little strips of garden-ground.  This peculiarity of position, added to the breadth of the roadway interposing between them and the smaller houses opposite, made it impossible for Magdalen to see the numbers on the doors, or to observe more of any one who might come to the windows than the bare general outline of dress and figure.  Nevertheless, there she stood, anxiously fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly opposite to her—­the house she had looked for before entering the lodgings; the house inhabited at that moment by Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.

After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or more, she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect which her behavior might have produced on her traveling 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 trades-people, 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 position of a new set of toys.  “Here’s light reading, printed in pretty colors.  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 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 backward and forward perpetually; heavy wagons 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