vanstone. I had often heard my poor mother

in past years speak of her brother Andrew, and I knew of that sad story

at Combe-Raven. But our families, as you are aware, had always been

estranged, and I had never seen my charming cousin before. She has the

dark eyes and hair, and the gentle, retiring manners that I always

admire in a woman. I don’t want to renew our old disagreement about

your father’s conduct to those two sisters, or to deny that his brother

Andrew may have behaved badly to him; I am willing to admit that the

high moral position he took in the matter is quite unassailable by such

a miserable sinner as I am; and I will not dispute that my own

spendthrift habits incapacitate me from offering any opinion on the

conduct of other people’s pecuniary affairs. But, with all these

allowances and drawbacks, I can tell you one thing, Noel. If you ever

see the elder Miss Vanstone, I venture to prophesy that, for the first

time in your life, you will doubt the propriety of following your

father’s example.

“She told me her little story, poor thing, most simply and

unaffectedly. She is now occupying her second situation as a

governess—and, as usual, I, who know everybody, know the family. They

are friends of my uncle’s, whom he has lost sight of latterly—the

Tyrrels of Portland Place—and they treat Miss Vanstone with as much

kindness and consideration as if she was a member of the family. One of

their old servants accompanied her to Aldborough, her object in

traveling to that place being what the landlady of the hotel had stated

it to be. The family reverses have, it seems, had a serious effect on

Miss Vanstone’s younger sister, who has left her friends and who has

been missing from home for some time. She had been last heard of at

Aldborough; and her elder sister, on her return from the Continent with

the Tyrrels, had instantly set out to make inquiries at that place.

“This was all Miss Vanstone told me. She asked whether you had seen

anything of her sister, or whether Mrs. Lecount knew anything of her

sister—I suppose because she was aware you had been at Aldborough. Of

course I could tell her nothing. She entered into no details on the

subject, and I could not presume to ask her for any. All I did was to

set to work with might and main to assist her inquiries. The attempt

was an utter failure; nobody could give us any information. We tried

personal description of course; and strange to say, the only young lady

formerly staying at Aldborough who answered the description was, of all

the people in the world, the lady you have married! If she had not had

an uncle and aunt (both of whom have left the place), I should have

begun to suspect that you had married your cousin without knowing it!

Is this the clue to the mystery? Don’t be angry; I must have my little

joke, and I can’t help writing as carelessly as I talk. The end of it

was, our inquiries were all baffled, and I traveled back with Miss

Vanstone and her attendant as far as our station here. I think I shall

call on the Tyrrels when I am next in London. I have certainly treated

that family with the most inexcusable neglect.

“Here I am at the end of my third sheet of note-paper! I don’t often

take the pen in hand; but when I do, you will agree with me that I am

in no hurry to lay it aside again. Treat the rest of my letter as you

like, but consider what I have told you about Mrs. Lecount, and

remember that time is of consequence.

“Ever yours,

“GEORGE BARTRAM.”

II.

From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth.

“Portland Place.

“MY DEAR MISS GARTH,

“More sorrow, more disappointment! I have just returned from

Aldborough, without making any discovery. Magdalen is still lost to us.

“I cannot attribute this new overthrow of my hopes to any want of

perseverance or penetration in making the necessary inquiries. My

inexperience in such matters was most kindly and unexpectedly assisted

by Mr. George Bartram. By a strange coincidence, he happened to be at

Aldborough, inquiring after Mr. Noel Vanstone, at the very time when I

was there inquiring after Magdalen. He sent in his card, and knowing,

when I looked at the name, that he was my cousin—if I may call him so—I

thought there would be no impropriety in my seeing him and asking his

advice. I abstained from entering into particulars for Magdalen’s sake,

and I made no allusion to that letter of Mrs. Lecount’s which you

answered for me. I only told him Magdalen was missing, and had been

last heard of at Aldborough. The kindness which he showed in devoting

himself to my assistance exceeds all description. He treated me, in my

forlorn situation, with a delicacy and respect which I shall remember

gratefully long after he has himself perhaps forgotten our meeting

altogether. He is quite young—not more than thirty, I should think. In

face and figure, he reminded me a little of the portrait of my father

at Combe-Raven—I mean the portrait in the dining-room, of my father

when he was a young man.

“Useless as our inquiries were, there is one result of them which has

left a very strange and shocking impression on my mind.

“It appears that Mr. Noel Vanstone has lately married, under mysterious

circumstances, a young lady whom he met with at Aldborough, named

Bygrave. He has gone away with his wife, telling nobody but his lawyer

where he has gone to. This I heard from Mr. George Bartram, who was

endeavoring to trace him, for the purpose of communicating the news of

his housekeeper’s serious illness—the housekeeper being the same Mrs.

Lecount whose letter you answered. So far, you may say, there is

nothing which need particularly interest either of us. But I think you

will be as much surprised as I was when I tell you that the description

given by the people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave’s appearance is most

startlingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen’s

appearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the

circumstances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I cannot

describe to you—which I dare not realize to myself. Pray come and see

me! I have never felt so wretched about Magdalen as I feel now.

Suspense must have weakened my nerves in some strange way. I feel

superstitious about the slightest things. This accidental resemblance

of a total stranger to Magdalen fills me every now and then with the

most horrible misgivings—merely because Mr. Noel Vanstone’s name

happens to be mixed up with it. Once more, pray come to me; I have so

much to say to you that I cannot, and dare not, say in writing.

“Gratefully and affectionately yours,

“NORAH.”

III.

From Mr. John Loscombe (Solicitor) to George Bartram, Esq.

“Lincoln’s Inn, London,

“September 6th, 1847.

“SIR,

“I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note, inclosing a letter

addressed to my client, Mr. Noel Vanstone, and requesting that I will

forward the same to Mr. Vanstone’s present address.

“Since I last had the pleasure of communicating with you on this

subject, my position toward my client is entirely altered. Three days

ago I received a letter from him, which stated his intention of

changing his place of residence on the next day then ensuing, but which

left me entirely in ignorance on the subject of the locality to which

it was his intention to remove. I have not heard from him since; and,

as he had previously drawn on me for a larger sum of money than usual,

there would be no present necessity for his writing to me

again—assuming that it is his wish to keep his place of residence

concealed from every one, myself included.

“Under these circumstances, I think it right to return you your letter,

with the assurance that I will let you know, if I happen to be again

placed in a position to forward it to its destination.

“Your obedient servant,

“JOHN LOSCOMBE.”

IV.

From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth.

“Portland Place.

“MY DEAR MISS GARTH,

“Forget the letter I wrote to you yesterday, and all the gloomy

forebodings that it contains. This morning’s post has brought new life

to me. I have just received a letter, addressed to me at your house,

and forwarded here, in your absence from home yesterday, by your

sister. Can you guess who the writer is?—Magdalen!

“The letter is very short; it seems to have been written in a hurry.

She says she has been dreaming of me for some nights past, and the

dreams have made her fear that her long silence has caused me more

distress on her account than she is worth. She writes, therefore, to

assure me that she is safe and well—that she hopes to see me before

long—and that she has something to tell me, when we meet, which will

try my sisterly love for her as nothing has tried it yet. The letter is

not dated; but the postmark is ‘Allonby,’ which I have found, on

referring to the Gazetteer, to be a little sea-side place in

Cumberland. There is no hope of my being able to write back, for

Magdalen expressly says that she is on the eve of departure from her

present residence, and that she is not at liberty to say where she is

going to next, or to leave instructions for forwarding any letters

after her.

“In happier times I should have thought this letter very far from being

a satisfactory one, and I should have been seriously alarmed by that

allusion to a future confidence on her part which will try my love for

her as nothing has tried it yet. But after all the suspense I have

suffered, the happiness of seeing her handwriting again seems to fill

my heart and to keep all other feelings out of it. I don’t send you her

letter, because I know you are coming to me soon, and I want to have

the pleasure of seeing you read it.

“Ever affectionately yours,

“NORAH.

“P.S.—Mr. George Bartram called on Mrs. Tyrrel to-day. He insisted on

being introduced to the children. When he was gone, Mrs. Tyrrel laughed

in her good-humored way, and said that his anxiety to see the children

looked, to her mind, very much like an anxiety to see _me_. You may

imagine how my spirits are improved when I can occupy my pen in writing

such nonsense as this!”

V.

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot, General Agent, London.

“St. Crux, October 23d, 1847.

“DEAR SIR,

“I have been long in thanking you for the kind letter which promises me

your assistance, in friendly remembrance of the commercial relations

formerly existing between my brother and yourself. The truth is, I have

over-taxed my strength on my recovery from a long and dangerous

illness; and for the last ten days I have been suffering under a

relapse. I am now better again, and able to enter on the business which

you so kindly offer to undertake for me.

“The person whose present place of abode it is of the utmost importance

to me to discover is Mr. Noel Vanstone. I have lived, for many years

past, in this gentleman’s service as house-keeper; and not having

received my formal dismissal, I consider myself in his service still.

