ed Captain Wragge's prediction.
She showed her claws.

The time could not have been better chosen; the circumstances could
hardly have favored her more. Magdalen's spirits were depressed: she was
weary in body and mind; and she sat exactly opposite the housekeeper,
who had been compelled, by the new arrangement, to occupy the seat of
honor next her master. With every facility for observing the slightest
changes that passed over Magdalen's face, Mrs. Lecount tried he r first
experiment by leading the conversation to the subject of London, and to
the relative advantages offered to residents by the various quarters
of the metropolis on both sides of the river. The ever-ready Wragge
penetrated her intention sooner than she had anticipated, and interposed
immediately. "You're coming to Vauxhall Walk, ma'am," thought the
captain; "I'll get there before you."

He entered at once into a purely fictitious description of the various
quarters of London in which he had himself resided; and, adroitly
mentioning Vauxhall Walk as one of them, saved Magdalen from the sudden
question relating to that very locality with which Mrs. Lecount had
proposed startling her, to begin with. From his residences he passed
smoothly to himself, and poured his whole family history (in the
character of Mr. Bygrave) into the housekeeper's ears--not forgetting
his brother's grave in Honduras, with the monument by the self-taught
negro artist, and his brother's hugely corpulent widow, on the
ground-floor of the boarding-house at Cheltenham. As a means of giving
Magdalen time to compose herself, this outburst of autobiographical
information attained its object, but it answered no other purpose. Mrs.
Lecount listened, without being imposed on by a single word the captain
said to her. He merely confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of
taking Noel Vanstone into her confidence before she had facts to help
her against Captain Wragge's otherwise unassailable position in the
identity which he had assumed. She quietly waited until he had done, and
then returned to the charge.

"It is a coincidence that your uncle should have once resided in
Vauxhall Walk," she said, addressing herself to Magdalen. "Mr. Noel
has a house in the same place, and we lived there before we came to
Aldborough. May I inquire, Miss Bygrave, whether you know anything of a
lady named Miss Garth?"

This time she put the question before the captain could interfere.
Magdalen ought to