ed change in him. The horror of the coming discovery had
laid its paralyzing hold on his mind. He moved mechanically; he looked
and spoke like a man in a dream.

"Will you take my arm, sir?"

He shook his head, and, preceding her along the passage and up the
stairs, led the way into his wife's room. When she joined him and locked
the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, without making
any remark, without showing any external appearance of surprise. He had
not removed either his hat or coat. Mrs. Lecount took them off for him.
"Thank you," he said, with the docility of a well-trained child. "It's
like a scene in a novel--it's like nothing in real life."

The bed-chamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy and
old-fashioned. But evidences of Magdalen's natural taste and refinement
were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that graced and
enlivened the aspect of the room. The perfume of dried rose-leaves
hung fra grant on the cool air. Mrs. Lecount sniffed the perfume with a
disparaging frown and threw the window up to its full height. "Pah!" she
said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust, "the atmosphere of deceit!"

She seated herself near the window. The wardrobe stood against the wall
opposite, and the bed was at the side of the room on her right hand.
"Open the wardrobe, Mr. Noel," she said. "I don't go near it. I touch
nothing in it myself. Take out the dresses with your own hand and put
them on the bed. Take them out one by one until I tell you to stop."

He obeyed her. "I'll do it as well as I can," he said. "My hands are
cold, and my head feels half asleep."

The dresses to be removed were not many, for Magdalen had taken some
of them away with her. After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was
obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe before he could
find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. Lecount made a sign to him to
stop. The end was reached already; he had found the brown Alpaca dress.

"Lay it out on the bed, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "You will see a double
flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and
pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a
place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop and look up at
me."

He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers for a minute or more,
then stopped and looked up. Mrs. Lecount produced her pocket-book and
opened it.

"Every word I now spea