the first obstacles presented themselves.  The art which succeeded by gas-light failed by day:  the difficulty of hiding the plainly artificial nature of the marks was almost insuperable.  She turned to her trunk; took from it two veils; and putting on her old-fashioned bonnet, tried the effect of them in succession.  One of the veils (of black lace) was too thick to be worn over the face at that summer season without exciting remark.  The other, of plain net, allowed her features to be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to permit the safe introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was accustomed to use in performing the character) on the forehead and at the sides of the mouth.  But the obstacle thus set aside only opened the way to a new difficulty—­the difficulty of keeping her veil down while she was speaking to other persons, without any obvious reason for doing so.  An instant’s consideration, and a chance look at her little china palette of stage colors, suggested to her ready invention the production of a visible excuse for wearing her veil.  She deliberately disfigured herself by artificially reddening the insides of her eyelids so as to produce an appearance of inflammation which no human creature but a doctor—­and that doctor at close quarters—­could have detected as false.  She sprang to her feet and looked triumphantly at the hideous transformation of herself reflected in the glass.  Who could think it strange now if she wore her veil down, and if she begged Mrs. Lecount’s permission to sit with her back to the light?

Her last proceeding was to put on the quiet gray cloak which she had brought from Birmingham, and which had been padded inside by Captain Wragge’s own experienced hands, so as to hide the youthful grace and beauty of her back and shoulders.  Her costume being now complete, she practiced the walk which had been originally taught her as appropriate to the character—­a walk with a slight limp—­and, returning to the glass after a minute’s trial, exercised herself next in the disguise of her voice and manner.  This was the only part of the character in which it had been possible, with her physical peculiarities, to produce an imitation of Miss Garth; and here the resemblance was perfect.  The harsh voice, the blunt manner, the habit of accompanying certain phrases by an emphatic nod of the head, the Northumbrian burr expressing itself in every word which contained the letter “r”—­all these personal peculiarities of the old North-country governess were reproduced to the life.  The personal transformation thus completed was literally what Captain Wragge had described it to be—­a triumph in the art of self-disguise.  Excepting the one case of seeing her face close, with a strong light on it, nobody who now looked at Magdalen could have suspected for an instant that she was other than an ailing, ill-made, unattractive woman of fifty years old at least.