As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck her when she put away the packet of Norah’s letters rose in her mind once more.  A sudden impulse to test the miserable completeness of her disguise mixed with the higher and purer feeling at her heart, and strengthened her natural longing to see her sister’s face again, though she dare not discover herself and speak.  Norah’s later letters had described, in the fullest details, her life as a governess—­her hours for teaching, her hours of leisure, her hours for walking out with her pupils.  There was just time, if she could find a vehicle at once, for Magdalen to drive to the house of Norah’s employer, with the chance of getting there a few minutes before the hour when her sister would be going out.  “One look at her will tell me more than a hundred letters!” With that thought in her heart, with the one object of following Norah on her daily walk, under protection of the disguise, Magdalen hastened over the bridge, and made for the northern bank of the river.

So, at the turning-point of her life—­so, in the interval before she took the irrevocable step, and passed the threshold of Noel Vanstone’s door—­the forces of Good triumphing in the strife for her over the forces of Evil, turned her back on the scene of her meditated deception, and hurried her mercifully further and further away from the fatal house.

She stopped the first empty cab that passed her; told the driver to go to New Street, Spring Gardens; and promised to double his fare if he reached his destination by a given time.  The man earned the money—­more than earned it, as the event proved.  Magdalen had not taken ten steps in advance along New Street, walking toward St. James’s Park, before the door of a house beyond her opened, and a lady in mourning came out, accompanied by two little girls.  The lady also took the direction of the Park, without turning her head toward Magdalen as she descended the house step.  It mattered little; Magdalen’s heart looked through her eyes, and told her that she saw Norah.

She followed them into St. James’s Park, and thence (along the Mall) into the Green Park, venturing closer and closer as they reached the grass and ascended the rising ground in the direction of Hyde Park Corner.  Her eager eyes devoured every detail in Norah’s dress, and detected the slightest change that had taken place in her figure and her bearing.  She had become thinner since the autumn—­her head drooped a little; she walked wearily.  Her mourning dress, worn with the modest grace and neatness which no misfortune could take from her, was suited to her altered station; her black gown was made of stuff; her black shawl and bonnet were of the plainest and cheapest kind.  The two little girls, walking on either side of her, were dressed in silk.  Magdalen instinctively hated them.