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

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

"Damn Lecount!" replied Mr. Noel
Vanstone, in great agitation. "I'm half inclined to
agree with you. I'm half inclined to think my
infernal housekeeper is mad."

He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the
merest allusion to Mrs. Lecount was distasteful
to him. His colour came and went; his manner
was absent and undecided; he fidgeted
restlessly about the garden walk. It would have been
plain to a far less acute observation than Captain
Wragge's, that Magdalen had met his advances
by an unexpected grace and readiness of
encouragement, which had entirely overthrown his
self-control.

"I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life!"
he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of
enthusiasm. "I hope Miss Bygrave feels all the better
for it. Do you go out at the same time to-morrow
morning? May I join you again?"

"By all means, Mr. Vanstone," said the
captain, cordially. "Excuse me for returning to the
subject—but what do you propose saying to Mrs.
Lecount?"

"I don't know. Lecount is a perfect nuisance!
What would you do, Mr. Bygrave, if you were in
my place?"

"Allow me to ask a question, my dear sir,
before I tell you. What is your breakfast-hour?"

"Half-past nine."

"Is Mrs. Lecount an early riser?"

"No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I
hate lazy women! If you were in my place, what
should you say to her?"

"I should say nothing," replied Captain
Wragge. "I should return at once by the back
way; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in the
front garden, as if I was taking a turn before
breakfast; and I should leave her to suppose that
I was only just out of my room. If she asks you
whether you mean to come here to-day, say no.
Secure a quiet life, until circumstances force you
to give her an answer. Then tell the plain truth
—say that Mr. Bygrave's niece and Mrs.
Lecount's description are at variance with each
other in the most important particular; and
beg that the subject may not be mentioned
again. There is my advice. What do you think
of it?"

If Mr. Noel Vanstone could have looked into
his counsellor's mind, he might have thought the
captain's advice excellently adapted to serve the
captain's interests. As long as Mrs. Lecount
could be kept in ignorance of her master's visits
to North Shingles—so long she would wait until
the opportunity came for trying her experiment;
and so long she might be trusted not to endanger
the conspiracy by any further proceedings.
Necessarily incapable of viewing Captain
Wragge's advice under this aspect, Mr. Noel
Vanstone simply looked at it, as offering him a
temporary means of escape from an explanation
with his housekeeper. He eagerly declared that
the course of action suggested to him should be
followed to the letter, and returned to Sea View
without further delay.

On this occasion, Captain Wragge's anticipations
were in no respect falsified by Mrs.
Lecount's conduct. She had no suspicion of her
master's visit to North Shingles—she had made
up her mind, if necessary, to wait patiently for
his interview with Miss Bygrave, until the end of
the week—and she did not embarrass him by any
unexpected questions, when he announced his
intention of holding no personal communication
with the Bygraves on that day. All she said
was, "Don't you feel well enough, Mr. Noel?
or don't you feel inclined?" He answered,
shortly, "I don't feel well enough;" and there
the conversation ended.

The next day, the proceedings of the previous
morning were exactly repeated. This time, Mr.
Noel Vanstone went home rapturously with a
keepsake in his breast-pocket—he had taken
tender possession of one of Miss Bygrave's gloves.
At intervals during the day, whenever he was
alone, he took out the glove, and kissed it with
a devotion which was almost passionate in its
fervour. The miserable little creature luxuriated
in his moments of stolen happiness, with a
speechless and stealthy delight which was a new
sensation to him. The few young girls whom he
had met with, in his father's narrow circle at
Zurich, had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating
him like a quaint little plaything; the
strongest impression he could make on their
hearts, was an impression in which their lapdogs
might have rivalled him; the deepest interest he
could create in them, was the interest they might
have felt in a new trinket or a new dress. The
only women who had hitherto invited his
admiration, and taken his compliments seriously,
had been women whose charms were on the
wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast
failing them. For the first time in his life, he
had now passed hours of happiness in the
society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to
think of her afterwards without a single
humiliating remembrance to lower him in his own
esteem.

Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change
produced in his look and manner by the new feeling
awakened in him, was not a change which
could be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the
second day, she pointedly asked him whether he
had not made an arrangement to call on the
Bygraves. He denied it, as before. "Perhaps,
you are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?" persisted
the housekeeper. He was at the end of his
resources; he was impatient to be rid of her inquiries;
he trusted to his friend at North Shingles
to help him—and, this time, he answered, Yes.
If you see the young lady," proceeded Mrs.
Lecount, "don't forget that note of mine, sir,
which you have in your waistcoat-pocket." No
more was said on either side—but by that night's