bits
it."

"Very sad," said Mrs. Lecount. "The poor lady must often feel lonely,
sir, when you and your niece are away from her?"

"No," replied the captain. "Mrs. Bygrave is a naturally domestic woman.
When she is able to employ herself, she finds unlimited resources in her
needle and thread." Having reached this stage of the explanation, and
having purposely skirted, as it were, round the confines of truth, in
the event of the housekeeper's curiosity leading her to make any private
inquiries on the subject of Mrs. Wragge, the captain wisely checked his
fluent tongue from carrying him into any further details. "I have great
hope from the air of this place," he remarked, in conclusion. "The
Iodine, as I have already observed, does wonders."

Mrs. Lecount acknowledged the virtues of Iodine, in the briefest
possible form of words, and withdrew into the innermost sanctuary of her
own thoughts. "Some mystery here," said the housekeeper to herself.
"A lady who looks the picture of health; a lady who suffers from a
complicated nervous malady; and a lady whose hand is steady enough to
use her needle and thread--is a living mass of contradictions I don't
quite understand. Do you make a long stay at Aldborough, sir?" she
added aloud, her eyes resting for a moment, in steady scrutiny, on the
captain's face.

"It all depends, my dear madam, on Mrs. Bygrave. I trust we shall stay
through the autumn. You are settled at Sea-view Cottage, I presume, for
the season?"

"You must ask my master, sir. It is for him to decide, not for me."

The answer was an unfortunate one. Noel Vanstone had been secretly
annoyed by the change in the walking arrangements, which had separated
him from Magdalen. He attributed that change to the meddling influence
of Mrs. Lecount, and he now took the earliest opportunity of resenting
it on the spot.

"I have nothing to do with our stay at Aldborough," he broke out,
peevishly. "You know as well as I do, Lecount, it all depends on _you_.
Mrs. Lecount has a brother in Switzerland," he went on, addressing
himself to the captain--"a brother who is seriously ill. If he gets
worse, she will have to go the re to see him. I can't accompany her,
and I can't be left in the house by myself. I shall have t o break up my
establishment at Aldborough, and stay with some friends. It all depends
on you, Lecount--or on your brother, which comes to the same thing. If
it depended on _me_," continued Mr. Noel Vanstone, lo