ead which the
landlady arranged betimes for the night. This done, and the candles
brought in, Magdalen was left alone to shape the future course as her
own thoughts counseled her.

The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that evening
at the stationer's shop led plainly to the conclusion that one day more
would bring Noel Vanstone's present term of residence in Vauxhall Walk
to an end. Her first cautious resolution to pass many days together
in unsuspected observation of the house opposite before she ventured
herself inside was entirely frustrated by the turn events had taken. She
was placed in the dilemma of running all risks headlong on the next day,
or of pausing for a future opportunity which might never occur. There
was no middle course open to her. Until she had seen Noel Vanstone with
her own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to fear from Mrs.
Lecount--until she had achieved t his double object, with the needful
precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the dark--not a step
could she advance toward the accomplishment of the purpose which had
brought her to London.

One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one after
another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her mind--and
still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and doubted, with a
hesitation new to her in her experience of herself. At last she crossed
the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief of unlocking her trunk
and taking from it the few things that she wanted for the night. Captain
Wragge's suspicions had not misled him. There, hidden between two
dresses, were the articles of costume which he had missed from her box
at Birmingham. She turned them over one by one, to satisfy herself that
nothing she wanted had been forgotten, and returned once more to her
post of observation by the window.

The house opposite was dark down to the parlor. There the blind,
previously raised, was now drawn over the window: the light burning
behind it showed her for the first time that the room was inhabited. Her
eyes brightened, and her color rose as she looked at it.

"There he is!" she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper. "There he
lives on our money, in the house that his father's warning has closed
against me!" She dropped the blind which she had raised to look out,
returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray wig which was part of
her dramatic costume in the character of the Nor