“Excuse me, sir,” interposed Mrs. Lecount, sorrowfully.  “I must really beg permission to retire if you speak of the poor things in that way.  I can’t sit by, sir, and hear them turned into ridicule.  Consider their position; consider Miss Garth.”

“You good creature!” said Noel Vanstone, surveying the housekeeper through his half-closed eyelids.  “You excellent Lecount!  I assure you, ma’am, Mrs. Lecount is a worthy creature.  You will observe that she pities the two girls.  I don’t go so far as that myself, but I can make allowances for them.  I am a large-minded man.  I can make allowances for them and for you.”  He smiled with the most cordial politeness, and helped himself to a strawberry from the dish on his lap.

“You shock Miss Garth; indeed, sir, without meaning it, you shock Miss Garth,” remonstrated Mrs. Lecount.  “She is not accustomed to you as I am.  Consider Miss Garth, sir.  As a favor to me, consider Miss Garth.”

Thus far Magdalen had resolutely kept silence.  The burning anger, which would have betrayed her in an instant if she had let it flash its way to the surface, throbbed fast and fiercely at her heart, and warned her, while Noel Vanstone was speaking, to close her lips.  She would have allowed him to talk on uninterruptedly for some minutes more if Mrs. Lecount had not interfered for the second time.  The refined insolence of the housekeeper’s pity was a woman’s insolence; and it stung her into instantly controlling herself.  She had never more admirably imitated Miss Garth’s voice and manner than when she spoke her next words.

“You are very good,” she said to Mrs. Lecount.  “I make no claim to be treated with any extraordinary consideration.  I am a governess, and I don’t expect it.  I have only one favor to ask.  I beg Mr. Noel Vanstone, for his own sake, to hear what I have to say to him.”

“You understand, sir?” observed Mrs. Lecount.  “It appears that Miss Garth has some serious warning to give you.  She says you are to hear her, for your own sake.”

Mr. Noel Vanstone’s fair complexion suddenly turned white.  He put away the plate of strawberries among his father’s bargains.  His hand shook and his little figure twisted itself uneasily in the chair.  Magdalen observed him attentively.  “One discovery already,” she thought; “he is a coward!”

“What do you mean, ma’am?” asked Noel Vanstone, with visible trepidation of look and manner.  “What do you mean by telling me I must listen to you for my own sake?  If you come her to intimidate me, you come to the wrong man.  My strength of character was universally noticed in our circle at Zurich—­wasn’t it, Lecount?”

“Universally, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “But let us hear Miss Garth.  Perhaps I have misinterpreted her meaning.”

“On the contrary,” replied Magdalen, “you have exactly expressed my meaning.  My object in coming here is to warn Mr. Noel Vanstone against the course which he is now taking.”