know whether what I have
heard of her voice in a passion is enough to make me recognize her voice
when she is calm. I possess a little memorial of her visit of which she
is not aware, and she will not escape me so easily as she thinks. If it
turns out a useful memorial, you shall know what it is. If not, I will
abstain from troubling you on so trifling a subject.--Allow me to remind
you, sir, of the letter under your hand. You have not looked at it yet."

Noel Vanstone opened the letter. He started as his eye fell on the first
lines--hesitated--and then hurriedly read it through. The paper dropped
from his hand, and he sank back in his chair. Mrs. Lecount sprang to her
feet with the alacrity of a young woman and picked up the letter.

"What has happened, sir?" she asked. Her face altered as she put
the question, and her large black eyes hardened fiercely, in genuine
astonishment and alarm.

"Send for the police," exclaimed her master. "Lecount, I insist on being
protected. Send for the police!"

"May I read the letter, sir?"

He feebly waved his hand. Mrs. Lecount read the letter attentively, and
put it aside on the table, without a word, when she had done.

"Have you nothing to say to me?" asked Noel Vanstone, staring at his
housekeeper in blank dismay. "Lecount, I'm to be robbed! The scoundrel
who wrote that letter knows all about it, and won't tell me anything
unless I pay him. I'm to be robbed! Here's property on this table worth
thousands of pounds--property that can never be replaced--property that
all the crowned heads in Europe could not produce if they tried. Lock me
in, Lecount, and send for the police!"

Instead of sending for the police, Mrs. Lecount took a large green paper
fan from the chimney-piece, and seated herself opposite her master.

"You are agitated, Mr. Noel," she said, "you are heated. Let me cool
you."

With her face as hard as ever--with less tenderness of look and
manner than most women would have shown if they had been rescuing a
half-drowned fly from a milk-jug--she silently and patiently fanned him
for five minutes or more. No practiced eye observing the peculiar bluish
pallor of his complexion, and the marked difficulty with which he drew
his breath, could have failed to perceive that the great organ of life
was in this man, what the housekeeper had stated it to be, too weak for
the function which it was called on to perform. The heart labored over
its work as if it had been the