“What can she have said to Miss Garth?”

Captain Wragge considered a little.

“I can’t say what Mrs. Lecount may have written,” he said, “but I can tell you what I should have written in Mrs. Lecount’s place.  I should have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to begin with, and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to help a benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends.”  The angry glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen’s eyes.

“What you would have done is what Mrs. Lecount has done,” she said, indignantly.  “Neither lawyer nor governess shall dispute my right to my own will and my own way.  If Miss Garth thinks she can control my actions by corresponding with Mrs. Lecount, I will show Miss Garth she is mistaken!  It is high time, Captain Wragge, to have done with these wretched risks of discovery.  We will take the short way to the end we have in view sooner than Mrs. Lecount or Miss Garth think for.  How long can you give me to wring an offer of marriage out of that creature downstairs?”

“I dare not give you long,” replied Captain Wragge.  “Now your friends know where you are, they may come down on us at a day’s notice.  Could you manage it in a week?”

“I’ll manage it in half the time,” she said, with a hard, defiant laugh.  “Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich, and take Mrs. Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company.  Is the paint dry yet?  Go downstairs and tell him I am coming directly.”

So, for the second time, Miss Garth’s well-meant efforts defeated their own end.  So the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that would fain have held Magdalen back into the hand that drove her on.

The captain returned to his visitor in the parlor, after first stopping on his way to issue his orders for the walking excursion to Mrs. Wragge.

“I am shocked to have kept you waiting,” he said, sitting down again confidentially by Noel Vanstone’s side.  “My only excuse is, that my niece had accidentally dressed her hair so as to defeat our object.  I have been persuading her to alter it, and young ladies are apt to be a little obstinate on questions relating to their toilet.  Give her a chair on that side of you when she comes in, and take your look at her neck comfortably before we start for our walk.”

Magdalen entered the room as he said those words, and after the first greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with the most unsuspicious readiness.  Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial Test on the spot, with the highest appreciation of the fair material which was the subject of experiment.  Not the vestige of a mole was visible on any part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave’s neck.  It mutely answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone’s half-closed eyes by the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs. Lecount.  That one central incident in the events of the morning was of all the incidents that had hitherto occurred, the most important in its results.  That one discovery shook the housekeeper’s hold on her master as nothing had shaken it yet.