“Don’t be alarmed,” said a woman’s voice behind her.  “My pets hurt nobody.”

Magdalen turned, and confronted Mrs. Lecount.  She had expected—­founding her anticipations on the letter which the housekeeper had written to her—­to see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent old woman.  She found herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity, whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical resistance to the deteriorating influence of time.  If Mrs. Lecount had struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man in a thousand, or one woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to believe her.  Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more.  It was plainly parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with mourning ribbons.  Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white forehead, or her plump white cheeks.  Her double chin was dimpled, and her teeth were marvels of whiteness and regularity.  Her lips might have been critically considered as too thin, if they had not been accustomed to make the best of their defects by means of a pleading and persuasive smile.  Her large black eyes might have looked fierce if they had been set in the face of another woman, they were mild and melting in the face of Mrs. Lecount; they were tenderly interested in everything she looked at—­in Magdalen, in the toad on the rock-work, in the back-yard view from the window; in her own plump fair hands,—­which she rubbed softly one over the other while she spoke; in her own pretty cambric chemisette, which she had a habit of looking at complacently while she listened to others.  The elegant black gown in which she mourned the memory of Michael Vanstone was not a mere dress—­it was a well-made compliment paid to Death.  Her innocent white muslin apron was a little domestic poem in itself.  Her jet earrings were so modest in their pretensions that a Quaker might have looked at them and committed no sin.  The comely plumpness of her face was matched by the comely plumpness of her figure; it glided smoothly over the ground; it flowed in sedate undulations when she walked.  There are not many men who could have observed Mrs. Lecount entirely from the Platonic point of view—­lads in their teens would have found her irresistible—­women only could have hardened their hearts against her, and mercilessly forced their way inward through that fair and smiling surface.  Magdalen’s first glance at this Venus of the autumn period of female life more than satisfied her that she had done well to feel her ground in disguise before she ventured on matching herself against Mrs. Lecount.

“Have I the pleasure of addressing the lady who called this morning?” inquired the housekeeper.  “Am I speaking to Miss Garth?”

Something in the expression of her eyes, as she asked that question, warned Magdalen to turn her face further inward from the window than she had turned it yet.  The bare doubt whether the housekeeper might not have seen her already under too strong a light shook her self-possession for the moment.  She gave herself time to recover it, and merely answered by a bow.