this lady merits a little serious consideration
on my part. I will close my chronicle for
to-day, and give Mrs. Lecount her due.

Three o'clock.—I open these pages again, to
record a discovery which has taken me entirely
by surprise.

After completing the last entry, a circumstance
revived in my memory, which I had noticed on
escorting the ladies this morning to the railway.
I then remarked that Miss Vanstone had only
taken one of her three boxes with her—and it
now occurred to me that a private investigation
of the luggage she had left behind, might possibly
be attended with beneficial results. Having, at
certain periods of my life, been in the habit of
cultivating friendly terms with strange locks, I
found no difficulty in establishing myself on a
familiar footing with Miss Vanstone's boxes. One
of the two presented nothing to interest me.
The other—devoted to the preservation of the
costumes, articles of toilette, and other properties
used in the dramatic Entertainment—proved to
be better worth examining: for it led me straight
to the discovery of one of its owner's secrets.

I found all the dresses in the box complete
—with one remarkable exception. That
exception was the dress of the old North-country
lady; the character which I have already
mentioned as the best of all my pupil's disguises,
and as modelled in voice and manner on
her old governess, Miss Garth. The wig; the
eyebrows; the bonnet and veil; the cloak, padded
inside to disfigure her back and shoulders; the
paints and cosmetics used to age her face and
alter her complexion—were all gone. Nothing
but the gown remained; a gaudily flowered silk,
useful enough for dramatic purposes, but too
extravagant in colour and pattern to bear inspection
by daylight. The other parts of the dress
are sufficiently quiet to pass muster; the bonnet
and veil are only old fashioned, and the cloak is
of a sober grey colour. But one plain inference
can be drawn from such a discovery as this. As
certainly as I sit here, she is going to open the
campaign against Noel Vanstone and Mrs.
Lecount, in a character which neither of those two
persons can have any possible reason for suspecting
at the outset—the character of Miss Garth.

What course am I to take under these
circumstances? Having got her secret, what am I to
do with it? These are awkward considerations;
I am rather puzzled how to deal with them.

It is something more than the mere fact of her
choosing to disguise herself to forward her own
private ends, that causes my present perplexity.
Hundreds of girls take fancies for disguising
themselves; and hundreds of instances of it are
related, year after year, in the public journals.
But my ex-pupil is not to be confounded, for
one moment, with the average adventuress of
the newspapers. She is capable of going a
long way beyond the limit of dressing herself
like a man, and imitating a man's voice and
manner. She has a natural gift for assuming
characters, which I have never seen equalled by
a woman; and she has performed in public until
she has felt her own power, and trained her talent
for disguising herself to the highest pitch. A girl
who takes the sharpest people unawares by using
such a capacity as this to help her own objects in
private life; and who sharpens that capacity by
a determination to fight her way to her own
purpose which has beaten down everything before
it, up to this time—is a girl who tries an experiment
in deception, new enough and dangerous
enough to lead, one way or the other, to very
serious results. This is my conviction, founded
on a large experience in the art of imposing on
my fellow-creatures. I say of my fair relative's
enterprise what I never said or thought of it till
I introduced myself to the inside of her box.
The chances for and against her winning the
fight for her lost fortune are now so evenly
balanced, that I cannot for the life of me see on
which side the scale inclines. All I can discern
is, that it will, to a dead certainty, turn one way
or the other, on the day when she passes Noel
Vanstone's doors in disguise.

[Which way do my interests point now? Upon
my honour, I don't know.]

Five o'clock.—I have effected a masterly
compromise; I have decided on turning myself into
a Jack-on-both-sides.

By to-day's post I have despatched to London
an anonymous letter for Mr. Noel Vanstone. It will
be forwarded to its destination by the same means
which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr.
Pendril; and it will reach Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth,
by the afternoon of to-morrow, at the latest.

The letter is short, and to the purpose. It
warns Mr. Noel Vanstone, in the most alarming
language, that he is destined to become the victim
of a conspiracy; and that the prime mover of it
is a young lady who has already held written
communication with his father and himself. It
offers him the information necessary to secure
his own safety, on condition that he makes it
worth the writer's while to run the serious
personal risk which such a disclosure will entail on
him. And it ends by stipulating that the answer
shall be advertised in the Times; shall be
addressed to "An Unknown Friend;" and shall
state plainly what remuneration Mr. Noel
Vanstone offers for the priceless service which it is
proposed to render him.

Unless some unexpected complication occurs,
this letter places me exactly in the position which
it is my present interest to occupy. If the
advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered
is large enough to justify me in going over to the
camp of the enemy, over I go. If no advertisement
appears, or if Mr. Noel Vanstone rates my
invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I
remain, biding my time till my fair relative wants
me—or till I make her want me, which comes to
the same thing. If the anonymous letter falls by
any accident into her hands, she will find
disparaging allusions in it to myself, purposely