the floor, within the housekeeper’s reach.  Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran round the bottom of the dress one over the other, softly cut away a little irregular fragment of stuff from the inner flounce, and neatly smoothed the outer one over it again, so as to hide the gap.  By the time she had put the scissors back in her pocket, and had risen to her feet (sheltering herself behind the post of the folding-door), Magdalen had spoken her last words.  Mrs. Lecount quietly repeated the ceremony of opening and shutting the back parlor door; and returned to her place.

“What has happened, sir, in my absence?” she inquired, addressing her master with a look of alarm.  “You are pale; you are agitated!  Oh, Miss Garth, have you forgotten the caution I gave you in the other room?”

“Miss Garth has forgotten everything,” cried Noel Vanstone, recovering his lost composure on the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount.  “Miss Garth has threatened me in the most outrageous manner.  I forbid you to pity either of those two girls any more, Lecount—­especially the younger one.  She is the most desperate wretch I ever heard of!  If she can’t get my money by fair means, she threatens to have it by foul.  Miss Garth has told me that to my face.  To my face!” he repeated, folding his arms, and looking mortally insulted.

“Compose yourself, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “Pray compose yourself, and leave me to speak to Miss Garth.  I regret to hear, ma’am, that you have forgotten what I said to you in the next room.  You have agitated Mr. Noel; you have compromised the interests you came here to plead; and you have only repeated what we knew before.  The language you have allowed yourself to use in my absence is the same language which your pupil was foolish enough to employ when she wrote for the second time to my late master.  How can a lady of your years and experience seriously repeat such nonsense?  This girl boasts and threatens.  She will do this; she will do that.  You have her confidence, ma’am.  Tell me, if you please, in plain words, what can she do?”

Sharply as the taunt was pointed, it glanced off harmless.  Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting once too often.  Magdalen rose in complete possession of her assumed character and composedly terminated the interview.  Ignorant as she was of what had happened behind her chair, she saw a change in Mrs. Lecount’s look and manner which warned her to run no more risks, and to trust herself no longer in the house.

“I am not in my pupil’s confidence,” she said.  “Her own acts will answer your question when the time comes.  I can only tell you, from my own knowledge of her, that she is no boaster.  What she wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone was what she was prepared to do—–­what, I have reason to think, she was actually on the point of doing, when her plans were overthrown by his death.  Mr. Michael Vanstone’s son has only to persist in following his father’s course to find, before long, that I am not mistaken in my pupil, and that I have not come here to intimidate him by empty threats.  My errand is done.  I leave Mr. Noel Vanstone with two alternatives to choose from.  I leave him to share Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s fortune with Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s daughters—­or to persist in his present refusal and face the consequences.”  She bowed, and walked to the door.