“I know you, ma’am!” thought the captain, while Mrs. Lecount was talking to him.  “You would like to catch me tripping in my ready-made science, and you wouldn’t object to drown me in the Professor’s Tank!”

“You villain with the brown eye and the green!” thought Mrs. Lecount, as the captain caught the ball of conversation in his turn; “thick as your skin is, I’ll sting you through it yet!”

In this frame of mind toward each other they talked fluently on general subjects, on public affairs, on local scenery, on society in England and society in Switzerland, on health, climate, books, marriage and money—­talked, without a moment’s pause, without a single misunderstanding on either side for nearly an hour, before Magdalen and Noel Vanstone strayed that way and made the party of four complete again.

When they reached the inn at which the carriage was waiting for them, Captain Wragge left Mrs. Lecount in undisturbed possession of her master, and signed to Magdalen to drop back for a moment and speak to him.

“Well?” asked the captain, in a whisper, “is he fast to your apron-string?”

She shuddered from head to foot as she answered.

“He has kissed my hand,” she said.  “Does that tell you enough?  Don’t let him sit next me on the way home!  I have borne all I can bear—­spare me for the rest of the day.”

“I’ll put you on the front seat of the carriage,” replied the captain, “side by side with me.”

On the journey back Mrs. Lecount verified Captain Wragge’s prediction.  She showed her claws.

The time could not have been better chosen; the circumstances could hardly have favored her more.  Magdalen’s spirits were depressed:  she was weary in body and mind; and she sat exactly opposite the housekeeper, who had been compelled, by the new arrangement, to occupy the seat of honor next her master.  With every facility for observing the slightest changes that passed over Magdalen’s face, Mrs. Lecount tried he r first experiment by leading the conversation to the subject of London, and to the relative advantages offered to residents by the various quarters of the metropolis on both sides of the river.  The ever-ready Wragge penetrated her intention sooner than she had anticipated, and interposed immediately.  “You’re coming to Vauxhall Walk, ma’am,” thought the captain; “I’ll get there before you.”

He entered at once into a purely fictitious description of the various quarters of London in which he had himself resided; and, adroitly mentioning Vauxhall Walk as one of them, saved Magdalen from the sudden question relating to that very locality with which Mrs. Lecount had proposed startling her, to begin with.  From his residences he passed smoothly to himself, and poured his whole family history (in the character of Mr. Bygrave) into the housekeeper’s ears—­not forgetting his brother’s grave in Honduras, with the monument by the self-taught negro artist, and his brother’s hugely corpulent