r, after first looking at her watch. It was close
on twelve o'clock. There was barely an hour left to try her desperate
experiment, and to return to the lodging before the landlady's children
came back from school.

An instant's listening on the landing assured her that all was quiet in
the passage below. She noiselessly descended the stairs and gained the
street without having met any living creature on her way out of the
house. In another minute she had crossed the road, and had knocked at
Noel Vanstone's door.

The door was opened by the same woman-servant whom she had followed on
the previous evening to the stationer's shop. With a momentary tremor,
which recalled the memorable first night of her appearance in public,
Magdalen inquired (in Miss Garth's voice, and with Miss Garth's manner)
for Mrs. Lecount.

"Mrs. Lecount has gone out, ma'am," said the servant.

"Is Mr. Vanstone at home?" asked Magdalen, her resolution asserting
itself at once against the first obstacle that opposed it.

"My master is not up yet, ma'am."

Another check! A weaker nature would have accepted the warning.
Magdalen's nature rose in revolt against it.

"What time will Mrs. Lecount be back?" she asked.

"About one o'clock, ma'am."

"Say, if you please, that I will call again as soon after one o'clock
as possible. I particularly wish to see Mrs. Lecount. My name is Miss
Garth."

She turned and left the house. Going back to her own room was out of the
question. The servant (as Magdalen knew by not hearing the door close)
was looking after her; and, moreover, she would expose herself, if she
went indoors, to the risk of going out again exactly at the time when
the landlady's children were sure to be about the house. She turned
mechanically to the right, walked on until she recalled Vauxhall Bridge,
and waited there, looking out over the river.

The interval of unemployed time now before her was nearly an hour. How
should she occupy it?

As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck her when
she put away the packet of Norah's letters rose in her mind once more. A
sudden impulse to test the miserable completeness of her disguise mixed
with the higher and purer feeling at her heart, and strengthened her
natural longing to see her sister's face again, though she dare not
discover herself and speak. Norah's later letters had described, in the
fullest details, her life as a governess--her hours for teaching, her
hou