She mechanically retraced her steps; she returned, as in a dream, to the open space of the Park.  Arming itself treacherously with the strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the indignation that she felt for her sister’s sake, the terrible temptation of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever.  Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and horrible.  Norah made an object of public curiosity and amusement; Norah reprimanded in the open street; Norah, the hired victim of an old woman’s insolence and a child’s ill-temper, and the same man to thank for it who had sent Frank to China!—­and that man’s son to thank after him!  The thought of her sister, which had turned her from the scene of her meditated deception, which had made the consciousness of her own disguise hateful to her, was now the thought which sanctioned that means, or any means, to compass her end; the thought which set wings to her feet, and hurried her back nearer and nearer to the fatal house.

She left the Park again, and found herself in the streets without knowing where.  Once more she hailed the first cab that passed her, and told the man to drive to Vauxhall Walk.

The change from walking to riding quieted her.  She felt her attention returning to herself and her dress.  The necessity of making sure that no accident had happened to her disguise in the interval since she had left her own room impressed itself immediately on her mind.  She stopped the driver at the first pastry-cook’s shop which he passed, and there obtained the means of consulting a looking-glass before she ventured back to Vauxhall Walk.

Her gray head-dress was disordered, and the old-fashioned bonnet was a little on one side.  Nothing else had suffered.  She set right the few defects in her costume, and returned to the cab.  It was half-past one when she approached the house and knocked, for the second time, at Noel Vanstone’s door.  The woman-servant opened it as before.

“Has Mrs. Lecount come back?”

“Yes, ma’am.  Step this way, if you please.”

The servant preceded Magdalen along an empty passage, and, leading her past an uncarpeted staircase, opened the door of a room at the back of the house.  The room was lighted by one window looking out on a yard; the walls were bare; the boarded floor was uncovered.  Two bedroom chairs stood against the wall, and a kitchen-table was placed under the window.  On the table stood a glass tank filled with water, and ornamented in the middle by a miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced with weeds.  Snails clung to the sides of the tank; tadpoles and tiny fish swam swiftly in the green water, slippery efts and slimy frogs twined their noiseless way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on top of the pyramid there sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the stone, motionless as the stone, a little bright-eyed toad.  The art of keeping fish and reptiles as domestic pets had not at that time been popularized in England; and Magdalen, on entering the room, started back, in irrepressible astonishment and disgust, from the first specimen of an Aquarium that she had ever seen.