During my absence on the Continent he was privately married at

Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the eighteenth of August last. He left

Aldborough the same day, taking his wife with him to some place of

retreat which was kept a secret from everybody except his lawyer, Mr.

Loscombe, of Lincoln’s Inn. After a short time he again removed, on the

4th of September, without informing Mr. Loscombe, on this occasion, of

his new place of abode. From that date to this the lawyer has remained

(or has pretended to remain) in total ignorance of where he now is.

Application has been made to Mr. Loscombe, under the circumstances, to

mention what that former place of residence was, of which Mr. Vanstone

is known to have informed him. Mr. Loscombe has declined acceding to

this request, for want of formal permission to disclose his client’s

proceedings after leaving Aldborough. I have all these latter

particulars from Mr. Loscombe’s correspondent—the nephew of the

gentleman who owns this house, and whose charity has given me an

asylum, during the heavy affliction of my sickness, under his own roof.

“I believe the reasons which have induced Mr. Noel Vanstone to keep

himself and his wife in hiding are reasons which relate entirely to

myself. In the first place, he is aware that the circumstances under

which he has married are such as to give me the right of regarding him

with a just indignation. In the second place, he knows that my faithful

services, rendered through a period of twenty years, to his father and

to himself, forbid him, in common decency, to cast me out helpless on

the world without a provision for the end of my life. He is the meanest

of living men, and his wife is the vilest of living women. As long as

he can avoid fulfilling his obligations to me, he will; and his wife’s

encouragement may be trusted to fortify him in his ingratitude.

“My object in determining to find him out is briefly this. His marriage

has exposed him to consequences which a man of ten times his courage

could not face without shrinking. Of those consequences he knows

nothing. His wife knows, and keeps him in ignorance. I know, and can

enlighten him. His security from the danger that threatens him is in my

hands alone; and he shall pay the price of his rescue to the last

farthing of the debt that justice claims for me as my due—no more, and

no less.

“I have now laid my mind before you, as you told me, without reserve.

You know why I want to find this man, and what I mean to do when I find

him. I leave it to your sympathy for me to answer the serious question

that remains: How is the discovery to be made? If a first trace of them

can be found, after their departure from Aldborough, I believe careful

inquiry will suffice for the rest. The personal appearance of the wife,

and the extraordinary contrast between her husband and herself, are

certain to be remarked, and remembered, by every stranger who sees

them.

“When you favor me with your answer, please address it to ‘Care of

Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in the-Marsh, near Ossory, Essex’.

“Your much obliged,

“VIRGINIE LECOUNT.”

VI.

From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.

“Dark’s Buildings, Kingsland,

“October 25th, 1847.

“Private and Confidential.

“DEAR MADAM,

“I hasten to reply to your favor of Saturday’s date. Circumstances have

enabled me to forward your interests, by consulting a friend of mine

possessing great experience in the management of private inquiries of

all sorts. I have placed your case before him (without mentioning

names); and I am happy to inform you that my views and his views of the

proper course to take agree in every particular.

“Both myself and friend, then, are of opinion that little or nothing

can be done toward tracing the parties you mention, until the place of

their temporary residence after they left Aldborough has been

discovered first. If this can be done, the sooner it is done the

better. Judging from your letter, some weeks must have passed since the

lawyer received his information that they had shifted their quarters.

As they are both remarkable-looking people, the strangers who may have

assisted them on their travels have probably not forgotten them yet.

Nevertheless, expedition is desirable.

“The question for you to consider is, whether they may not possibly

have communicated the address of which we stand in need to some other

person besides the lawyer. The husband may have written to members of

his family, or the wife may have written to members of her family. Both

myself and friend are of opinion that the latter chance is the likelier

of the two. If you have any means of access in the direction of the

wife’s family, we strongly recommend you to make use of them. If not,

please supply us with the names of any of her near relations or

intimate female friends whom you know, and we will endeavor to get

access for you.

“In any case, we request you will at once favor us with the most exact

personal description that can be written of both the parties. We may

require your assistance, in this important particular, at five minutes’

notice. Favor us, therefore, with the description by return of post. In

the meantime, we will endeavor to ascertain on our side whether any

information is to be privately obtained at Mr. Loscombe’s office. The

lawyer himself is probably altogether beyond our reach. But if any one

of his clerks can be advantageously treated with on such terms as may

not overtax your pecuniary resources, accept my assurance that the

opportunity shall be made the most of by,

“Dear madam,

“Your faithful servant,

“ALFRED DE BLERIOT.”

VII.

From Mr. Pendril to Norah Vanstone.

“Serle Street, October 27th. 1847.

“MY DEAR MISS VANSTONE,

“A lady named Lecount (formerly attached to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s service

in the capacity of housekeeper) has called at my office this morning,

and has asked me to furnish her with your address. I have begged her to

excuse my immediate compliance with her request, and to favor me with a

call to-morrow morning, when I shall be prepared to meet her with a

definite answer.

“My hesitation in this matter does not proceed from any distrust of

Mrs. Lecount personally, for I know nothing whatever to her prejudice.

But in making her request to me, she stated that the object of the

desired interview was to speak to you privately on the subject of your

sister. Forgive me for acknowledging that I determined to withhold the

address as soon as I heard this. You will make allowances for your old

friend, and your sincere well-wisher? You will not take it amiss if I

express my strong disapproval of your allowing yourself, on any

pretense whatever, to be mixed up for the future with your sister’s

proceedings.

“I will not distress you by saying more than this. But I feel too deep

an interest in your welfare, and too sincere an admiration of the

patience with which you have borne all your trials, to say less.

“If I cannot prevail on you to follow my advice, you have only to say

so, and Mrs. Lecount shall have your address to-morrow. In this case

(which I cannot contemplate without the greatest unwillingness), let me

at least recommend you to stipulate that Miss Garth shall be present at

the interview. In any matter with which your sister is concerned, you

may want an old friend’s advice, and an old friend’s protection against

your own generous impulses. If I could have helped you in this way, I

would; but Mrs. Lecount gave me indirectly to understand that the

subject to be discussed was of too delicate a nature to permit of my

presence. Whatever this objection may be really worth, it cannot apply

to Miss Garth, who has brought you both up from childhood. I say,

again, therefore, if you see Mrs. Lecount, see her in Miss Garth’s

company.

“Always most truly yours,

“WILLIAM PENDRIL.”

VIII.

From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril.

“Portland Place, Wednesday.

“DEAR MR. PENDRIL,

“Pray don’t think I am ungrateful for your kindness. Indeed, indeed I

am not! But I must see Mrs. Lecount. You were not aware when you wrote

to me that I had received a few lines from Magdalen—not telling me

where she is, but holding out the hope of our meeting before long.

Perhaps Mrs. Lecount may have something to say to me on this very

subject. Even if it should not be so, my sister—do what she may—is

still my sister. I can’t desert her; I can’t turn my back on any one

who comes to me in her name. You know, dear Mr. Pendril, I have always

been obstinate on this subject, and you have always borne with me. Let

me owe another obligation to you which I can never return, and bear

with me still!

“Need I say that I willingly accept that part of your advice which

refers to Miss Garth? I have already written to beg that she will come

here at four to-morrow afternoon. When you see Mrs. Lecount, please

inform her that Miss Garth will be with me, and that she will find us

both ready to receive her here to-morrow at four o’clock.

“Gratefully yours,

“NORAH VANSTONE.”

IX.

From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.

“Dark’s Buildings, October 28th.

“Private.

“DEAR MADAM,

“One of Mr. Loscombe’s clerks has proved amenable to a small pecuniary

consideration, and has mentioned a circumstance which it may be of some

importance to you to know.

“Nearly a month since, accident gave the clerk in question an

opportunity of looking into one of the documents on his master’s table,

which had attracted his attention from a slight peculiarity in the form

and color of the paper. He had only time, during Mr. Loscombe’s

momentary absence, to satisfy his curiosity by looking at the beginning

of the document and at the end. At the beginning he saw the customary

form used in making a will; at the end he discovered the signature of

Mr. Noel Vanstone, with the names of two attesting witnesses, and the

date (of which he is quite certain)—_the thirtieth of September last._

“Before the clerk had time to make any further investigations, his

master returned, sorted the papers on the table, and carefully locked

up the will in the strong box devoted to the custody of Mr. Noel

Vanstone’s documents. It has been ascertained that, at the close of

September, Mr. Loscombe was absent from the office. If he was then

employed in superintending the execution of his client’s will—which is

quite possible—it follows clearly that he was in the secret of Mr.

Vanstone’s address after the removal of the 4th of September; and if

you can do nothing on your side, it may be desirable to have the lawyer

watched on ours. In any case, it is certainly ascertained that Mr. Noel

Vanstone has made his will since his marriage. I leave you to draw your

own conclusions from that fact, and remain, in the hope of hearing from

you shortly,

“Your faithful servant,

“ALFRED DE BLERIOT.”

