uce their results; she had more than recovered her composure.
Vibrating perpetually from one violent extreme to another, she had now
passed from the passionate despair of five days since to a feverish
exaltation of spirits which defied all remorse and confronted all
consequences. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were bright with color; she
talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of
past days; she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing; she
imitated Mrs. Lecount's smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount's insinuating
graces of manner with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which
was but the coarse reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of
former times. Noel Vanstone, who had never yet seen her as he saw
her now, was enchanted; his weak head whirled with an intoxication of
enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had caught the infection
from hers. The half-hour during which he was alone with her passed like
five minutes to him. When that time had elapsed, and when she
suddenly left him--to obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt's
presence--miser as he was, he would have paid at that moment five golden
sovereigns out of his pocket for five golden minutes more passed in her
society.

The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, and the
captain walked in. He entered on the explanations which his visitor
naturally expected from him with the unceremonious abruptness of a man
hard pressed for time, and determined to make the most of every moment
at his disposal.

"Since we last saw each other," he began, "I have been reckoning up the
chances for and against us as we stand at present. The result on my
own mind is this: If you are still at Aldborough when that letter from
Zurich reaches Mrs. Lecount, all the pains we have taken will have been
pains thrown away. If your housekeeper had fifty brothers all dying
together, she would throw the whole fifty over sooner than leave you
alone at Sea View while we are your neighbors at North Shingles."

Noel Vanstone's flushed cheek turned pale with dismay. His own knowledge
of Mrs. Lecount told him that this view of the case was the right one.

"If _we_ go away again," proceeded the captain, "nothing will be gained,
for nothing would persuade your housekeeper, in that case, that we have
not left you the means of following us. _You_ must leave Aldborough this
time; and, what is more, you must go without leaving a si