widow, on the ground-floor of the boarding-house at Cheltenham.  As a means of giving Magdalen time to compose herself, this outburst of autobiographical information attained its object, but it answered no other purpose.  Mrs. Lecount listened, without being imposed on by a single word the captain said to her.  He merely confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of taking Noel Vanstone into her confidence before she had facts to help her against Captain Wragge’s otherwise unassailable position in the identity which he had assumed.  She quietly waited until he had done, and then returned to the charge.

“It is a coincidence that your uncle should have once resided in Vauxhall Walk,” she said, addressing herself to Magdalen.  “Mr. Noel has a house in the same place, and we lived there before we came to Aldborough.  May I inquire, Miss Bygrave, whether you know anything of a lady named Miss Garth?”

This time she put the question before the captain could interfere.  Magdalen ought to have been prepared for it by what had already passed in her presence, but her nerves had been shaken by the earlier events of the day; and she could only answer the question in the negative, after an instant’s preliminary pause to control herself.  Her hesitation was of too momentary a nature to attract the attention of any unsuspicious person.  But it lasted long enough to confirm Mrs. Lecount’s private convictions, and to encourage her to advance a little further.

“I only asked,” she continued, steadily fixing her eyes on Magdalen, steadily disregarding the efforts which Captain Wragge made to join in the conversation, “because Miss Garth is a stranger to me, and I am curious to find out what I can about her.  The day before we left town, Miss Bygrave, a person who presented herself under the name I have mentioned paid us a visit under very extraordinary circumstances.”

With a smooth, ingratiating manner, with a refinement of contempt which was little less than devilish in its ingenious assumption of the language of pity, she now boldly described Magdalen’s appearance in disguise in Magdalen’s own presence.  She slightingly referred to the master and mistress of Combe-Raven as persons who had always annoyed the elder and more respectable branch of the family; she mourned over the children as following their parents’ example, and attempting to take a mercenary advantage of Mr. Noel Vanstone, under the protection of a respectable person’s character and a respectable person’s name.  Cleverly including her master in the conversation, so as to prevent the captain from effecting a diversion in that quarter; sparing no petty aggravation; striking at every tender place which the tongue of a spiteful woman can wound, she would, beyond all doubt, have carried her point, and tortured Magdalen into openly betraying herself, if Captain Wragge had not checked her in full career by a loud exclamation of alarm, and a sudden clutch at Magdalen’s wrist.