opposite seat, with her eyes closed and her veil
down.

It was only when the carriage stopped at North
Shingles, and when Captain Wragge was handing
Magdalen out, that the housekeeper at last
condescended to notice him . As he smiled and took
off his hat at the carriage door, the strong restraint
she had laid on herself suddenly gave way; and
she flashed one look at him, which scorched up
the captain's politeness on the spot. He turned
at once, with a hasty acknowledgment of Noel
Vanstone's last sympathetic inquiries, and took
Magdalen into the house.

"I told you she would show her claws," he
said. "It is not my fault that she scratched you
before I could stop her. She hasn't hurt you,
has she ?"

"She has hurt me, to some purpose," said
Magdalen—"she has given me the courage to go
on. Say what must be done, to-morrow, and
trust me to do it," She sighed heavily as she
said those words, and went up to her room.

Captain Wragge walked meditatively into the
parlour, and sat down to consider. He felt by
no means so certain as he could have wished, of
the next proceeding on the part of the enemy
after the defeat of that day. The housekeeper's
farewell look had plainly informed him that she
was not at the end of her resources yet; and the
old militiaman felt the full importance of preparing
himself in good time to meet the next step
which she took in advance. He lit a cigar, and
bent his wary mind on the dangers of the future.

While Captain Wragge was considering in the
parlour at North Shingles, Mrs. Lecount was
meditating in her bedroom at Sea View. Her
exasperation at the failure of her first attempt to
expose the conspiracy, had not blinded her to the
instant necessity of making a second effort, before
Noel Vanstone's growing infatuation got beyond
her control. The snare set for Magdalen having
failed, the chance of entrapping Magdalen's sister
was the next chance to try. Mrs. Lecount
ordered a cup of tea; opened her writing-case;
and began the rough draught of a letter to be
sent to Miss Vanstone the elder by the morrow's
post.

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

IGNORAMUS AT THE EXHIBITION.

Not content with showing me the machinery,*
which I understood no better after their
explanation than I did before, another of my scientific
friends insisted on taking me through the
Eastern Annexe, to enlighten me concerning the
uses of the various chemicals stored up there.
I submitted: how could I do otherwise?
*See page 345.

Off we went, through the colonial courts;
past the monkeys and snakes of British Guiana
and the Maltese stone-work and filigree silver;
past the Australian wood trophy and the Canadian
long-necked bottles of golden petroleum or
rock oil — just glancing at the vases, and jugs, and
tables, and tazzas of black marble from
Derbyshire; and finally bringing up before a certain
case, where some pretty things were to be
seen.

First, there was some nitrate of uranium—not
that I know what nitrate of uranium is, only that
it is very like exceedingly yellow barley-sugar. It
is used chiefly for glass-staining and painting on
enamel. Uranium was first discovered by Klaproth
in 1789, but found now to be comparatively
common in the Cornwall tin mines and among
the lead and silver veins of Saxony. Then
there were two big vessels of platinum; the one
an alembic (what an old alchemist's word!), and
the other a boiler for rectifying sulphuric acid,
and worth four hundred and sixty-five pounds,
without the tubes. Platinum is essentially the
chemist's metal, and the most useful that he has.
Fire does not melt it, unless at the most
outrageous and almost unattainable ferocity; air
and water do not touch it; it can be heated
to a white heat and still retain its polish; and
the only acid that dissolves it, is the
nitromuriatic. What the analytical world did when
it was not, no one now can understand.
Platinum is rarely found in masses, only in grains
or spangles, for the most part not so large as
linseed, sometimes as large as hempseed, and
sometimes, but very rarely, as big as peas. But
there have been tremendous giants—just one or
two—to show what platinum can do if it likes.
The largest bit seen hitherto is in this very
Eastern Annexe of ours. It is an irregular
mass about a foot long, and from five to six
inches deep, weighing three thousand two
hundred ounces, or two hundred pounds. Up
to the advent of this metallic son of Anak,
the prize piece was one of twenty-one
pounds' weight, brought from the Ural
Mountains, and now in the famous Demidoff
cabinet; then there was another, over eleven
pounds, also found in the Ural Mountains in the
year 1827; and one in the Royal Museum at
Madrid, larger than a turkey's egg, and brought
from the gold mine of Condoto, at Choco, in
Peru; and another from the same place, weighing
more than two ounces avoirdupois, which
Humboldt presented to the cabinet of Berlin.
All these were mighty in their day, when
compared to the linseed and hempseed of ordinary
growths; but what are they now in the presence
of a leviathan weighing two hundred pounds?
Platinum— a minor silver, from "plata," which
means silver, according to the Spaniards —is
found principally in the company of gold; and
when first brought to Europe, in 1748, was called
"white gold," in recognition of the many noble
properties, which seem to make it akin to the
royal metal. For it is so malleable that it can be
beaten into leaves thin enough to be blown about
and floated anywhere by the breath—just like
gold-leaf, in fact; and it is so ductile (I am
obliged to use these hard words, but I don't like
them), that Dr. Wollaston made a wire of it no
larger in diameter than the two-thousandth part
of an inch; while its tenacity is proved by the