His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his strange proposal.  Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics and followed him into the dressing-room.  He locked the door, placed her on a chair close to the light, and then told her what had happened.

“We are on the brink of detection,” proceeded the captain, carefully mixing his colors with liquid glue, and with a strong “drier” added from a bottle in his own possession.  “There is only one chance for us (lift up your hair from the left side of your neck)—­I have told Mr. Noel Vanstone to take a private opportunity of looking at you; and I am going to give the lie direct to that she-devil Lecount by painting out your moles.”

“They can’t be painted out,” said Magdalen.  “No color will stop on them.”

“My color will,” remarked Captain Wragge.  “I have tried a variety of professions in my time—­the profession of painting among the rest.  Did you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye?  I lived some months once in the neighborhood of Drury Lane entirely on Black Eyes.  My flesh-color stood on bruises of all sorts, shades, and sizes, and it will stand, I promise you, on your moles.”

With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump of opaque color which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had graduated as nearly as the materials would permit to the color of Magdalen’s skin.  After first passing a cambric handkerchief, with some white powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he designed to operate, he placed two layers of color on the moles with the tip of the brush.  The process was performed in a few moments, and the moles, as if by magic, disappeared from view.  Nothing but the closest inspection could have discovered the artifice by which they had been concealed; at the distance of two or three feet only, it was perfectly invisible.

“Wait here five minutes,” said Captain Wragge, “to let the paint dry—­and then join us in the parlor.  Mrs. Lecount herself would be puzzled if she looked at you now.”

“Stop!” said Magdalen.  “There is one thing you have not told me yet.  How did Mrs. Lecount get the description which you read downstairs?  Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen the mark on my neck—­it is too far back, and too high up; my hair hides it.”

“Who knows of the mark?” asked Captain Wragge.

She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollection of Frank.

“My sister knows it,” s he said, faintly.

“Mrs. Lecount may have written to your sister,” suggested the captain: 

“Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger has a right to know?  Never! never!”

“Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs. Lecount?  The mark was mentioned in the handbills at York.  Who put it there?”

“Not Norah!  Perhaps Mr. Pendril.  Perhaps Miss Garth.”

“Then Mrs. Lecount has written to Mr. Pendril or Miss Garth—­more likely to Miss Garth.  The governess would be easier to deal with than the lawyer.”