he broke out peevishly. "You know
as well as I do, Lecount, it all depends on you.
Mrs. Lecount has a brother in Switzerland," he
went on, addressing himself to the captain—"a
brother who is seriously ill. If he gets worse, she
will have to go there and see him. I can't
accompany her, and I can't be left in the house
by myself. I shall have to break up my
establishment at Aldborough, and stay with some
friends. It all depends on you, Lecount—or
on your brother, which comes to the same thing.
If it depended on me" continued Mr. Noel
Vanstone, looking pointedly at Magdalen across
the housekeeper, "I should stay at Aldborough
all through the autumn with the greatest pleasure.
With the greatest pleasure," he reiterated,
repeating the words with a tender look for
Magdalen, and a spiteful accent for Mrs. Lecount.

Thus far, Captain Wragge had remained silent;
carefully noting in his mind the promising
possibilities of a separation between Mrs. Lecount
and her master, which Mr. Noel Vanstone's little
fretful outbreak had just disclosed to him. An
ominous trembling in the housekeeper's thin lips,
as her master openly exposed her family affairs
before strangers, and openly set her jealousy at
defiance, now warned him to interfere. If the
misunderstanding were permitted to proceed to
extremities, there was a chance that the invitation
for that evening to Sea-View Cottage might be
put off. Now, as ever, equal to the occasion,
Captain Wragge called his useful information
once more to the rescue. Under the learned
auspices of Joyce, he plunged, for the third time,
into the ocean of science, and brought up another
pearl. He was still haranguing (on Pneumatics
this time), still improving Mrs. Lecount's mind
with his politest perseverance and his smoothest
flow of language—when the walking party
stopped at Mr. Noel Vanstone's door.

"Bless my soul, here we are at your house,
sir!" said the captain, interrupting himself in the
middle of one of his graphic sentences. "I won't
keep you standing a moment. Not a word of
apology, Mrs. Lecount, I beg and pray! I will
put that curious point in Pneumatics more
clearly before you on a future occasion. In the
mean time, I need only repeat, that you can
perform the experiment I have just mentioned, to
your own entire satisfaction, with a bladder, an
exhausted receiver, and a square box. At seven
o'clock this evening, sir—at seven o'clock, Mrs.
Lecount. We have had a remarkably pleasant
walk, and a most instructive interchange of
ideas. Now my dear girl! your aunt is waiting
for us."

While Mrs. Lecount stepped aside to open the
garden gate, Mr. Noel Vanstone seized his opportunity,
and shot a last tender glance at Magdalen
—under shelter of the umbrella, which he had taken
into his own hands for that express purpose.
"Don't forget," he said, with his sweetest smile;
"don't forget, when you come this evening, to
wear that charming hat!" Before he could add
any last words, Mrs. Lecount glided back to her
place; and the sheltering umbrella changed hands
again immediately.

"An excellent morning's work!" said Captain
Wragge, as he and Magdalen walked on together
to North Shingles. "You and I and Joyce have
all three done wonders. We have secured a
friendly invitation at the first day's fishing for it."

He paused for an answer; and, receiving none,
observed Magdalen more attentively than he had
observed her yet. Her face had turned deadly
pale again; her eyes looked out mechanically
straight before her in heedless, reckless despair.

"What is the matter?" he asked, with the
greatest surprise. "Are you ill?"

She made no reply; she hardly seemed to hear
him.

"Are you getting alarmed about Mrs.
Lecount?" he inquired next. "There is not the
least reason for alarm. She may fancy she has
heard something like your voice before; but
your face evidently bewilders her. Keep your
temper, and you keep her in the dark. Keep
her in the dark; and you will put that two
hundred pounds into my hands before the autumn is
over."

He waited again for an answer; and again she
remained silent. The captain tried for the third
time, in another direction.

"Did you get any letters this morning?" he
went on. "Is there bad news again from home?
Any fresh difficulties with your sister?"

"Say nothing about my sister!" she broke out,
passionately. "Neither you nor I are fit to
speak of her."

She said those words at the garden gate, and
hurried into the house by herself. He followed
her, and heard the door of her own room violently
shut to, violently locked and double-locked.
Solacing his indignation by an oath, Captain Wragge
sullenly went into one of the parlours on the
ground floor to look after his wife. The room
communicated with a smaller and darker room
at the back of the house, by means of a quaint
little door, with a window in the upper half of
it. Softly approaching this door, the captain
lifted the white muslin curtain which hung over
the window, and looked into the inner room.

There was Mrs. Wragge, with her cap on one
side, and her shoes down at heel; with a row of
pins between her teeth; with the Oriental
Cashmere Robe slowly slipping off the table; with
her scissors suspended uncertain in one hand,
and her written directions for dressmaking held
doubtfully in the other—so absorbed over the
invincible difficulties of her employment, as to
be perfectly unconscious that she was at that
moment the object of her husband's superintending
eye. Under other circumstances, she would
have been soon brought to a sense of her situation
by the sound of his voice. But Captain
Wragge was too anxious about Magdalen to
waste any time on his wife, after satisfying
himself that she was safe in her seclusion, and that
she might be trusted to remain there.

He left the parlour, and, after a little hesitation