X.

From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril.

“Portland Place, October 28th.

“MY DEAR SIR,

“Mrs. Lecount has just left us. If it was not too late to wish, I

should wish, from the bottom of my heart, that Norah had taken your

advice, and had refused to see her.

“I write in such distress of mind that I cannot hope to give you a

clear and complete account of the interview. I can only tell you

briefly what Mrs. Lecount has done, and what our situation now is. The

rest must be left until I am more composed, and until I can speak to

you personally.

“You will remember my informing you of the letter which Mrs. Lecount

addressed to Norah from Aldborough, and which I answered for her in her

absence. When Mrs. Lecount made her appearance to-day, her first words

announced to us that she had come to renew the subject. As well as I

can remember it, this is what she said, addressing herself to Norah:

“‘I wrote to you on the subject of your sister, Miss Vanstone, some

little time since, and Miss Garth was so good as to answer the letter.

What I feared at that time has come true. Your sister has defied all my

efforts to check her; she has disappeared in company with my master,

Mr. Noel Vanstone; and she is now in a position of danger which may

lead to her disgrace and ruin at a moment’s notice. It is my interest

to recover my master, it is your interest to save your sister. Tell

me—for time is precious—have you any news of her?’

“Norah answered, as well as her terror and distress would allow her, ‘I

have had a letter, but there was no address on it.’

“Mrs. Lecount asked, ‘Was there no postmark on the envelope?’

“Norah said, ‘Yes; Allonby.’

“‘Allonby is better than nothing,’ said Mrs. Lecount. ‘Allonby may help

you to trace her. Where is Allonby?’

“Norah told her. It all passed in a minute. I had been too much

confused and startled to interfere before, but I composed myself

sufficiently to interfere now.

“‘You have entered into no particulars,’ I said. ‘You have only

frightened us—you have told us nothing.’

“‘You shall hear the particulars, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Lecount; ‘and you

and Miss Vanstone shall judge for yourselves if I have frightened you

without a cause.’

“Upon this, she entered at once upon a long narrative, which I cannot—I

might almost say, which I dare not—repeat. You will understand the

horror we both felt when I tell you the end. If Mrs. Lecount’s

statement is to be relied on, Magdalen has carried her mad resolution

of recovering her father’s fortune to the last and most desperate

extremity—she has married Michael Vanstone’s son under a false name.

Her husband is at this moment still persuaded that her maiden name was

Bygrave, and that she is really the niece of a scoundrel who assisted

her imposture, and whom I recognize, by the description of him, to have

been Captain Wragge.

“I spare you Mrs. Lecount’s cool avowal, when she rose to leave us, of

her own mercenary motives in wishing to discover her master and to

enlighten him. I spare you the hints she dropped of Magdalen’s purpose

in contracting this infamous marriage. The one aim and object of my

letter is to implore you to assist me in quieting Norah’s anguish of

mind. The shock she has received at hearing this news of her sister is

not the worst result of what has happened. She has persuaded herself

that the answers she innocently gave, in her distress, to Mrs.

Lecount’s questions on the subject of her letter—the answers wrung from

her under the sudden pressure of confusion and alarm—may be used to

Magdalen’s prejudice by the woman who purposely startled her into

giving the information. I can only prevent her from taking some

desperate step on her side—some step by which she may forfeit the

friendship and protection of the excellent people with whom she is now

living—by reminding her that if Mrs. Lecount traces her master by means

of the postmark on the letter, we may trace Magdalen at the same time,

and by the same means. Whatever objection you may personally feel to

renewing the efforts for the rescue of this miserable girl which failed

so lamentably at York, I entreat you, for Norah’s sake, to take the

same steps now which we took then. Send me the only assurance which

will quiet her—the assurance, under your own hand, that the search on

our side has begun. If you will do this, you may trust me, when the

time comes, to stand between these two sisters, and to defend Norah’s

peace, character, and future prosperity at any price.

“Most sincerely yours,

“HARRIET GARTH.”

XI.

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot.

“October 28th.

“DEAR SIR,

“I have found the trace you wanted. Mrs. Noel Vanstone has written to

her sister. The letter contains no address, but the postmark is

Allonby, in Cumberland. From Allonby, therefore, the inquiries must

begin. You have already in your possession the personal description of

both husband and wife. I urgently recommend you not to lose one

unnecessary moment. If it is possible to send to Cumberland immediately

on receipt of this letter, I beg you will do so.

“I have another word to say before I close my note—a word about the

discovery in Mr. Loscombe’s office.

“It is no surprise to me to hear that Mr. Noel Vanstone has made his

will since his marriage, and I am at no loss to guess in whose favor

the will is made. If I succeed in finding my master, let that person

get the money if that person can. A course to follow in this matter has

presented itself to my mind since I received your letter, but my

ignorance of details of business and intricacies of law leaves me still

uncertain whether my idea is capable of ready and certain execution. I

know no professional person whom I can trust in this delicate and

dangerous business. Is your large experience in other matters large

enough to help me in this? I will call at your office to-morrow at two

o’clock, for the purpose of consulting you on the subject. It is of the

greatest importance, when I next see Mr. Noel Vanstone, that he should

find me thoroughly prepared beforehand in this matter of the will.

“Your much obliged servant,

“VIRGINIE LECOUNT.”

XII.

From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth.

“Serle Street, October 29th.

“DEAR MISS GARTH,

“I have only a moment to assure you of the sorrow with which I have

read your letter. The circumstances under which you urge your request,

and the reasons you give for making it, are sufficient to silence any

objection I might otherwise feel to the course you propose. A

trustworthy person, whom I have myself instructed, will start for

Allonby to-day, and as soon as I receive any news from him, you shall

hear of it by special messenger. Tell Miss Vanstone this, and pray add

the sincere expression of my sympathy and regard.

“Faithfully yours,

“WILLIAM PENDRIL.”

XIII.

From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.

“Dark’s Buildings. November 1st.

“DEAR MADAM,

“I have the pleasure of informing you that the discovery has been made

with far less trouble than I had anticipated.

“Mr. and Mrs. Noel Vanstone have been traced across the Solway Firth to

Dumfries, and thence to a cottage a few miles from the town, on the

banks of the Nith. The exact address is Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries.

“This information, though easily hunted up, has nevertheless been

obtained under rather singular circumstances.

“Before leaving Allonby, the persons in my employ discovered, to their

surprise, that a stranger was in the place pursuing the same inquiry as

themselves. In the absence of any instructions preparing them for such

an occurrence as this, they took their own view of the circumstance.

Considering the man as an intruder on their business, whose success

might deprive them of the credit and reward of making the discovery,

they took advantage of their superiority in numbers, and of their being

first in the field, and carefully misled the stranger before they

ventured any further with their own investigations. I am in possession

of the details of their proceedings, with which I need not trouble you.

The end is, that this person, whoever he may be, was cleverly turned

back southward on a false scent before the men in my employment crossed

the Firth.

“I mention the circumstance, as you may be better able than I am to

find a clue to it, and as it may possibly be of a nature to induce you

to hasten your journey.

“Your faithful servant,

“ALFRED DE BLERIOT.”

XIV.

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot.

“November 1st.

“DEAR SIR,

“One line to say that your letter has just reached me at my lodging in

London. I think I know who sent the strange man to inquire at Allonby.

It matters little. Before he finds out his mistake, I shall be at

Dumfries. My luggage is packed, and I start for the North by the next

train.

“Your deeply obliged,

“VIRGINIE LECOUNT.”

THE FIFTH SCENE.

BALIOL COTTAGE, DUMFRIES.

CHAPTER I.

Toward eleven o’clock, on the morning of the third of November, the

breakfast-table at Baliol Cottage presented that essentially

comfortless appearance which is caused by a meal in a state of

transition—that is to say, by a meal prepared for two persons, which

has been already eaten by one, and which has not yet been approached by

the other. It must be a hardy appetite which can contemplate without a

momentary discouragement the battered egg-shell, the fish half stripped

to a skeleton, the crumbs in the plate, and the dregs in the cup. There

is surely a wise submission to those weaknesses in human nature which

must be respected and not reproved, in the sympathizing rapidity with

which servants in places of public refreshment clear away all signs of

the customer in the past, from the eyes of the customer in the present.

Although his predecessor may have been the wife of his bosom or the

child of his loins, no man can find himself confronted at table by the

traces of a vanished eater, without a passing sense of injury in

connection with the idea of his own meal.

Some such impression as this found its way into the mind of Mr. Noel

Vanstone when he entered the lonely breakfast-parlor at Baliol Cottage

shortly after eleven o’clock. He looked at the table with a frown, and

rang the bell with an expression of disgust.

“Clear away this mess,” he said, when the servant appeared. “Has your

mistress gone?”

“Yes, sir—nearly an hour ago.”

“Is Louisa downstairs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you have put the table right, send Louisa up to me.”

