To his surprise; Mrs. Lecount at once complied with this characteristic request.

“I wish you to wait, sir,” she replied.  “I have something important to say, before you add another line to your will.  A little while since, I told you there was a second necessity connected with your present situation, which had not been provided for yet, but which must be provided for, when the time came.  The time has come now.  You have a serious difficulty to meet and conquer before you can leave your fortune to your cousin George.”

“What difficulty?” he asked.

Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair without answering, stole to the door, and suddenly threw it open.  No one was listening outside; the passage was a solitude, from one end to the other.

“I distrust all servants,” she said, returning to her place—­“your servants particularly.  Sit closer, Mr. Noel.  What I have now to say to you must be heard by no living creature but ourselves.”

CHAPTER III.

THERE was a pause of a few minutes while Mrs. Lecount opened the second of the two papers which lay before her on the table, and refreshed her memory by looking it rapidly through.  This done, she once more addressed herself to Noel Vanstone, carefully lowering her voice, so as to render it inaudible to any one who might be listening in the passage outside.

“I must beg your permission, sir,” she began, “to return to the subject of your wife.  I do so most unwillingly; and I promise you that what I have now to say about her shall be said, for your sake and for mine, in the fewest words.  What do we know of this woman, Mr. Noel—­judging her by her own confession when she came to us in the character of Miss Garth, and by her own acts afterward at Aldborough?  We know that, if death had not snatched your father out of her reach, she was ready with her plot to rob him of the Combe-Raven money.  We know that, when you inherited the money in your turn, she was ready with her plot to rob you.  We know how she carried that plot through to the end; and we know that nothing but your death is wanted, at this moment, to crown her rapacity and her deception with success.  We are sure of these things.  We are sure that she is young, bold, and clever—­that she has neither doubts, scruples, nor pity—­and that she possesses the personal qualities which men in general (quite incomprehensibly to me!) are weak enough to admire.  These are not fancies, Mr. Noel, but facts; you know them as well as I do.”

He made a sign in the affirmative, and Mrs. Lecount went on: