The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that evening at the stationer’s shop led plainly to the conclusion that one day more would bring Noel Vanstone’s present term of residence in Vauxhall Walk to an end.  Her first cautious resolution to pass many days together in unsuspected observation of the house opposite before she ventured herself inside was entirely frustrated by the turn events had taken.  She was placed in the dilemma of running all risks headlong on the next day, or of pausing for a future opportunity which might never occur.  There was no middle course open to her.  Until she had seen Noel Vanstone with her own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to fear from Mrs. Lecount—­until she had achieved t his double object, with the needful precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the dark—­not a step could she advance toward the accomplishment of the purpose which had brought her to London.

One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one after another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her mind—­and still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and doubted, with a hesitation new to her in her experience of herself.  At last she crossed the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief of unlocking her trunk and taking from it the few things that she wanted for the night.  Captain Wragge’s suspicions had not misled him.  There, hidden between two dresses, were the articles of costume which he had missed from her box at Birmingham.  She turned them over one by one, to satisfy herself that nothing she wanted had been forgotten, and returned once more to her post of observation by the window.

The house opposite was dark down to the parlor.  There the blind, previously raised, was now drawn over the window:  the light burning behind it showed her for the first time that the room was inhabited.  Her eyes brightened, and her color rose as she looked at it.

“There he is!” she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper.  “There he lives on our money, in the house that his father’s warning has closed against me!” She dropped the blind which she had raised to look out, returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray wig which was part of her dramatic costume in the character of the North-country lady.  The wig had been crumpled in packing; she put it on and went to the toilet-table to comb it out.  “His father has warned him against Magdalen Vanstone,” she said, repeating the passage in Mrs. Lecount’s letter, and laughing bitterly, as she looked at herself in the glass.  “I wonder whether his father has warned him against Miss Garth?  To-morrow is sooner than I bargained for.  No matter:  to-morrow shall show.”

CHAPTER II.

THE early morning, when Magdalen rose and looked out, was cloudy and overcast.  But as time advanced to the breakfast hour the threatening of rain passed away; and she was free to provide, without hinderance from the weather, for the first necessity of the day—­the necessity of securing the absence of her traveling companion from the house.