“Your position, sir, must be as plain by this time to you as it is to me,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “There is only one obstacle now left between this woman and the attainment of her end. That obstacle is your life. After the discovery we have made upstairs, I leave you to consider for yourself what your life is worth.”

At those terrible words, the ebbing resolution in him ran out to the last drop.  “Don’t frighten me!” he pleaded; “I have been frightened enough already.”  He rose, and dragged his chair after him, round the table to Mrs. Lecount’s side.  He sat down and caressingly kissed her hand.  “You good creature!” he said, in a sinking voice.  “You excellent Lecount!  Tell me what to do.  I’m full of resolution—­I’ll do anything to save my life!”

“Have you got writing materials in the room, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount.  “Will you put them on the table, if you please?”

While the writing materials were in process of collection, Mrs. Lecount made a new demand on the resources of her traveling-bag.  She took two papers from it, each indorsed in the same neat commercial handwriting.  One was described as “Draft for proposed Will,” and the other as “Draft for proposed Letter.”  When she placed them before her on the table, her hand shook a little; and she applied the smelling-salts, which she had brought with her in Noel Vanstone’s interests, to her own nostrils.

“I had hoped, when I came here, Mr. Noel,” she proceeded, “to have given you more time for consideration than it seems safe to give you now.  When you first told me of your wife’s absence in London, I thought it probable that the object of her journey was to see her sister and Miss Garth.  Since the horrible discovery we have made upstairs, I am inclined to alter that opinion.  Your wife’s determination not to tell you who the friends are whom she has gone to see, fills me with alarm.  She may have accomplices in London—­accomplices, for anything we know to the contrary, in this house.  All three of your servants, sir, have taken the opportunity, in turn, of coming into the room and looking at me.  I don’t like their looks!  Neither you nor I know what may happen from day to day, or even from hour to hour.  If you take my advice, you will get the start at once of all possible accidents; and, when the carriage comes back, you will leave this house with me!”

“Yes, yes!” he said, eagerly; “I’ll leave the house with you.  I wouldn’t stop here by myself for any sum of money that could be offered me.  What do we want the pen and ink for?  Are you to write, or am I?”

“You are to write, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “The means taken for promoting your own safety are to be means set in motion, from beginning to end, by yourself.  I suggest, Mr. Noel—­and you decide.  Recognize your own position, sir.  What is your first and foremost necessity?  It is plainly this.  You must destroy your wife’s interest in your death by making another will.”