“Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife’s society on yourself for a fortnight?” he asked, in great surprise.

“Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house,” she burst out vehemently.  “I must and will have her with me!”

“Pray don’t agitate yourself,” said the captain.  “Take Mrs. Wragge, by all means.  I don’t want her.”  Having resigned the partner of his existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the parlor.  “The weakness of the sex!” thought the captain, tapping his sagacious head.  “Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the female temper gives way directly.”

The strain to which the captain alluded was not confined that evening to the female intellect at North Shingles:  it extended to the female intellect at Sea View.  For nearly two hours Mrs. Lecount sat at her desk writing, correcting, and writing again, before she could produce a letter to Miss Vanstone, the elder, which exactly accomplished the object she wanted to attain.  At last the rough draft was completed to her satisfaction; and she made a fair copy of it forthwith, to be posted the next day.

Her letter thus produced was a masterpiece of ingenuity.  After the first preliminary sentences, the housekeeper plainly informed Norah of the appearance of the visitor in disguise at Vauxhall Walk; of the conversation which passed at the interview; and of her own suspicion that the person claiming to be Miss Garth was, in all probability, the younger Miss Vanstone herself.  Having told the truth thus far, Mrs. Lecount next proceeded to say that her master was in possession of evidence which would justify him in putting the law in force; that he knew the conspiracy with which he was threatened to be then in process of direction against him at Aldborough; and that he only hesitated to protect himself in deference to family considerations, and in the hope that the elder Miss Vanstone might so influence her sister as to render it unnecessary to proceed to extremities.

Under these circumstances (the letter continued) it was plainly necessary that the disguised visitor to Vauxhall Walk should be properly identified; for if Mrs. Lecount’s guess proved to be wrong, and if the person turned out to be a stranger, Mr. Noel Vanstone was positively resolved to prosecute in his own defense.  Events at Aldborough, on which it was not necessary to dwell, would enable Mrs. Lecount in a few days to gain sight of the suspected person in her own character.  But as the housekeeper was entirely unacquainted with the younger Miss Vanstone, it was obviously desirable that some better informed person should, in this particular, take the matter in hand.  If the elder Miss Vanstone happened to be at liberty to come to Aldborough herself, would she kindly write and say so? and Mrs. Lecount would write back again to appoint a day.  If, on the other hand, Miss Vanstone was prevented from taking the journey, Mrs. Lecount suggested that her reply