for ten minutes or more, she suddenly looked
back into the room, to observe the effect which
her behaviour might have produced on her
travelling companion.

Not the slightest cause appeared for any
apprehension in that quarter. Mrs. Wragge was
seated at the table, absorbed in the arrangement
of a series of smart circulars and tempting price-
lists, issued by advertising tradespeople, and
flung in at the cab-windows as they left the
London terminus. "I've often heard tell of light
reading," said Mrs. Wragge, restlessly shifting
the positions of the circulars, as a child
restlessly shifts the positions of a new set of toys.
"Here's light reading, printed in pretty colours.
Here's all the Things I'm going to buy when
I'm out shopping to-morrow. Lend us a pencil,
please—you won't be angry, will you?—I do so
want to mark 'em off." She looked up at
Magdalen, chuckled joyfully over her own altered
circumstances, and beat her great hands on the
table in irrepressible delight. "No cookery-
book!" cried Mrs. Wragge. "No Buzzing in
my head! no Captain to shave to-morrow! I'm
all down at heel; my cap's on one side; and
nobody bawls at me. My heart alive, here is a
holiday and no mistake!" Her hands began to
drum again on the table louder than ever, until
Magdalen quieted them by presenting her with
a pencil. Mrs. Wragge instantly recovered her
dignity, squared her elbows on the table, and
plunged into imaginary shopping for the rest of
the evening.

Magdalen returned to the window. She took
a chair, seated herself behind the curtain, and
steadily fixed her eyes once more on the house
opposite.

The blinds were down over the windows of the
first floor and the second. The window of the
room on the ground floor was uncovered and
partly open, but no living creature came near it.
Doors opened, and people came and went, in the
houses on either side; children by the dozen
poured out on the pavement to play, and invaded
the little strips of garden-ground to recover lost
balls and shuttlecocks; streams of people passed
backwards and forwards perpetually; heavy
waggons piled high with goods, lumbered along
the road, on their way to, or their way from, the
railway station near; all the daily life of the
district stirred with its ceaseless activity, in every
direction but one. The hours passed—and there
was the house opposite, still shut up, still void
of any signs of human existence, inside or out.
The one object which had decided Magdalen on
personally venturing herself in Vauxhall Walk—
the object of studying the looks, manners, and
habits of Mrs. Lecount and her master from a
post of observation known only to herself—was,
thus far, utterly defeated. After three hours'
watching at the window, she had not even
discovered enough to show her that the house was
inhabited at all.

Shortly after six o'clock, the landlady disturbed
Mrs. Wragge's studies by spreading the cloth for
dinner. Magdalen placed herself at the table,
in a position which still enabled her to command
the view from the window. Nothing happened.
The dinner came to an end; Mrs. Wragge
(lulled by the narcotic influences of annotating
circulars and eating and drinking with an
appetite sharpened by the captain's absence)
withdrew to an arm-chair, and fell asleep in an
attitude which would have caused her husband
the acutest mental suffering; seven o'clock
struck; the shadows of the summer evening
lengthened stealthily on the grey pavement and
the brown house-walls—and still the closed door
opposite remained shut; still the one window
open, showed nothing but the black blank of the
room inside, lifeless and changeless as if that
room had been a tomb.

Mrs. Wragge's meek snoring deepened in tone;
the evening wore on drearily; it was close on
eight o'clock—when an event happened at last.
The street-door opposite opened for the first
time, and a woman appeared on the threshold.

Was the woman Mrs. Lecount? No. As she
came nearer, her dress showed her to be a
servant. She had a large door-key in her hand, and
was evidently going out to perform an errand.
Roused, partly by curiosity—partly by the
impulse of the moment, which urged her
impetuous nature into action, after the passive
endurance of many hours past—Magdalen snatched
up her bonnet, and determined to follow the
servant to her destination, wherever it might be.

The woman led her to the great thoroughfare
of shops close at hand, called Lambeth Walk.
After proceeding some little distance, and looking
about her with the hesitation of a person not
well acquainted with the neighbourhood, the
servant crossed the road, and entered a
stationer's shop. Magdalen crossed the road after
her, and followed her in.

The inevitable delay in entering the shop,
under these circumstances, made Magdalen too
late to hear what the woman asked for. The first
words spoken, however, by the man behind the
counter, reached her ears, and informed her that
the servant's object was to buy a railway Guide.

"Do you mean a Guide for this month? or a
Guide for July?" asked the shopman, addressing
his customer.

"Master didn't tell me which," answered the
woman. "All I know is, he's going into the
country the day after to-morrow."

"The day after to-morrow is the first of July,"
said the shopman. "The Guide your master
wants, is the Guide for the new month. It won't
be published till to-morrow."

Engaging to call again on the next day, the
servant left the shop, and took the way that led
back to Vauxhall Walk.

Magdalen purchased the first trifle she saw on
the counter, and hastily returned in the same
direction. The discovery she had just made was
of very serious importance to her; and she felt
the necessity of acting on it with as little delay
as possible.