“Be so good as to get that letter to-day, Mr. Vanstone, without your housekeeper’s knowledge, and add to the favor by letting me have it here privately for an hour or two.”

“What do you want it for?”

“I have some more questions to ask before I tell you.  Have you any intimate friend at Zurich whom you could trust to help you in playing a trick on Mrs. Lecount?”

“What sort of help do you mean?” asked Noel Vanstone.

“Suppose,” said the captain, “you were to send a letter addressed to Mrs. Lecount at Aldborough, inclosed in another letter addressed to one of your friends abroad?  And suppose you were to instruct that friend to help a harmless practical joke by posting Mrs. Lecount’s letter at Zurich?  Do you know any one who could be trusted to do that?”

“I know two people who could be trusted!” cried Noel Vanstone.  “Both ladies—­both spinsters—­both bitter enemies of Lecount’s.  But what is your drift, Mr. Bygrave?  Though I am not usually wanting in penetration, I don’t altogether see your drift.”

“You shall see it directly, Mr. Vanstone.”

With those words he rose, withdrew to his desk in the corner of the room, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper.  After first reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to come and read them too.

“A few minutes since,” said the captain, pointing complacently to his own composition with the feather end of his pen, “I had the honor of suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount.  There it is!”

He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor.  Noel Vanstone sat down, and read these lines: 

“MY DEAR MADAM—­Since I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform you that your brother has suffered a relapse.  The symptoms are so serious, that it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his bedside.  I am making every effort to resist the renewed progress of the malady, and I have not yet lost all hope of success.  But I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to leave you in ignorance of a serious change in my patient for the worse, which may be attended by fatal results.  With much sympathy, I remain, etc. etc.”

Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which this letter might produce.  Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, even Noel Vanstone might feel some compunction at practicing such a deception as was here suggested on a woman who stood toward him in the position of Mrs. Lecount.  She had served him faithfully, however interested her motives might be—­she had lived since he was a lad in the full possession of his father’s confidence—­she was living now under the protection of his own roof.  Could be fail to remember this; and, remembering it, could he lend his aid without hesitation to the scheme which was now proposed to him?  Captain Wragge unconsciously retained belief enough in human nature to doubt it.  To his surprise, and, it must be