He walked away to the window. The momentary irritation passed away from

his face; but it left an expression there which remained—an expression

of pining discontent. Personally, his marriage had altered him for the

worse. His wizen little cheeks were beginning to shrink into hollows,

his frail little figure had already contracted a slight stoop. The

former delicacy of his complexion had gone—the sickly paleness of it

was all that remained. His thin flaxen mustaches were no longer

pragmatically waxed and twisted into a curl: their weak feathery ends

hung meekly pendent over the querulous corners of his mouth. If the ten

or twelve weeks since his marriage had been counted by his locks, they

might have reckoned as ten or twelve years. He stood at the window

mechanically picking leaves from a pot of heath placed in front of it,

and drearily humming the forlorn fragment of a tune.

The prospect from the window overlooked the course of the Nith at a

bend of the river a few miles above Dumfries. Here and there, through

wintry gaps in the wooded bank, broad tracts of the level cultivated

valley met the eye. Boats passed on the river, and carts plodded along

the high-road on their way to Dumfries. The sky was clear; the November

sun shone as pleasantly as if the year had been younger by two good

months; and the view, noted in Scotland for its bright and peaceful

charm, was presented at the best which its wintry aspect could assume.

If it had been hidden in mist or drenched with rain, Mr. Noel Vanstone

would, to all appearance, have found it as attractive as he found it

now. He waited at the window until he heard Louisa’s knock at the door,

then turned back sullenly to the breakfast-table and told her to come

in.

“Make the tea,” he said. “I know nothing about it. I’m left here

neglected. Nobody helps me.”

The discreet Louisa silently and submissively obeyed.

“Did your mistress leave any message for me,” he asked, “before she

went away?”

“No message in particular, sir. My mistress only said she should be too

late if she waited breakfast any longer.”

“Did she say nothing else?”

“She told me at the carriage door, sir, that she would most likely be

back in a week.”

“Was she in good spirits at the carriage door?”

“No, sir. I thought my mistress seemed very anxious and uneasy. Is

there anything more I can do, sir?”

“I don’t know. Wait a minute.”

He proceeded discontentedly with his breakfast. Louisa waited

resignedly at the door.

“I think your mistress has been in bad spirits lately,” he resumed,

with a sudden outbreak of petulance.

“My mistress has not been very cheerful, sir.”

“What do you mean by not very cheerful? Do you mean to prevaricate? Am

I nobody in the house? Am I to be kept in the dark about everything? Is

your mistress to go away on her own affairs, and leave me at home like

a child—and am I not even to ask a question about her? Am I to be

prevaricated with by a servant? I won’t be prevaricated with! Not very

cheerful? What do you mean by not very cheerful?”

“I only meant that my mistress was not in good spirits, sir.”

“Why couldn’t you say it, then? Don’t you know the value of words? The

most dreadful consequences sometimes happen from not knowing the value

of words. Did your mistress tell you she was going to London?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you think when your mistress told you she was going to

London? Did you think it odd she was going without me?”

“I did not presume to think it odd, sir.—Is there anything more I can

do for you, if you please, sir?”

“What sort of a morning is it out? Is it warm? Is the sun on the

garden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you seen the sun yourself on the garden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get me my great-coat; I’ll take a little turn. Has the man brushed it?

Did you see the man brush it yourself? What do you mean by saying he

has brushed it, when you didn’t see him? Let me look at the tails. If

there’s a speck of dust on the tails, I’ll turn the man off!—Help me on

with it.”

Louisa helped him on with his coat, and gave him his hat. He went out

irritably. The coat was a large one (it had belonged to his father);

the hat was a large one (it was a misfit purchased as a bargain by

himself). He was submerged in his hat and coat; he looked singularly

small, and frail, and miserable, as he slowly wended his way, in the

wintry sunlight, down the garden walk. The path sloped gently from the

back of the house to the water side, from which it was parted by a low

wooden fence. After pacing backward and forward slowly for some little

time, he stopped at the lower extremity of the garden, and, leaning on

the fence, looked down listlessly at the smooth flow of the river.

His thoughts still ran on the subject of his first fretful question to

Louisa—he was still brooding over the circumstances under which his

wife had left the cottage that morning, and over the want of

consideration toward himself implied in the manner of her departure.

The longer he thought of his grievance, the more acutely he resented

it. He was capable of great tenderness of feeling where any injury to

his sense of his own importance was concerned. His head drooped little

by little on his arms, as they rested on the fence, and, in the deep

sincerity of his mortification, he sighed bitterly.

The sigh was answered by a voice close at his side.

“You were happier with _me_, sir,” said the voice, in accents of tender

regret.

He looked up with a scream—literally, with a scream—and confronted Mrs.

Lecount.

Was it the specter of the woman, or the woman herself? Her hair was

white; her face had fallen away; her eyes looked out large, bright, and

haggard over her hollow cheeks. She was withered and old. Her dress

hung loose round her wasted figure; not a trace of its buxom autumnal

beauty remained. The quietly impenetrable resolution, the smoothly

insinuating voice—these were the only relics of the past which sickness

and suffering had left in Mrs. Lecount.

“Compose yourself, Mr. Noel,” she said, gently. “You have no cause to

be alarmed at seeing me. Your servant, when I inquired, said you were

in the garden, and I came here to find you. I have traced you out, sir,

with no resentment against yourself, with no wish to distress you by so

much as the shadow of a reproach. I come here on what has been, and is

still, the business of my life—your service.”

He recovered himself a little, but he was still incapable of speech. He

held fast by the fence, and stared at her.

“Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount.

“I have come here not as your enemy, but as your friend. I have been

tried by sickness, I have been tried by distress. Nothing remains of me

but my heart. My heart forgives you; my heart, in your sore need—need

which you have yet to feel-places me at your service. Take my arm, Mr.

Noel. A little turn in the sun will help you to recover yourself.”

She put his hand through her arm and marched him slowly up the garden

walk. Before she had been five minutes in his company, she had resumed

full possession of him in her own right.

“Now down again, Mr. Noel,” she said. “Gently down again, in this fine

sunlight. I have much to say to you, sir, which you never expected to

hear from me. Let me ask a little domestic question first. They told me

at the house door Mrs. Noel Vanstone was gone away on a journey. Has

she gone for long?”

Her master’s hand trembled on her arm as she put that question. Instead

of answering it, he tried faintly to plead for himself. The first words

that escaped him were prompted by his first returning sense—the sense

that his housekeeper had taken him into custody. He tried to make his

peace with Mrs. Lecount.

“I always meant to do something for you,” he said, coaxingly. “You

would have heard from me before long. Upon my word and honor, Lecount,

you would have heard from me before long!”

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount. “But for the present,

never mind about Me. You and your interests first.”

“How did you come here?” he asked, looking at her in astonishment. “How

came you to find me out?”

“It is a long story, sir; I will tell it you some other time. Let it be

enough to say now that I _have_ found you. Will Mrs. Noel be back again

at the house to-day? A little louder, sir; I can hardly hear you. So!

so! Not back again for a week! And where has she gone? To London, did

you say? And what for?—I am not inquisitive, Mr. Noel; I am asking

serious questions, under serious necessity. Why has your wife left you

here, and gone to London by herself?”

They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry, and

they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered. Her

reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were producing their

effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of

addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already

with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount—returning insidiously, in

company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which

had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown

the wound inflicted on his vanity to his wife’s maid.

“I can’t answer for Mrs. Noel Vanstone,” he said, spitefully. “Mrs.

Noel Vanstone has not treated me with the consideration which is my

due. She has taken my permission for granted, and she has only thought

proper to tell me that the object of her journey is to see her friends

in London. She went away this morning without bidding me good-by. She

takes her own way as if I was nobody; she treats me like a child. You

may not believe it, Lecount, but I don’t even know who her friends are.

I am left quite in the dark; I am left to guess for myself that her

friends in London are her uncle and aunt.”

Mrs. Lecount privately considered the question by the help of her own

knowledge obtained in London. She soon reached the obvious conclusion.

After writing to her sister in the first instance, Magdalen had now, in

all probability, followed the letter in person. There was little doubt

that the friends she had gone to visit in London were her sister and

Miss Garth.

“Not her uncle and aunt, sir,” resumed Mrs. Lecount, composedly. “A

secret for your private ear! She has no uncle and aunt. Another little

turn before I explain myself—another little turn to compose your

spirits.”

She took him into custody once more, and marched him back toward the

house.

“Mr. Noel!” she said, suddenly stopping in the middle of the walk. “Do

you know what was the worst mischief you ever did yourself in your

life? I will tell you. That worst mischief was sending me to Zurich.”

His hand began to tremble on her arm once more.

“I didn’t do it!” he cried piteously. “It was all Mr. Bygrave.”

“You acknowledge, sir, that Mr. Bygrave deceived _me?_” proceeded Mrs.

Lecount. “I am glad to hear that. You will be all the readier to make

the next discovery which is waiting for you—the discovery that Mr.

