and nearer came the fatal moment of Mr.
Bygrave's return. Mrs. Lecount looked at her watch for the third
time, without an attempt on this occasion to conceal the action
from her companion's notice. There were literally two minutes
left for her to  get clear of North  Shingles. Two minutes would
be enough, if no accident happened. She had discov ered the
Alpaca dress; she had heard the whole story of the adventure in
Vauxhall Walk; and, more than that, she had even informed herself
of the number of the house -- which Mrs. Wragge happened to
remember, because it answered to the number of years in her own
age. All that was necessary to her master's complete
enlightenment she had now accomplished. Even if there had been
time to stay longer, there was nothing worth staying for. "I'll
strike this worthy idiot dumb with a _coup d'etat_," thought the
housekeeper, "and vanish before she recovers herself."

"Horrible!" cried Mrs. Lecount, interrupting the ghostly
narrative by a shrill little scream and making for the door, to
Mrs. Wragge's unutterable astonishment, without the least
ceremony. "You freeze the very marrow of my bones. Good-morning!"
She coolly tossed the Oriental Cashmere Robe into Mrs. Wragge's
expansive lap and left the room in an instant.

As she swiftly descended the stairs, she heard the door of the
bedroom open.

"Where are your manners?" cried a voice from above, hailing her
feebly over the banisters. "What do you mean by pitching my gown
at me in that way? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" pursued
Mrs. Wragge, turning from a lamb to a lioness, as she gradually
realized the indignity offered to the Cashmere Robe. "You nasty
foreigner, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

Pursued by this valedictory address, Mrs. Lecount reached the
house door, and opened it without interruption. She glided
rapidly along the garden path, passed through the gate, and
finding herself safe on the Parade, stopped, and looked toward
the sea.

The first object which her eyes encountered was the figure of Mr.
Bygrave standing motionless on the beach -- a petrified bather,
with his towels in his hand! One glance at him was enough to show
that he had seen the housekeeper passing out through his garden
gate.

Rightly conjecturing that Mr. Bygrave's first impulse would lead
him to make instant inquiries in his own house, Mrs. Lecount
pursued her way back to Sea View as composedly as if nothing had
happened. When she entered the parlor where her solitary
breakfast was waiting for her, she was surprised to see a letter
lying on the table. She approached to take it up with an
expression of impatience, thinking it might be some tradesman's
bill which she had forgotten.

It was the forged letter from Zurich.



CHAPTER XI.

THE postmark and the handwriting on the address (admirably
imitated from the original) warned Mrs. Lecount of the contents
of the letter before she opened it.

After waiting a moment to compose herself, she read the
announcement of her brother's relapse.

There was nothing in the handwriting, there was no expression in
any part of the letter which could suggest to her mind the
faintest suspicion of foul play. Not the shadow of a doubt
occurred to her that the summons to her brother's bedside was
genuine. The hand that held the letter dropped heavily into her
lap; she became pale, and old, and haggard in a moment. Thoughts,
far removed from her present aims and interests; remembrances
that carried her back to other lands than England, to other times
than the time of her life in service, prolonged their inner
shadows to the surface, and showed the traces of their mysterious
passage darkly on her face. The minutes followed each other, and
still the servant below stairs waited vainly for the parlor bell.
The minutes followed each other, and still she sat, tearless and
quiet, dead to the present and the future, living in the past.

The entrance of the servant, uncalled, roused her. With a heavy
sigh, the cold and secret woman folded the letter up again and
addressed herself to the interests and the duties of the passing
time.

She decided the question of going or not going to Zurich, after a
very brief consideration of it. Before she had drawn her chair to
the breakfast-table she had resolved to go.

Admirably as Captain Wragge's stratagem had worked, it might have
failed -unassisted by the occurrence of the morning -- to achieve
this result. The very accident against which it had been the
captain's chief anxiety to guard -- the accident which had just
taken place in spite of him -- was, of all the events that could
have happened, the one event which falsified every previous
calculation, by directly forwarding the main purpose of the
conspiracy! If Mrs. Lecount had not obtained the information of
which she was in search before the receipt of the letter from
Zurich, the letter might have addressed her in vain. She would
have hesitated before deciding to leave England, and that
hesitation might have proved fatal to the captain's scheme.

As it was, with the plain proofs in her possession, with the gown
discovered in Magdalen's wardrobe, with the piece cut out of it
in her own pocketbook, and with the knowledge, obtained from Mrs.
Wragge, of the very house in which the disguise had been put on,
Mrs. Lecount had now at her command the means of warning Noel
Vanstone as she had never been able to warn him yet, or, in other
words, the means of guarding against any dangerous tendencies
toward reconciliation with the Bygraves which might otherwise
have entered his mind during her absence at Zurich. The only
difficulty which now perplexed her was the difficulty of deciding
whether she should communicate with her master personally or by
writing, before her departure from England.

She looked again at the doctor's letter. The word "instantly," in
the sentence which summoned her to her dying brother, was twice
underlined. Admiral Bartram's house was at some distance from the
railway; the time consumed in driving to St. Crux, and driving
back again, might be time fatally lost on the journey to Zurich.
Although she would infinitely have preferred a personal interview
with Noel Vanstone, there was no choice on a matter of life and
death but to save the precious hours by writing to him.

