“Good creature!  Give me your hand.”  He kissed her hand, and smiled in high approval of his own affectionate proceeding.  “Lecount, you are a worthy creature!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.  She courtesied and went out.  “If he had any brains in that monkey head of his,” she said to herself in the passage, “what a rascal he would be!”

Left by himself, Noel Vanstone became absorbed in anxious reflection over the blank space in the advertisement.  Mrs. Lecount’s apparently superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money when he knew he had no intention of parting with it, had been founded on an intimate knowledge of his character.  He had inherited his father’s sordid love of money, without inheriting his father’s hard-headed capacity for seeing the uses to which money can be put.  His one idea in connection with his wealth was the idea of keeping it.  He was such an inborn miser that the bare prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him.  He took up the pen; laid it down again; and read the anonymous letter for the third time, shaking his head over it suspiciously.  “If I offer this man a large sum of money,” he thought, on a sudden, “how do I know he may not find a means of actually making me pay it?  Women are always in a hurry.  Lecount is always in a hurry.  I have got the afternoon before me—­I’ll take the afternoon to consider it.”

He fretfully put away the blotting-book and the sketch of the advertisement on the chair which Mrs. Lecount had just left.  As he returned to his own seat, he shook his little head solemnly, and arranged his white dressing-gown over his knees with the air of a man absorbed in anxious thought.  Minute after minute passed away; the quarters and the half-hours succeeded each other on the dial of Mrs. Lecount’s watch, and still Noel Vanstone remained lost in doubt; still no summons for the servants disturbed the tranquillity of the parlor bell.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, after parting with Mrs. Lecount, Magdalen had cautiously abstained from crossing the road to her lodgings, and had only ventured to return after making a circuit in the neighborhood.  When she found herself once more in Vauxhall Walk, the first object which attracted her attention was a cab drawn up before the door of the lodgings.  A few steps more in advance showed her the landlady’s daughter standing at the cab door engaged in a dispute with the driver on the subject of his fare.  Noticing that the girl’s back was turned toward her, Magdalen instantly profited by that circumstance and slipped unobserved into the house.

She glided along the passage, ascended the stairs, and found herself, on the first landing, face to face with her traveling companion!  There stood Mrs. Wragge, with a pile of small parcels hugged up in her arms, anxiously waiting the issue of the dispute with the cabman in the street.  To return was impossible—­the sound of the angry voices below was advancing into the passage.  To hesitate was worse than useless.  But one choice was left—­the choice of going on—­and Magdalen desperately took it.  She pushed by Mrs. Wragge without a word, ran into her own room, tore off her cloak, bonnet and wig, and threw them down out of sight in the blank space between the sofa-bedstead and the wall.