o see that she had been thus far met and baffled
successfully at every point. What was she to do next? If she sent for
Mr. Pendril when he came to Aldborough (with only a few hours spared
from his business at her disposal), what definite course would there be
for him to follow? If she showed Noel Vanstone the original letter from
which her note had been copied, he would apply instantly to the writer
for an explanation: would expose the fabricated story by which Mrs.
Lecount had succeeded in imposing on Miss Garth; and would, in any
event, still declare, on the evidence of his own eyes, that the test
by the marks on the neck had utterly failed. Miss Vanstone, the elder,
whose unexpected presence at Aldborough might have done wonders--whose
voice in the hall at North Shingles, even if she had been admitted
no further, might have reached her sister's ears and led to instant
results--Miss Vanstone, the elder, was out of the country, and was not
likely to return for a month at least. Look as anxiously as Mrs. Lecount
might along the course which she had hitherto followed, she failed
to see her way through the accumulated obstacles which now barred her
advance.

Other women in this position might have waited until circumstances
altered, and helped them. Mrs. Lecount boldly retraced her steps, and
determined to find her way to her end in a new direction. Resigning for
the present all further attempt to prove that the false Miss Bygrave was
the true Magdalen Vanstone, she resolved to narrow the range of her next
efforts; to leave the actual question of Magdalen's identity untouched;
and to rest satisfied with convincing her master of this simple
fact--that the young lady who was charming him at North Shingles, and
the disguised woman who had terrified him in Vauxhall Walk, were one and
the same person.

The means of effecting this new object were, to all appearance, far less
easy of attainment than the means of effecting the object which Mrs.
Lecount had just resigned. Here no help was to be expected from others,
no ostensibly benevolent motives could be put forward as a blind--no
appeal could be made to Mr. Pendril or to Miss Garth. Here the
housekeeper's only chance of success depended, in the first place, on
her being able to effect a stolen entrance into Mr. Bygrave's house,
and, in the second place, on her ability to discover whether that
memorable alpaca dress from which she had secretly cut the fragment of
stuff happen