After sending to secure a place at once in the early coach, she
sat down to write to her master.

Her first thought was to tell him all that had happened at North
Shingles that morning. On reflection, however, she rejected the
idea. Once already (in copying the personal description from Miss
Garth's letter) she had trusted her weapons in her master's
hands, and Mr. Bygrave had contrived to turn them against her.
She resolved this time to keep them strictly in her own
possession. The secret of the missing fragment of the Alpaca
dress was known to no living creature but herself; and, until her
return to England, she determined to keep it to herself. The
necessary impression might be produced on Noel Vanstone's mind
without venturing into details. She knew by experience the form
of letter which might be trusted to produce an effect on him, and
she now wrote it in these words:


"DEAR MR. NOEL -- Sad news has reached me from Switzerland. My
beloved brother is dying and his medical attendant summons me
instantly to Zurich. The serious necessity of availing myself of
the earliest means of conveyance to the Continent leaves me but
one alternative. I must profit by the permission to leave
England, if necessary, which you kindly granted to me at the
beginning of my brother's illness, and I must avoid all delay by
going straight to London, instead of turning aside, as I should
have liked, to see you first at St. Crux.

"Painfully as I am affected by the family calamity which has
fallen on me, I cannot let this opportunity pass without
adverting to another subject which seriously concerns your
welfare, and in which (on that account) your old housekeeper
feels the deepest interest.

"I am going to surprise and shock you, Mr. Noel. Pray don't be
agitated! pray compose yourself!

"The impudent attempt to cheat you, which has happily opened your
eyes to the true character of our neighbors at North Shingles,
was not the only object which Mr. Bygrave had in forcing himself
on your acquaintance. The infamous conspiracy with which you were
threatened in London has been in full progress against you under
Mr. Bygrave's direction, at  Aldborough. Accident -- I will tell
you what accident when we meet -- has put me in possession of i
nformation precious to your future security. I have discovered,
to an absolute certainty, that the person calling herself Miss
Bygrave is no other than the woman who visited us in disguise at
Vauxhall Walk.

"I suspected this from the first, but I had no evidence to
support my suspicions; I had no means of combating the false
impression produced on you. My hands, I thank Heaven, are tied no
longer. I possess absolute proof of the assertion that I have
just made -- proof that your own eyes can see -- proof that would
satisfy you, if you were judge in a Court of Justice.

"Perhaps even yet, Mr. Noel, you will refuse to believe me? Be it
so. Believe me or not, I have one last favor to ask, which your
English sense of fair play will not deny me.

"This melancholy journey of mine will keep me away from England
for a fortnight, or, at most, for three weeks. You will oblige me
-- and you will certainly not sacrifice your own convenience and
pleasure -- by staying through that interval with your friends at
St. Crux. If, before my return, some unexpected circumstance
throws you once more into the company of the Bygraves, and if
your natural kindness of heart inclines you to receive the
excuses which they will, in that case, certainly address to you,
place one trifling restraint on yourself, for your own sake, if
not for mine. Suspend your flirtation with the young lady (I beg
pardon of all other young ladies for calling her so!) until my
return. If, when I come back, I fail to prove to you that Miss
Bygrave is the woman who wore that disguise, and used those
threatening words, in Vauxhall Wall, I will engage to leave your
service at a day's notice; and I will atone for the sin of
bearing false witness against my neighbor by resigning every
claim I have to your grateful remembrance, on your father's
account as well as on your own. I make this engagement without
reserves of any kind; and I promise to abide by it -- if my
proofs fail -- on the faith of a good Catholic, and the word of
an honest woman. Your faithful servant,

"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."


The closing sentences of this letter -- as the housekeeper well
knew when she wrote them -- embodied the one appeal to Noel
Vanstone which could be certainly trusted to produce a deep and
lasting effect. She might have staked her oath, her life, or her
reputation, on proving the assertion which she had made, and have
failed to leave a permanent impression on his mind. But when she
staked not only her position in his service, but her pecuniary
claims on him as well, she at once absorbed the ruling passion of
his life in expectation of the result. There was not a doubt of
it, in the strongest of all his interests -- the interest of
saving his money -- he would wait.

"Checkmate for Mr. Bygrave!" thought Mrs. Lecount, as she sealed
and directed the letter. The battle is over -- the game is played
out."

While Mrs. Lecount was providing for her master's future security
at Sea View, events were in full progress at North Shingles.

As soon as Captain Wragge recovered his astonishment at the
housekeeper's appearance on his own premises, he hurried into the
house, and, guided by his own forebodings of the disaster that
had happened, made straight for his wife's room.

Never, in all her former experience, had poor Mrs. Wragge felt
the full weight of the captain's indignation as she felt it now.
All the little intelligence she naturally possessed vanished at
once in the whirlwind of her husband's rage. The only plain facts
which he could extract from her were two in number. In the first
place, Magdalen's rash desertion of her post proved to have no
better reason to excuse it than Magdalen's incorrigible
impatience: she had passed a sleepless night; she had risen
feverish and wretched; and she had gone out, reckless of all
consequences, to cool her burning head in the fresh air. In the
second place, Mrs. Wragge had, on her own confession, seen Mrs.
Lecount, had talked with Mrs. Lecount, and had ended by telling
Mrs. Lecount the story of the ghost. Having made these
discoveries, Captain