Instead of at once entering the house, he passed it; stopped, as if struck by a sudden recollection; and, retracing his steps, asked for Mr. Vanstone at the door.  Mr. Vanstone came out hospitably into the passage.  Pitching his voice to a tone which could be easily heard by any listening individual through any open door in the bedroom regions, Mr. Bygrave announced the object of his visit on the door-mat in the fewest possible words.  He had been staying with a distant relative.  The distant relative possessed two pictures—­Gems by the Old Masters—­which he was willing to dispose of, and which he had intrusted for that purpose to Mr. Bygrave’s care.  If Mr. Noel Vanstone, as an amateur in such matters, wished to see the Gems, they would be visible in half an hour’s time, when Mr. Bygrave would have returned to North Shingles.

Having delivered himself of this incomprehensible announcement, the arch-conspirator laid his significant forefinger along the side of his short Roman nose, said, “Fine weather, isn’t it?  Good-afternoon!” and sauntered out inscrutably to continue his walk on the Parade.

On the expiration of the half-hour Noel Vanstone presented himself at North Shingles, with the ardor of a lover burning inextinguishably in his bosom, through the superincumbent mental fog of a thoroughly bewildered man.  To his inexpressible happiness, he found Magdalen alone in the parlor.  Never yet had she looked so beautiful in his eyes.  The rest and relief of her four days’ absence from Aldborough had not failed to produce their results; she had more than recovered her composure.  Vibrating perpetually from one violent extreme to another, she had now passed from the passionate despair of five days since to a feverish exaltation of spirits which defied all remorse and confronted all consequences.  Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were bright with color; she talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of past days; she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing; she imitated Mrs. Lecount’s smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount’s insinuating graces of manner with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which was but the coarse reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of former times.  Noel Vanstone, who had never yet seen her as he saw her now, was enchanted; his weak head whirled with an intoxication of enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had caught the infection from hers.  The half-hour during which he was alone with her passed like five minutes to him.  When that time had elapsed, and when she suddenly left him—­to obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt’s presence—­miser as he was, he would have paid at that moment five golden sovereigns out of his pocket for five golden minutes more passed in her society.

The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, and the captain walked in.  He entered on the explanations which his visitor naturally expected from him with the unceremonious abruptness of a man hard pressed for time, and determined to make the most of every moment at his disposal.