Bygrave has deceived _you_. He is not here to slip through my fingers

now, and I am not the helpless woman in this place that I was at

Aldborough. Thank God!”

She uttered that devout exclamation through her set teeth. All her

hatred of Captain Wragge hissed out of her lips in those two words.

“Oblige me, sir, by holding one side of my traveling-bag,” she resumed,

“while I open it and take something out.”

The interior of the bag disclosed a series of neatly-folded papers, all

laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs. Lecount took out one

of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud snap of the spring

that closed it.

“At Aldborough, Mr. Noel, I had only my own opinion to support me,” she

remarked. “My own opinion was nothing against Miss Bygrave’s youth and

beauty, and Mr. Bygrave’s ready wit. I could only hope to attack your

infatuation with proofs, and at that time I had not got them. I have

got them now! I am armed at all points with proofs; I bristle from head

to foot with proofs; I break my forced silence, and speak with the

emphasis of my proofs. Do you know this writing, sir?”

He shrank back from the paper which she offered to him.

“I don’t understand this,” he said, nervously. “I don’t know what you

want, or what you mean.”

Mrs. Lecount forced the paper into his hand. “You shall know what I

mean, sir, if you will give me a moment’s attention,” she said. “On the

day after you went away to St. Crux, I obtained admission to Mr.

Bygrave’s house, and I had some talk in private with Mr. Bygrave’s

wife. That talk supplied me with the means to convince you which I had

wanted to find for weeks and weeks past. I wrote you a letter to say

so—I wrote to tell you that I would forfeit my place in your service,

and my expectations from your generosity, if I did not prove to you

when I came back from Switzerland that my own private suspicion of Miss

Bygrave was the truth. I directed that letter to you at St. Crux, and I

posted it myself. Now, Mr. Noel, read the paper which I have forced

into your hand. It is Admiral Bartram’s written affirmation that my

letter came to St. Crux, and that he inclosed it to you, under cover to

Mr. Bygrave, at your own request. Did Mr. Bygrave ever give you that

letter? Don’t agitate yourself, sir! One word of reply will do—Yes or

No.”

He read the paper, and looked up at her with growing bewilderment and

fear. She obstinately waited until he spoke. “No,” he said, faintly; “I

never got the letter.”

“First proof!” said Mrs. Lecount, taking the paper from him, and

putting it back in the bag. “One more, with your kind permission,

before we come to things more serious still. I gave you a written

description, sir, at Aldborough, of a person not named, and I asked you

to compare it with Miss Bygrave the next time you were in her company.

After having first shown the description to Mr. Bygrave—it is useless

to deny it now, Mr. Noel; your friend at North Shingles is not here to

help you!—after having first shown my note to Mr. Bygrave, you made the

comparison, and you found it fail in the most important particular.

There were two little moles placed close together on the left side of

the neck, in my description of the unknown lady, and there were no

little moles at all when you looked at Miss Bygrave’s neck. I am old

enough to be your mother, Mr. Noel. If the question is not indelicate,

may I ask what the present state of your knowledge is on the subject of

your wife’s neck?”

She looked at him with a merciless steadiness. He drew back a few

steps, cowering under her eye. “I can’t say,” he stammered. “I don’t

know. What do you mean by these questions? I never thought about the

moles afterward; I never looked. She wears her hair low—”

“She has excellent reasons to wear it low, sir,” remarked Mrs. Lecount.

“We will try and lift that hair before we have done with the subject.

When I came out here to find you in the garden, I saw a neat young

person through the kitchen window, with her work in her hand, who

looked to my eyes like a lady’s maid. Is this young person your wife’s

maid? I beg your pardon, sir, did you say yes? In that case, another

question, if you please. Did you engage her, or did your wife?”

“I engaged her—”

“While I was away? While I was in total ignorance that you meant to

have a wife, or a wife’s maid?”

“Yes.”

“Under those circumstances, Mr. Noel, you cannot possibly suspect me of

conspiring to deceive you, with the maid for my instrument. Go into the

house, sir, while I wait here. Ask the woman who dresses Mrs. Noel

Vanstone’s hair morning and night whether her mistress has a mark on

the left side of her neck, and (if so) what that mark is?”

He walked a few steps toward the house without uttering a word, then

stopped, and looked back at Mrs. Lecount. His blinking eyes were

steady, and his wizen face had become suddenly composed. Mrs. Lecount

advanced a little and joined him. She saw the change; but, with all her

experience of him, she failed to interpret the true meaning of it.

“Are you in want of a pretense, sir?” she asked. “Are you at a loss to

account to your wife’s maid for such a question as I wish you to put to

her? Pretenses are easily found which will do for persons in her

station of life. Say I have come here with news of a legacy for Mrs.

Noel Vanstone, and that there is a question of her identity to settle

before she can receive the money.”

She pointed to the house. He paid no attention to the sign. His face

grew paler and paler. Without moving or speaking he stood and looked at

her.

“Are you afraid?” asked Mrs. Lecount.

Those words roused him; those words lit a spark of the fire of manhood

in him at last. He turned on her like a sheep on a dog.

“I won’t be questioned and ordered!” he broke out, trembling violently

under the new sensation of his own courage. “I won’t be threatened and

mystified any longer! How did you find me out at this place? What do

you mean by coming here with your hints and your mysteries? What have

you got to say against my wife?”

Mrs. Lecount composedly opened the traveling-bag and took out her

smelling bottle, in case of emergency.

“You have spoken to me in plain words,” she said. “In plain words, sir,

you shall have your answer. Are you too angry to listen?”

Her looks and tones alarmed him, in spite of himself. His courage began

to sink again; and, desperately as he tried to steady it, his voice

trembled when he answered her.

“Give me my answer,” he said, “and give it at once.”

“Your commands shall be obeyed, sir, to the letter,” replied Mrs.

Lecount. “I have come here with two objects. To open your eyes to your

own situation, and to save your fortune—perhaps your life. Your

situation is this. Miss Bygrave has married you under a false character

and a false name. Can you rouse your memory? Can you call to mind the

disguised woman who threatened you in Vauxhall Walk? That woman—as

certainly as I stand here—is now your wife.”

He looked at her in breathless silence, his lips falling apart, his

eyes fixed in vacant inquiry. The suddenness of the disclosure had

overreached its own end. It had stupefied him.

“My wife?” he repeated, and burst into an imbecile laugh.

“Your wife,” reiterated Mrs. Lecount.

At the repetition of those two words the strain on his faculties

relaxed. A thought dawned on him for the first time. His eyes fixed on

her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily. “Mad!” he said to

himself, with a sudden remembrance of what his friend Mr. Bygrave had

told him at Aldborough, sharpened by his own sense of the haggard

change that he saw in her face.

He spoke in a whisper, but Mrs. Lecount heard him. She was close at his

side again in an instant. For the first time, her self-possession

failed her, and she caught him angrily by the arm.

“Will you put my madness to the proof, sir?” she asked.

He shook off her hold; he began to gather courage again, in the intense

sincerity of his disbelief, courage to face the assertion which she

persisted in forcing on him.

“Yes,” he answered. “What must I do?”

“Do what I told you,” said Mrs. Lecount. “Ask the maid that question

about her mistress on the spot. And if she tells you the mark is there,

do one thing more. Take me up into your wife’s room, and open her

wardrobe in my presence with your own hands.”

“What do you want with her wardrobe?” he asked.

“You shall know when you open it.”

“Very strange!” he said to himself, vacantly. “It’s like a scene in a

novel—it’s like nothing in real life.” He went slowly into the house,

and Mrs. Lecount waited for him in the garden.

After an absence of a few minutes only he appeared again, on the top of

the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house. He held

by the iron rail with one hand, while with the other he beckoned to

Mrs. Lecount to join him on the steps.

“What does the maid say?” she asked, as she approached him. “Is the

mark there?”

He answered in a whisper, “Yes.” What he had heard from the maid had

produced a marked change in him. The horror of the coming discovery had

laid its paralyzing hold on his mind. He moved mechanically; he looked

and spoke like a man in a dream.

“Will you take my arm, sir?”

He shook his head, and, preceding her along the passage and up the

stairs, led the way into his wife’s room. When she joined him and

locked the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, without

making any remark, without showing any external appearance of surprise.

He had not removed either his hat or coat. Mrs. Lecount took them off

for him. “Thank you,” he said, with the docility of a well-trained

child. “It’s like a scene in a novel—it’s like nothing in real life.”

The bed-chamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy and

old-fashioned. But evidences of Magdalen’s natural taste and refinement

were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that graced and

enlivened the aspect of the room. The perfume of dried rose-leaves hung

fragrant on the cool air. Mrs. Lecount sniffed the perfume with a

disparaging frown and threw the window up to its full height. “Pah!”

she said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust, “the atmosphere of

deceit!”

She seated herself near the window. The wardrobe stood against the wall

opposite, and the bed was at the side of the room on her right hand.

