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 paralysing 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,"
lie 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 pocket-book,
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