with the untiring vigilance of
malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a
discovery rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and
industriously--with an ever-present remembrance of herself and her
place--the new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of rest and
relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day with old
Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night during which
she was secure from observation in the solitude of her room. Thanks to
the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each one of the servants
had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a room of her own. Alone
in the night, Magdalen might dare to be herself again--might dream
of the past, and wake from the dream, encountering no curious eyes
to notice that she was in tears--might ponder over the future, and
be roused by no whisperings in corners, which tainted her with the
suspicion of "having something on her mind."

Satisfied, thus far, of the perfect security of her position in the
house, she profited next by a second chance in her favor, which--before
the fortnight was at an end--relieved her mind of all doubt on the
formidable subject of Mrs. Lecount.

Partly from the accidental gossip of the women at the table in the
servants' hall; partly from a marked paragraph in a Swiss newspaper,
which she had found one morning lying open on the admiral's
easy-chair--she gained the welcome assurance that no danger was to be
dreaded, this time, from the housekeeper's presence on the scene. Mrs.
Lecount had, as it appeared, passed a week or more at St. Crux after the
date of her master's death, and had then left England, to live on the
interest of her legacy, in honorable and prosperous retirement, in
her native place. The paragraph in the Swiss newspaper described
the fulfillment of this laudable project. Mrs. Lecount had not only
established herself at Zurich, but (wisely mindful of the uncertainty of
life) had also settled the charitable uses to which her fortune was to
be applied after her death. One half of it was to go to the founding of
a "Lecompte Scholarship" for poor students in the University of Geneva.
The other half was to be employed by the municipal authorities of Zurich
in the maintenance and education of a certain number of orphan girls,
natives of the city, who were to be trained for domestic service
in later life. The Swiss journalist adverted to these philanthropic
beq