aped Mrs. Lecount."

She had done nothing of the kind. Mrs. Lecount had never left the room.

After opening the door and closing it again, without going out,
the housekeeper had noiselessly knelt down behind Magdalen's chair.
Steadying herself against the post of the folding-door, she took a pair
of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Vanstone (from whose view
she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen's attention by speaking
to her, and then bent forward, with the scissors ready in her hand. The
skirt of the false Miss Garth's gown--the brown alpaca dress, with the
white spots on it--touched the floor, within the housekeeper's reach.
Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran round
the bottom of the dress one over the other, softly cut away a little
irregular fragment of stuff from the inner flounce, and neatly smoothed
the outer one over it again, so as to hide the gap. By the time she
had put the scissors back in her pocket, and had risen to her feet
(sheltering herself behind the post of the folding-door), Magdalen had
spoken her last words. Mrs. Lecount quietly repeated the ceremony of
opening and shutting the back parlor door; and returned to her place.

"What has happened, sir, in my absence?" she inquired, addressing her
master with a look of alarm. "You are pale; you are agitated! Oh, Miss
Garth, have you forgotten the caution I gave you in the other room?"

"Miss Garth has forgotten everything," cried Noel Vanstone, recovering
his lost composure on the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount. "Miss Garth
has threatened me in the most outrageous manner. I forbid you to pity
either of those two girls any more, Lecount--especially the younger
one. She is the most desperate wretch I ever heard of! If she can't get
my money by fair means, she threatens to have it by foul. Miss Garth has
told me that to my face. To my face!" he repeated, folding his arms, and
looking mortally insulted.

"Compose yourself, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "Pray compose yourself, and
leave me to speak to Miss Garth. I regret to hear, ma'am, that you have
forgotten what I said to you in the next room. You have agitated Mr.
Noel; you have compromised the interests you came here to plead; and you
have only repeated what we knew before. The language you have allowed
yourself to use in my absence is the same language which your pupil was
foolish enough to employ when she wrote for the second time to my late
master. How can