The announcement of her approaching departure was intimated to me yesterday.  After another civil speech about the information I had procured at Brighton, she hinted that there was a necessity for pushing our inquiries a little further.  I immediately offered to undertake them, as before.  “No,” she said; “they are not in your way this time.  They are inquiries relating to a woman; and I mean to make them myself!” Feeling privately convinced that this new resolution pointed straight at Mrs. Lecount, I tried a few innocent questions on the subject.  She quietly declined to answer them.  I asked next when she proposed to leave.  She would leave on the twenty-eighth.  For what destination?  London.  For long?  Probably not.  By herself?  No.  With me?  No.  With whom then?  With Mrs. Wragge, if I had no objection.  Good heavens! for what possible purpose?  For the purpose of getting a respectable lodging, which she could hardly expect to accomplish unless she was accompanied by an elderly female friend.  And was I, in the capacity of elderly male friend, to be left out of the business altogether?  Impossible to say at present.  Was I not even to forward any letters which might come for her at our present address?  No:  she would make the arrangement herself at the post-office; and she would ask me, at the same time, for an address, at which I could receive a letter from her, in case of necessity for future communication.  Further inquiries, after this last answer, could lead to nothing but waste of time.  I saved time by putting no more questions.

It was clear to me that our present position toward each other was what our position had been previously to the event of Michael Vanstone’s death.  I returned, as before, to my choice of alternatives.  Which way did my private interests point?  Toward trusting the chance of her wanting me again?  Toward threatening her with the interference of her relatives and friends?  Or toward making the information which I possessed a marketable commodity between the wealthy branch of the family and myself?  The last of the three was the alternative I had chosen in the case of the father.  I chose it once more in the case of the son.

The train started for London nearly four hours since, and took her away in it, accompanied by Mrs. Wragge.

My wife is too great a fool, poor soul, to be actively valuable in the present emergency; but she will be passively useful in keeping up Miss Vanstone’s connection with me—­and, in consideration of that circumstance, I consent to brush my own trousers, shave my own chin, and submit to the other inconveniences of waiting on myself for a limited period.  Any faint glimmerings of sense which Mrs. Wragge may have formerly possessed appear to have now finally taken their leave of her.  On receiving permission to go to London, she favored us immediately with two inquiries.  Might she do some shopping? and might she leave the cookery-book behind her?  Miss Vanstone said Yes to one question, and I said Yes to the other—­and from that moment, Mrs. Wragge has existed in a state of perpetual laughter.  I am still hoarse with vainly repeated applications of vocal stimulant; and I left her in the railway carriage, to my inexpressible disgust, with both shoes down at heel.