She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel of note-paper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, and respectfully placed it in Noel Vanstone’s hands.

“If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. Noel,” she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, “you will kindly put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat pocket; you will open and read it, for the first time, when you are next in Miss Bygrave’s company, and you will say nothing of what has now passed between us to any living creature, from this time to that.  I promise to explain my strange request, sir, when you have done what I ask, and when your next interview with Miss Bygrave has come to an end.”

She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room.

Noel Vanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and from the door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonishment.  A mystery in his own house! under his own nose!  What did it mean?

It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning.  While the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North Shingles, the housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under his feet.  The folded paper contained nothing less than a carefully written extract from the personal description of Magdalen in Miss Garth’s letter.  With a daring ingenuity which even Captain Wragge might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had found her instrument for exposing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting person of the victim himself!

CHAPTER VII.

LATE that evening, when Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge came back from their walk in the dark, the captain stopped Magdalen on her way upstairs to inform her of the proceedings of the day.  He added the expression of his opinion that the time had come for bringing Noel Vanstone, with the least possible delay, to the point of making a proposal.  She merely answered that she understood him, and that she would do what was required of her.  Captain Wragge requested her in that case to oblige him by joining a walking excursion in Mr. Noel Vanstone’s company at seven o’clock the next morning.  “I will be ready,” she replied.  “Is there anything more?” There was nothing more.  Magdalen bade him good-night and returned to her own room.

She had shown the same disinclination to remain any longer than was necessary in the captain’s company throughout the three days of her seclusion in the house.

During all that time, instead of appearing to weary of Mrs. Wragge’s society, she had patiently, almost eagerly, associated herself with her companion’s one absorbing pursuit.  She who had often chafed and fretted in past days under the monotony of her life in the freedom of Combe-Raven, now accepted without a murmur the monotony of her life at Mrs. Wragge’s work-table.  She who had hated the sight of her needle and thread in old times—­who had