Vauxhall Walk!  Those two words told Mrs. Lecount she was on the brink of another discovery.  She stole a second look at her watch.  There was barely ten minutes to spare before the time when Mr. Bygrave might return; there was not one of those ten minutes which might not bring his niece back to the house.  Caution counseled Mrs. Lecount to go, without running any more risks.  Curiosity rooted her to the spot, and gave the courage to stay at all hazards until the time was up.  Her amiable smile began to harden a little as she probed her way tenderly into Mrs. Wragge’s feeble mind.

“You have some unpleasant remembrances of Vauxhall Walk?” she said, with the gentlest possible tone of inquiry in her voice.  “Or perhaps I should say, unpleasant remembrances of that dress belonging to your niece?”

“The last time I saw her with that gown on,” said Mrs. Wragge, dropping into a chair and beginning to tremble, “was the time when I came back from shopping and saw the Ghost.”

“The Ghost?” repeated Mrs. Lecount, clasping her hands in graceful astonishment.  “Dear madam, pardon me!  Is there such a thing in the world?  Where did you see it?  In Vauxhall Walk?  Tell me—­you are the first lady I ever met with who has seen a ghost—­pray tell me!”

Flattered by the position of importance which she had suddenly assumed in the housekeeper’s eyes, Mrs. Wragge entered at full length into the narrative of her supernatural adventure.  The breathless eagerness with which Mrs. Lecount listened to her description of the specter’s costume, the specter’s hurry on the stairs, and the specter’s disappearance in the bedroom; the extraordinary interest which Mrs. Lecount displayed on hearing that the dress in the wardrobe was the very dress in which Magdalen happened to be attired at the awful moment when the ghost vanished, encouraged Mrs. Wragge to wade deeper and deeper into details, and to involve herself in a confusion of collateral circumstances out of which there seemed to be no prospect of her emerging for hours to come.  Faster and faster the inexorable minutes flew by; nearer and nearer came the fatal moment of Mr. Bygrave’s return.  Mrs. Lecount looked at her watch for the third time, without an attempt on this occasion to conceal the action from her companion’s notice.  There were literally two minutes left for her to get clear of North Shingles.  Two minutes would be enough, if no accident happened.  She had discovered the Alpaca dress; she had heard the whole story of the adventure in Vauxhall Walk; and, more than that, she had even informed herself of the number of the house—­which Mrs. Wragge happened to remember, because it answered to the number of years in her own age.  All that was necessary to her master’s complete enlightenment she had now accomplished.  Even if there had been time to stay longer, there was nothing worth staying for.  “I’ll strike this worthy idiot dumb with a coup d’etat,” thought the housekeeper, “and vanish before she recovers herself.”