ed to form part of Miss Bygrave's wardrobe.

Taking the difficulties now before her in their order as they occurred,
Mrs. Lecount first resolved to devote the next few days to watching the
habits of the inmates of North Shingles, from early in the morning to
late at night, and to testing the capacity of the one servant in the
house to resist the temptation of a bribe. Assuming that results proved
successful, and that, either by money or by stratagem, she gained
admission to North Shingles (without the knowledge of Mr. Bygrave or
his niece), she turned next to the second difficulty of the two--the
difficulty of obtaining access to Miss Bygrave's wardrobe.

If the servant proved corruptible, all obstacles in this direction might
be considered as removed beforehand. But if the servant proved honest,
the new problem was no easy one to solve.

Long and careful consideration of the question led the housekeeper at
last to the bold resolution of obtaining an interview--if the servant
failed her--with Mrs. Bygrave herself. What was the true cause of this
lady's mysterious seclusion? Was she a person of the strictest and the
most inconvenient integrity? or a person who could not be depended
on to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave
himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new
deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount
could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which
they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was gained), it
might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy hidden in the
dark. In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of the three
chances in her favor on which she had reckoned at the outset of the
struggle--the chance of entrapping Magdalen by word of mouth, the
chance of entrapping her by the help of her friends, and the chance of
entrapping her by means of Mrs. Bygrave--two had been tried, and two
had failed. The third remained to be tested yet; and the third might
succeed.

So, the captain's enemy plotted against him in the privacy of her own
chamber, while the captain watched the light in her window from the
beach outside.

Before breakfast the next morning, Captain Wragge posted the forged
letter to Zurich with his own hand. He went back to North Shingles
with his mind not quite decided on the course to take with Mrs. Lecount
during the all-important interval of the next ten da