“Open the wardrobe, Mr. Noel,” she said. “I don’t go near it. I touch

nothing in it myself. Take out the dresses with your own hand and put

them on the bed. Take them out one by one until I tell you to stop.”

He obeyed her. “I’ll do it as well as I can,” he said. “My hands are

cold, and my head feels half asleep.”

The dresses to be removed were not many, for Magdalen had taken some of

them away with her. After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was

obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe before he could

find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. Lecount made a sign to him to

stop. The end was reached already; he had found the brown Alpaca dress.

“Lay it out on the bed, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “You will see a double

flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and

pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a

place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop and look up at

me.”

He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers for a minute or more,

then stopped and looked up. Mrs. Lecount produced her pocket-book and

opened it.

“Every word I now speak, sir, is of serious consequence to you and to

me,” she said. “Listen with your closest attention. When the woman

calling herself Miss Garth came to see us in Vauxhall Walk, I knelt

down behind the chair in which she was sitting and I cut a morsel of

stuff from the dress she wore, which might help me to know that dress

if I ever saw it again. I did this while the woman’s whole attention

was absorbed in talking to you. The morsel of stuff has been kept in my

pocketbook from that time to this. See for yourself, Mr. Noel, if it

fits the gap in that dress which your own hands have just taken from

your wife’s wardrobe.”

She rose and handed him the fragment of stuff across the bed. He put it

into the vacant space in the flounce as well as his trembling fingers

would let him.

“Does it fit, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount.

The dress dropped from his hands, and the deadly bluish pallor—which

every doctor who attended him had warned his housekeeper to

dread—overspread his face slowly. Mrs. Lecount had not reckoned on such

an answer to her question as she now saw in his cheeks. She hurried

round to him, with the smelling-bottle in her hand. He dropped to his

knees and caught at her dress with the grasp of a drowning man. “Save

me!” he gasped, in a hoarse, breathless whisper. “Oh, Lecount, save

me!”

“I promise to save you,” said Mrs. Lecount; “I am here with the means

and the resolution to save you. Come away from this place—come nearer

to the air.” She raised him as she spoke, and led him across the room

to the window. “Do you feel the chill pain again on your left side?”

she asked, with the first signs of alarm that she had shown yet. “Has

your wife got any eau-de-cologne, any sal-volatile in her room? Don’t

exhaust yourself by speaking—point to the place!”

He pointed to a little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten

walnut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the

door: it was locked.

As she made that discovery, she saw his head sink back gradually on the

easy-chair in which she had placed him. The warning of the doctors in

past years—“If you ever let him faint, you let him die”—recurred to her

memory as if it had been spoken the day before. She looked at the

cupboard again. In a recess under it lay some ends of cord, placed

there apparently for purposes of packing. Without an instant’s

hesitation, she snatched up a morsel of cord, tied one end fast round

the knob of the cupboard door, and seizing the other end in both hands,

pulled it suddenly with the exertion of her whole strength. The rotten

wood gave way, the cupboard doors flew open, and a heap of little

trifles poured out noisily on the floor. Without stopping to notice the

broken china and glass at her feet, she looked into the dark recesses

of the cupboard and saw the gleam of two glass bottles. One was put

away at the extreme back of the shelf, the other was a little in

advance, almost hiding it. She snatched them both out at once, and took

them, one in each hand, to the window, where she could read their

labels in the clearer light.

The bottle in her right hand was the first bottle she looked at. It was

marked—_Sal-volatile_.

She instantly laid the other bottle aside on the table without looking

at it. The other bottle lay there, waiting its turn. It held a dark

liquid, and it was labeled—POISON.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs. Lecount mixed the sal-volatile with water, and administered it

immediately. The stimulant had its effect. In a few minutes Noel

Vanstone was able to raise himself in the chair without assistance; his

color changed again for the better, and his breath came and went more

freely.

“How do you feel now, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “Are you warm again on

your left side?”

He paid no attention to that inquiry; his eyes, wandering about the

room, turned by chance toward the table. To Mrs. Lecount’s surprise,

instead of answering her, he bent forward in his chair, and looked with

staring eyes and pointing hand at the second bottle which she had taken

from the cupboard, and which she had hastily laid aside without paying

attention to it. Seeing that some new alarm possessed him, she advanced

to the table, and looked where he looked. The labeled side of the

bottle was full in view; and there, in the plain handwriting of the

chemist at Aldborough, was the one startling word confronting them

both—“Poison.”

Even Mrs. Lecount’s self-possession was shaken by that discovery. She

was not prepared to see her own darkest forebodings—the unacknowledged

offspring of her hatred for Magdalen—realized as she saw them realized

now. The suicide-despair in which the poison had been procured; the

suicide-purpose for which, in distrust of the future, the poison had

been kept, had brought with them their own retribution. There the

bottle lay, in Magdalen’s absence, a false witness of treason which had

never entered her mind—treason against her husband’s life!

With his hand still mechanically pointing at the table Noel Vanstone

raised his head and looked up at Mrs. Lecount.

“I took it from the cupboard,” she said, answering the look. “I took

both bottles out together, not knowing which might be the bottle I

wanted. I am as much shocked, as much frightened, as you are.”

“Poison!” he said to himself, slowly. “Poison locked up by my wife in

the cupboard in her own room.” He stopped, and looked at Mrs. Lecount

once more. “For _me?_” he asked, in a vacant, inquiring tone.

“We will not talk of it, sir, until your mind is more at ease,” said

Mrs. Lecount. “In the meantime, the danger that lies waiting in this

bottle shall be instantly destroyed in your presence.” She took out the

cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the empty bottle after

it. “Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery for the present,” she

resumed; “let us go downstairs at once. All that I have now to say to

you can be said in another room.”

She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her own. “It

is well for him; it is well for me,” she thought, as they went

downstairs together, “that I came when I did.”

On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the

carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and

instructed the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to

call again for her in two hours’ time. This done, she accompanied Noel

Vanstone into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed him

before it comfortably in an easy-chair. He sat for a few minutes,

warming his hands feebly like an old man, and staring straight into the

flame. Then he spoke.

“When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk,” he began,

still staring into the fire, “you came back to the parlor after she was

gone, and you told me—?” He stopped, shivered a little, and lost the

thread of his recollections at that point.

“I told you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “that the woman was, in my

opinion, Miss Vanstone herself. Don’t start, Mr. Noel! Your wife is

away, and I am here to take care of you. Say to yourself, if you feel

frightened, ‘Lecount is here; Lecount will take care of me.’ The truth

must be told, sir, however hard to bear the truth may be. Miss Magdalen

Vanstone was the woman who came to you in disguise; and the woman who

came to you in disguise is the woman you have married. The conspiracy

which she threatened you with in London is the conspiracy which has

made her your wife. That is the plain truth. You have seen the dress

upstairs. If that dress had been no longer in existence, I should still

have had my proofs to convince you. Thanks to my interview with Mrs.

Bygrave I have discovered the house your wife lodged at in London; it

was opposite our house in Vauxhall Walk. I have laid my hand on one of

the landlady’s daughters, who watched your wife from an inner room, and

saw her put on the disguise; who can speak to her identity, and to the

identity of her companion, Mrs. Bygrave; and who has furnished me, at

my own request, with a written statement of facts, which she is ready

to affirm on oath if any person ventures to contradict her. You shall

read the statement, Mr. Noel, if you like, when you are fitter to

understand it. You shall also read a letter in the handwriting of Miss

Garth—who will repeat to you personally every word she has written to

me—a letter formally denying that she was ever in Vauxhall Walk, and

formally asserting that those moles on your wife’s neck are marks

peculiar to Miss Magdalen Vanstone, whom she has known from childhood.

I say it with a just pride—you will find no weak place anywhere in the

evidence which I bring you. If Mr. Bygrave had not stolen my letter,

you would have had your warning before I was cruelly deceived into

going to Zurich; and the proofs which I now bring you, after your

marriage, I should then have offered to you before it. Don’t hold me

responsible, sir, for what has happened since I left England. Blame

your uncle’s bastard daughter, and blame that villain with the brown

eye and the green!”

She spoke her last venomous words as slowly and distinctly as she had

spoken all the rest. Noel Vanstone made no answer—he still sat cowering

over the fire. She looked round into his face. He was crying silently.

“I was so fond of her!” said the miserable little creature; “and I

thought she was so fond of Me!”

Mrs. Lecount turned her back on him in disdainful silence. “Fond of

her!” As she repeated those words to herself, her haggard face became

almost handsome again in the magnificent intensity of its contempt.

She walked to a book-case at the lower end of the room, and began

examining the volumes in it. Before she had been long engaged in this

way, she was startled by the sound of his voice, affrightedly calling

her back. The tears were gone from his face; it was blank again with

terror when he now turned it toward her.

“Lecount!” he said, holding to her with both hands. “Can an egg be

poisoned? I had an egg for breakfast this morning, and a little toast.”

