orth Shingles, was not
the only object which Mr. Bygrave had in forcing himself on your
acquaintance. The infamous conspiracy with which you were threatened
in London has been in full progress against you under Mr. Bygrave's
direction, at Aldborough. Accident--I will tell you what accident when
we meet--has put me in possession of information precious to your
future security. I have discovered, to an absolute certainty, that
the person calling herself Miss Bygrave is no other than the woman who
visited us in disguise at Vauxhall Walk.

"I suspected this from the first, but I had no evidence to support my
suspicions; I had no means of combating the false impression produced
on you. My hands, I thank Heaven, are tied no longer. I possess absolute
proof of the assertion that I have just made--proof that your own eyes
can see--proof that would satisfy you, if you were judge in a Court of
Justice.

"Perhaps even yet, Mr. Noel, you will refuse to believe me? Be it so.
Believe me or not, I have one last favor to ask, which your English
sense of fair play will not deny me.

"This melancholy journey of mine will keep me away from England for a
fortnight, or, at most, for three weeks. You will oblige me--and you
will certainly not sacrifice your own convenience and pleasure--by
staying through that interval with your friends at St. Crux. If, before
my return, some unexpected circumstance throws you once more into the
company of the Bygraves, and if your natural kindness of heart inclines
you to receive the excuses which they will, in that case, certainly
address to you, place one trifling restraint on yourself, for your own
sake, if not for mine. Suspend your flirtation with the young lady
(I beg pardon of all other young ladies for calling her so!) until my
return. If, when I come back, I fail to prove to you that Miss Bygrave
is the woman who wore that disguise, and used those threatening words,
in Vauxhall Wall, I will engage to leave your service at a day's
notice; and I will atone for the sin of bearing false witness against my
neighbor by resigning every claim I have to your grateful remembrance,
on your father's account as well as on your own. I make this engagement
without reserves of any kind; and I promise to abide by it--if my proofs
fail--on the faith of a good Catholic, and the word of an honest woman.
Your faithful servant,

"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."

The closing sentences of this letter--as the housekeeper well k