garden to the
street.

She passed through the garden gates little thinking from what new
difficulty and new danger her timely departure had saved her. The letter
which the postman had just delivered into the housekeeper's hands was
no other than the anonymous letter addressed to Noel Vanstone by Captain
Wragge.

CHAPTER IV.

MRS. LECOUNT returned to the parlor, with the fragment of Magdalen's
dress in one hand, and with Captain Wragge's letter in the other.

"Have you got rid of her?" asked Noel Vanstone. "Have you shut the door
at last on Miss Garth?"

"Don't call her Miss Garth, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, smiling
contemptuously. "She is as much Miss Garth as you are. We have been
favored by the performance of a clever masquerade; and if we had taken
the disguise off our visitor, I think we should have found under it Miss
Vanstone herself.--Here is a letter for you, sir, which the postman has
just left."

She put the letter on the table within her master's reach. Noel
Vanstone's amazement at the discovery just communicated to him kept his
whole attention concentrated on the housekeeper's face. He never so much
as looked at the letter when she placed it before him.

"Take my word for it, sir," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, composedly taking a
chair. "When our visitor gets home she will put her gray hair away in a
box, and will cure that sad affliction in her eyes with warm water and a
sponge. If she had painted the marks on her face, as well as she painted
the inflammation in her eyes, the light would have shown me nothing,
and I should certainly have been deceived. But I saw the marks; I saw a
young woman's skin under that dirty complexion of hers; I heard in this
room a true voice in a passion, as well as a false voice talking with
an accent, and I don't believe in one morsel of that lady's personal
appearance from top to toe. The girl herself, in my opinion, Mr.
Noel--and a bold girl too."

"Why didn't you lock the door and send for the police?" asked Mr. Noel.
"My father would have sent for the police. You know, as well as I do,
Lecount, my father would have sent for the police."

"Pardon me, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, "I think your father would have
waited until he had got something more for the police to do than we have
got for them yet. We shall see this lady again, sir. Perhaps she will
come here next time with her own face and her own voice. I am curious to
see what her own face is like. I am curious to