Placed between the alternatives of losing Magdalen’s society or betraying Mrs. Lecount, unenlightened by any suspicion of the housekeeper’s ultimate object, cowed by the immovable scrutiny of Captain Wragge’s inquiring eye, Noel Vanstone was not long in making his choice.  He confusedly described his singular interview of the previous evening with Mrs. Lecount, and, taking the folded paper from his pocket, placed it in the captain’s hand.

A suspicion of the truth dawned on Captain Wragge’s mind the moment he saw the mysterious note.  He withdrew to the window before he opened it.  The first lines that attracted his attention were these:  “Oblige me, Mr. Noel, by comparing the young lady who is now in your company with the personal description which follows these lines, and which has been communicated to me by a friend.  You shall know the name of the person described—­which I have left a blank—­as soon as the evidence of your own eyes has forced you to believe what you would refuse to credit on the unsupported testimony of Virginie Lecount.”

That was enough for the captain.  Before he had read a word of the description itself, he knew what Mrs. Lecount had done, and felt, with a profound sense of humiliation, that his female enemy had taken him by surprise.

There was no time to think; the whole enterprise was threatened with irrevocable overthrow.  The one resource in Captain Wragge’s present situation was to act instantly on the first impulse of his own audacity.  Line by line he read on, and still the ready inventiveness which had never deserted him yet failed to answer the call made on it now.  He came to the closing sentence—­to the last words which mentioned the two little moles on Magdalen’s neck.  At that crowning point of the description, an idea crossed his mind; his party-colored eyes twinkled; his curly lips twisted up at the corners; Wragge was himself again.  He wheeled round suddenly from the window, and looked Noel Vanstone straight in the face with a grimly-quiet suggestiveness of something serious to come.

“Pray, sir, do you happen to know anything of Mrs. Lecount’s family?” he inquired.

“A respectable family,” said Noel Vanstone—­“that’s all I know.  Why do you ask?”

“I am not usually a betting man,” pursued Captain Wragge.  “But on this occasion I will lay you any wager you like there is madness in your housekeeper’s family.”

“Madness!” repeated Noel Vanstone, amazedly

“Madness!” reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with his forefinger.  “I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document.  There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs. Lecount’s behavior to my niece.  It is clear to me that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your housekeeper—­who has been formerly connected, perhaps, with an outbreak of insanity in your housekeeper—­and who is now evidently confused with my niece in your housekeeper’s wandering mind.  That is my conviction, Mr. Vanstone.  I may be right, or I may be wrong.  All I say is this—­neither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you are requested to make of it.”