ult. After a moment's thinking, she addressed
her master with another question: "You will probably visit Mr. Bygrave
again, sir?"

"Of course I shall visit him--if I please."

"And perhaps see Miss Bygrave, if she gets better?"

"Why not? I should be glad to know why not? Is it necessary to ask your
leave first, Lecount?"

"By no means, sir. As you have often said (and as I have often agreed
with you), you are master. It may surprise you to hear it, Mr. Noel,
but I have a private reason for wishing that you should see Miss Bygrave
again."

Mr. Noel started a little, and looked at his housekeeper with some
curiosity.

"I have a strange fancy of my own, sir, about that young lady,"
proceeded Mrs. Lecount. "If you will excuse my fancy, and indulge it,
you will do me a favor for which I shall be very grateful."

"A fancy?" repeated her master, in growing surprise. "What fancy?"

"Only this, sir," said Mrs. Lecount.

She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel of
note-paper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, and
respectfully placed it in Noel Vanstone's hands.

"If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. Noel,"
she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, "you will kindly
put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat pocket; you will open
and read it, for the first time, _when you are next in Miss Bygrave's
company_, and you will say nothing of what has now passed between us
to any living creature, from this time to that. I promise to explain my
strange request, sir, when you have done what I ask, and when your next
interview with Miss Bygrave has come to an end."

She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room.

Noel Vanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and from the
door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonishment. A mystery in
his own house! under his own nose! What did it mean?

It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning. While
the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North Shingles, the
housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under his feet. The folded
paper contained nothing less than a carefully written extract from the
personal description of Magdalen in Miss Garth's letter. With a daring
ingenuity which even Captain Wragge might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had
found her instrument for exposing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting
person of the victim himself!