Magdalen was standing by her dressing-table when a faint tap at the door suddenly roused her.  The tap was followed by the sound of a meek voice, which announced itself as the voice of “her maid,” and inquired if Miss Bygrave needed any assistance that morning.

“Not at present,” said Magdalen, as soon as she had recovered the surprise of finding herself unexpectedly provided with an attendant.  “I will ring when I want you.”

After dismissing the woman with that answer, she accidentally looked from the door to the window.  Any speculations on the subject of the new servant in which she might otherwise have engaged were instantly suspended by the sight of the bottle of laudanum, still standing on the ledge of the window, where she had left it at sunrise.  She took it once more in her hand, with a strange confusion of feeling—­with a vague doubt even yet, whether the sight of it reminded her of a terrible reality or a terrible dream.  Her first impulse was to rid herself of it on the spot.  She raised the bottle to throw the contents out of the window, and paused, in sudden distrust of the impulse that had come to her.  “I have accepted my new life,” she thought.  “How do I know what that life may have in store for me?” She turned from the window and went back to the table.  “I may be forced to drink it yet,” she said, and put the laudanum into her dressing-case.

Her mind was not at ease when she had done this:  there seemed to be some indefinable ingratitude in the act.  Still she made no attempt to remove the bottle from its hiding-place.  She hurried on her toilet; she hastened the time when she could ring for the maid, and forget herself and her waking thoughts in a new subject.  After touching the bell, she took from the table her letter to Norah and her letter to the captain, put them both into her dressing-case with the laudanum, and locked it securely with the key which she kept attached to her watch-chain.

Magdalen’s first impression of her attendant was not an agreeable one.  She could not investigate the girl with the experienced eye of the landlady at the London hotel, who had characterized the stranger as a young person overtaken by misfortune, and who had showed plainly, by her look and manner, of what nature she suspected that misfortune to be.  But with this drawback, Magdalen was perfectly competent to detect the tokens of sickness and sorrow lurking under the surface of the new maid’s activity and politeness.  She suspected the girl was ill-tempered; she disliked her name; and she was indisposed to welcome any servant who had been engaged by Noel Vanstone.  But after the first few minutes, “Louisa” grew on her liking.  She answered all the questions put to her with perfect directness; she appeared to understand her duties thoroughly; and she never spoke until she was spoken to first.  After making all the inquiries that occurred to her at the time, and after determining to give the maid a fair trial, Magdalen rose to leave the room.  The very air in it was still heavy to her with the oppression of the past night.