“Make your mind easy, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “The poison of your

wife’s deceit is the only poison you have taken yet. If she had

resolved already on making you pay the price of your folly with your

life, she would not be absent from the house while you were left living

in it. Dismiss the thought from your mind. It is the middle of the day;

you want refreshment. I have more to say to you in the interests of

your own safety—I have something for you to do, which must be done at

once. Recruit your strength, and you will do it. I will set you the

example of eating, if you still distrust the food in this house. Are

you composed enough to give the servant her orders, if I ring the bell?

It is necessary to the object I have in view for you, that nobody

should think you ill in body or troubled in mind. Try first with me

before the servant comes in. Let us see how you look and speak when you

say, ‘Bring up the lunch.’”

After two rehearsals, Mrs. Lecount considered him fit to give the

order, without betraying himself.

The bell was answered by Louisa—Louisa looked hard at Mrs. Lecount. The

luncheon was brought up by the house-maid—the house-maid looked hard at

Mrs. Lecount. When luncheon was over, the table was cleared by the

cook—the cook looked hard at Mrs. Lecount. The three servants were

plainly suspicious that something extraordinary was going on in the

house. It was hardly possible to doubt that they had arranged to share

among themselves the three opportunities which the service of the table

afforded them of entering the room.

The curiosity of which she was the object did not escape the

penetration of Mrs. Lecount. “I did well,” she thought, “to arm myself

in good time with the means of reaching my end. If I let the grass grow

under my feet, one or the other of those women might get in my way.”

Roused by this consideration, she produced her traveling-bag from a

corner, as soon as the last of the servants had entered the room; and

seating herself at the end of the table opposite Noel Vanstone, looked

at him for a moment, with a steady, investigating attention. She had

carefully regulated the quantity of wine which he had taken at

luncheon—she had let him drink exactly enough to fortify, without

confusing him; and she now examined his face critically, like an artist

examining his picture at the end of the day’s work. The result appeared

to satisfy her, and she opened the serious business of the interview on

the spot.

“Will you look at the written evidence I have mentioned to you, Mr.

Noel, before I say any more?” she inquired. “Or are you sufficiently

persuaded of the truth to proceed at once to the suggestion which I

have now to make to you?”

“Let me hear your suggestion,” he said, sullenly resting his elbows on

the table, and leaning his head on his hands.

Mrs. Lecount took from her traveling-bag the written evidence to which

she had just alluded, and carefully placed the papers on one side of

him, within easy reach, if he wished to refer to them. Far from being

daunted, she was visibly encouraged by the ungraciousness of his

manner. Her experience of him informed her that the sign was a

promising one. On those rare occasions when the little resolution that

he possessed was roused in him, it invariably asserted itself—like the

resolution of most other weak men—aggressively. At such times, in

proportion as he was outwardly sullen and discourteous to those about

him, his resolution rose; and in proportion as he was considerate and

polite, it fell. The tone of the answer he had just given, and the

attitude he assumed at the table, convinced Mrs. Lecount that Spanish

wine and Scotch mutton had done their duty, and had rallied his sinking

courage.

“I will put the question to you for form’s sake, sir, if you wish it,”

she proceeded. “But I am already certain, without any question at all,

that you have made your will?”

He nodded his head without looking at her.

“You have made it in your wife’s favor?”

He nodded again.

“You have left her everything you possess?”

“No.”

Mrs. Lecount looked surprised.

“Did you exercise a reserve toward her, Mr. Noel, of your own accord?”

she inquired; “or is it possible that your wife put her own limits to

her interest in your will?”

He was uneasily silent—he was plainly ashamed to answer the question.

Mrs. Lecount repeated it in a less direct form.

“How much have you left your widow, Mr. Noel, in the event of your

death?”

“Eighty thousand pounds.”

That reply answered the question. Eighty thousand pounds was exactly

the fortune which Michael Vanstone had taken from his brother’s orphan

children at his brother’s death—exactly the fortune of which Michael

Vanstone’s son had kept possession, in his turn, as pitilessly as his

father before him. Noel Vanstone’s silence was eloquent of the

confession which he was ashamed to make. His doting weakness had,

beyond all doubt, placed his whole property at the feet of his wife.

And this girl, whose vindictive daring had defied all restraints—this

girl, who had not shrunk from her desperate determination even at the

church door—had, in the very hour of her triumph, taken part only from

the man who would willingly have given all!—had rigorously exacted her

father’s fortune from him to the last farthing; and had then turned her

back on the hand that was tempting her with tens of thousands more! For

the moment, Mrs. Lecount was fairly silenced by her own surprise;

Magdalen had forced the astonishment from her which is akin to

admiration, the astonishment which her enmity would fain have refused.

She hated Magdalen with a tenfold hatred from that time.

“I have no doubt, sir,” she resumed, after a momentary silence, “that

Mrs. Noel gave you excellent reasons why the provision for her at your

death should be no more, and no less, than eighty thousand pounds. And,

on the other hand, I am equally sure that you, in your innocence of all

suspicion, found those reasons conclusive at the time. That time has

now gone by. Your eyes are opened, sir; and you will not fail to remark

(as I remark) that the Combe-Raven property happens to reach the same

sum exactly, as the legacy which your wife’s own instructions directed

you to leave her. If you are still in any doubt of the motive for which

she married you, look in your own will—and there the motive is!”

He raised his head from his hands, and became closely attentive to what

she was saying to him, for the first time since they had faced each

other at the table. The Combe-Raven property had never been classed by

itself in his estimation. It had come to him merged in his father’s

other possessions, at his father’s death. The discovery which had now

opened before him was one to which his ordinary habits of thought, as

well as his innocence of suspicion, had hitherto closed his eyes. He

said nothing; but he looked less sullenly at Mrs. Lecount. His manner

was more ingratiating; the high tide of his courage was already on the

ebb.

“Your position, sir, must be as plain by this time to you as it is to

me,” said Mrs. Lecount. “There is only one obstacle now left between

this woman and the attainment of her end. _That obstacle is your life._

After the discovery we have made upstairs, I leave you to consider for

yourself what your life is worth.”

At those terrible words, the ebbing resolution in him ran out to the

last drop. “Don’t frighten me!” he pleaded; “I have been frightened

enough already.” He rose, and dragged his chair after him, round the

table to Mrs. Lecount’s side. He sat down and caressingly kissed her

hand. “You good creature!” he said, in a sinking voice. “You excellent

Lecount! Tell me what to do. I’m full of resolution—I’ll do anything to

save my life!”

“Have you got writing materials in the room, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount.

“Will you put them on the table, if you please?”

While the writing materials were in process of collection, Mrs. Lecount

made a new demand on the resources of her traveling-bag. She took two

papers from it, each indorsed in the same neat commercial handwriting.

One was described as “Draft for proposed Will,” and the other as “Draft

for proposed Letter.” When she placed them before her on the table, her

hand shook a little; and she applied the smelling-salts, which she had

brought with her in Noel Vanstone’s interests, to her own nostrils.

“I had hoped, when I came here, Mr. Noel,” she proceeded, “to have

given you more time for consideration than it seems safe to give you

now. When you first told me of your wife’s absence in London, I thought

it probable that the object of her journey was to see her sister and

Miss Garth. Since the horrible discovery we have made upstairs, I am

inclined to alter that opinion. Your wife’s determination not to tell

you who the friends are whom she has gone to see, fills me with alarm.

She may have accomplices in London—accomplices, for anything we know to

the contrary, in this house. All three of your servants, sir, have

taken the opportunity, in turn, of coming into the room and looking at

me. I don’t like their looks! Neither you nor I know what may happen

from day to day, or even from hour to hour. If you take my advice, you

will get the start at once of all possible accidents; and, when the

carriage comes back, you will leave this house with me!”

“Yes, yes!” he said, eagerly; “I’ll leave the house with you. I

wouldn’t stop here by myself for any sum of money that could be offered

me. What do we want the pen and ink for? Are you to write, or am I?”

“You are to write, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “The means taken for

promoting your own safety are to be means set in motion, from beginning

to end, by yourself. I suggest, Mr. Noel—and you decide. Recognize your

own position, sir. What is your first and foremost necessity? It is

plainly this. You must destroy your wife’s interest in your death by

making another will.”

He vehemently nodded his approval; his color rose, and his blinking

eyes brightened in malicious triumph. “She shan’t have a farthing,” he

said to himself, in a whisper—“she shan’t have a farthing!”

“When your will is made, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, “you must place

it in the hands of a trustworthy person—not my hands, Mr. Noel; I am

only your servant! Then, when the will is safe, and when you are safe,

write to your wife at this house. Tell her her infamous imposture is

discovered; tell her you have made a new will, which leaves her

penniless at your death; tell her, in your righteous indignation, that

she enters your doors no more. Place yourself in that strong position,

and it is no longer you who are at your wife’s mercy, but your wife who

is at yours. Assert your own power, sir, with the law to help you, and

crush this woman into submission to any terms for the future that you

please to impose.”

