He recovered himself a little, but he was still incapable of speech.  He held fast by the fence, and stared at her.

“Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount.  “I have come here not as your enemy, but as your friend.  I have been tried by sickness, I have been tried by distress.  Nothing remains of me but my heart.  My heart forgives you; my heart, in your sore need—­need which you have yet to feel-places me at your service.  Take my arm, Mr. Noel.  A little turn in the sun will help you to recover yourself.”

She put his hand through her arm and marched him slowly up the garden walk.  Before she had been five minutes in his company, she had resumed full possession of him in her own right.

“Now down again, Mr. Noel,” she said.  “Gently down again, in this fine sunlight.  I have much to say to you, sir, which you never expected to hear from me.  Let me ask a little domestic question first.  They told me at the house door Mrs. Noel Vanstone was gone away on a journey.  Has she gone for long?”

Her master’s hand trembled on her arm as she put that question.  Instead of answering it, he tried faintly to plead for himself.  The first words that escaped him were prompted by his first returning sense—­the sense that his housekeeper had taken him into custody.  He tried to make his peace with Mrs. Lecount.

“I always meant to do something for you,” he said, coaxingly.  “You would have heard from me before long.  Upon my word and honor, Lecount, you would have heard from me before long!”

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount.  “But for the present, never mind about Me.  You and your interests first.”

“How did you come here?” he asked, looking at her in astonishment.  “How came you to find me out?”

“It is a long story, sir; I will tell it you some other time.  Let it be enough to say now that I have found you.  Will Mrs. Noel be back again at the house to-day?  A little louder, sir; I can hardly hear you.  So! so!  Not back again for a week!  And where has she gone?  To London, did you say?  And what for?—­I am not inquisitive, Mr. Noel; I am asking serious questions, under serious necessity.  Why has your wife left you here, and gone to London by herself?”

They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry, and they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered.  Her reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were producing their effect; he was beginning to recover himself.  The old helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount—­returning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his vanity to his wife’s maid.