He eagerly took up the pen. “Yes,” he said, with a vindictive

self-importance, “any terms I please to impose.” He suddenly checked

himself and his face became dejected and perplexed. “How can I do it

now?” he asked, throwing down the pen as quickly as he had taken it up.

“Do what, sir?” inquired Mrs. Lecount.

“How can I make my will, with Mr. Loscombe away in London, and no

lawyer here to help me?”

Mrs. Lecount gently tapped the papers before her on the table with her

forefinger.

“All the help you need, sir, is waiting for you here,” she said. “I

considered this matter carefully before I came to you; and I provided

myself with the confidential assistance of a friend to guide me through

those difficulties which I could not penetrate for myself. The friend

to whom I refer is a gentleman of Swiss extraction, but born and bred

in England. He is not a lawyer by profession—but he has had his own

sufficient experience of the law, nevertheless; and he has supplied me,

not only with a model by which you may make your will, but with the

written sketch of a letter which it is as important for us to have, as

the model of the will itself. There is another necessity waiting for

you, Mr. Noel, which I have not mentioned yet, but which is no less

urgent in its way than the necessity of the will.”

“What is it?” he asked, with roused curiosity.

“We will take it in its turn, sir,” answered Mrs. Lecount. “Its turn

has not come yet. The will, if you please, first. I will dictate from

the model in my possession and you will write.”

Noel Vanstone looked at the draft for the Will and the draft for the

Letter with suspicious curiosity.

“I think I ought to see the papers myself, before you dictate,” he

said. “It would be more satisfactory to my own mind, Lecount.”

“By all means, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, handing him the papers

immediately.

He read the draft for the Will first, pausing and knitting his brows

distrustfully, wherever he found blank spaces left in the manuscript to

be filled in with the names of persons and the enumeration of sums

bequeathed to them. Two or three minutes of reading brought him to the

end of the paper. He gave it back to Mrs. Lecount without making any

objection to it.

The draft for the Letter was a much longer document. He obstinately

read it through to the end, with an expression of perplexity and

discontent which showed that it was utterly unintelligible to him. “I

must have this explained,” he said, with a touch of his old

self-importance, “before I take any steps in the matter.”

“It shall be explained, sir, as we go on,” said Mrs. Lecount.

“Every word of it?”

“Every word of it, Mr. Noel, when its turn comes. You have no objection

to the will? To the will, then, as I said before, let us devote

ourselves first. You have seen for yourself that it is short enough and

simple enough for a child to understand it. But if any doubts remain on

your mind, by all means compose those doubts by showing your will to a

lawyer by profession. In the meantime, let me not be considered

intrusive if I remind you that we are all mortal, and that the lost

opportunity can never be recalled. While your time is your own, sir,

and while your enemies are unsuspicious of you, make your will!”

She opened a sheet of note-paper and smoothed it out before him; she

dipped the pen in ink, and placed it in his hands. He took it from her

without speaking—he was, to all appearance, suffering under some

temporary uneasiness of mind. But the main point was gained. There he

sat, with the paper before him, and the pen in his hand; ready at last,

in right earnest, to make his will.

“The first question for you to decide, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, after a

preliminary glance at her Draft, “is your choice of an executor. I have

no desire to influence your decision; but I may, without impropriety,

remind you that a wise choice means, in other words, the choice of an

old and tried friend whom you know that you can trust.”

“It means the admiral, I suppose?” said Noel Vanstone.

Mrs. Lecount bowed.

“Very well,” he continued. “The admiral let it be.”

There was plainly some oppression still weighing on his mind. Even

under the trying circumstances in which he was placed it was not in his

nature to take Mrs. Lecount’s perfectly sensible and disinterested

advice without a word of cavil, as he had taken it now.

“Are you ready, sir?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Lecount dictated the first paragraph from the Draft, as follows:

“This is the last Will and Testament of me, Noel Vanstone, now living

at Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries. I revoke, absolutely and in every

particular, my former will executed on the thirtieth of September,

eighteen hundred and forty-seven; and I hereby appoint Rear-Admiral

Arthur Everard Bartram, of St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex, sole executor

of this my will.”

“Have you written those words, sir?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft; Noel Vanstone laid down the pen. They

neither of them looked at each other. There was a long silence.

“I am waiting, Mr. Noel,” said Mrs. Lecount, at last, “to hear what

your wishes are in respect to the disposal of your fortune. Your

_large_ fortune,” she added, with merciless emphasis.

He took up the pen again, and began picking the feathers from the quill

in dead silence.

“Perhaps your existing will may help you to instruct me, sir,” pursued

Mrs. Lecount. “May I inquire to whom you left all your surplus money,

after leaving the eighty thousand pounds to your wife?”

If he had answered that question plainly, he must have said: “I have

left the whole surplus to my cousin, George Bartram”—and the implied

acknowledgment that Mrs. Lecount’s name was not mentioned in the will

must then have followed in Mrs. Lecount’s presence. A much bolder man,

in his situation, might have felt the same oppression and the same

embarrassment which he was feeling now. He picked the last morsel of

feather from the quill; and, desperately leaping the pitfall under his

feet, advanced to meet Mrs. Lecount’s claims on him of his own accord.

“I would rather not talk of any will but the will I am making now,” he

said uneasily. “The first thing, Lecount—” He hesitated—put the bare

end of the quill into his mouth—gnawed at it thoughtfully—and said no

more.

“Yes, sir?” persisted Mrs. Lecount.

“The first thing is—”

“Yes, sir?”

“The first thing is, to—to make some provision for You?”

He spoke the last words in a tone of plaintive interrogation—as if all

hope of being met by a magnanimous refusal had not deserted him even

yet. Mrs. Lecount enlightened his mind on this point, without a

moment’s loss of time.

“Thank you, Mr. Noel,” she said, with the tone and manner of a woman

who was not acknowledging a favor, but receiving a right.

He took another bite at the quill. The perspiration began to appear on

his face.

“The difficulty is,” he remarked, “to say how much.”

“Your lamented father, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “met that

difficulty (if you remember) at the time of his last illness?”

“I don’t remember,” said Noel Vanstone, doggedly.

“You were on one side of his bed, sir, and I was on the other. We were

vainly trying to persuade him to make his will. After telling us he

would wait and make his will when he was well again, he looked round at

me, and said some kind and feeling words which my memory will treasure

to my dying day. Have you forgotten those words, Mr. Noel?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Noel, without hesitation.

“In my present situation, sir,” retorted Mrs. Lecount, “delicacy

forbids me to improve your memory.”

She looked at her watch, and relapsed into silence. He clinched his

hands, and writhed from side to side of his chair in an agony of

indecision. Mrs. Lecount passively refused to take the slightest notice

of him.

“What should you say—?” he began, and suddenly stopped again.

“Yes, sir?”

“What should you say to—a thousand pounds?”

Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair, and looked him full in the face, with

the majestic indignation of an outraged woman.

“After the service I have rendered you to-day, Mr. Noel,” she said, “I

have at least earned a claim on your respect, if I have earned nothing

more. I wish you good-morning.”

“Two thousand!” cried Noel Vanstone, with the courage of despair.

Mrs. Lecount folded up her papers and hung her traveling-bag over her

arm in contemptuous silence.

“Three thousand!”

Mrs. Lecount moved with impenetrable dignity from the table to the

door.

“Four thousand!”

Mrs. Lecount gathered her shawl round her with a shudder, and opened

the door.

“Five thousand!”

He clasped his hands, and wrung them at her in a frenzy of rage and

suspense. “Five thousand” was the death-cry of his pecuniary suicide.

Mrs. Lecount softly shut the door again, and came back a step.

“Free of legacy duty, sir?” she inquired.

“No.”

Mrs. Lecount turned on her heel and opened the door again.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Lecount came back, and resumed her place at the table as if

nothing had happened.

“Five thousand pounds, free of legacy duty, was the sum, sir, which

your father’s grateful regard promised me in his will,” she said,

quietly. “If you choose to exert your memory, as you have not chosen to

exert it yet, your memory will tell you that I speak the truth. I

accept your filial performance of your father’s promise, Mr. Noel—and

there I stop. I scorn to take a mean advantage of my position toward

you; I scorn to grasp anything from your fears. You are protected by my

respect for myself, and for the Illustrious Name I bear. You are

welcome to all that I have done, and to all that I have suffered in

your service. The widow of Professor Lecompte, sir, takes what is

justly hers—and takes no more!”

As she spoke those words, the traces of sickness seemed, for the

moment, to disappear from her face; her eyes shone with a steady inner

light; all the woman warmed and brightened in the radiance of her own

triumph—the triumph, trebly won, of carrying her point, of vindicating

her integrity, and of matching Magdalen’s incorruptible self-denial on

Magdalen’s own ground.

“When you are yourself again, sir, we will proceed. Let us wait a

little first.”

She gave him time to compose himself; and then, after first looking at

her Draft, dictated the second paragraph of the will, in these terms: