new when
she wrote them--embodied the one appeal to Noel Vanstone which could be
certainly trusted to produce a deep and lasting effect. She might have
staked her oath, her life, or her reputation, on proving the assertion
which she had made, and have failed to leave a permanent impression on
his mind. But when she staked not only her position in his service, but
her pecuniary claims on him as well, she at once absorbed the ruling
passion of his life in expectation of the result. There was not a doubt
of it, in the strongest of all his interests--the interest of saving his
money--he would wait.

"Checkmate for Mr. Bygrave!" thought Mrs. Lecount, as she sealed and
directed the letter. "The battle is over--the game is played out."

While Mrs. Lecount was providing for her master's future security at Sea
View, events were in full progress at North Shingles.

As soon as Captain Wragge recovered his astonishment at the
housekeeper's appearance on his own premises, he hurried into the house,
and, guided by his own forebodings of the disaster that had happened,
made straight for his wife's room.

Never, in all her former experience, had poor Mrs. Wragge felt the full
weight of the captain's indignation as she felt it now. All the little
intelligence she naturally possessed vanished at once in the whirlwind
of her husband's rage. The only plain facts which he could extract from
her were two in number. In the first place, Magdalen's rash desertion
of her post proved to have no better reason to excuse it than Magdalen's
incorrigible impatience: she had passed a sleepless night; she had
risen feverish and wretched; and she had gone out, reckless of all
consequences, to cool her burning head in the fresh air. In the second
place, Mrs. Wragge had, on her own confession, seen Mrs. Lecount, had
talked with Mrs. Lecount, and had ended by telling Mrs. Lecount the
story of the ghost. Having made these discoveries, Captain Wragge wasted
no time in contending with his wife's terror and confusion. He withdrew
at once to a window which commanded an uninterrupted prospect of Noel
Vanstone's house, and there established himself on the watch for events
at Sea View, precisely as Mrs. Lecount had established herself on the
watch for events at North Shingles.

Not a word of comment on the disaster of the morning escaped him when
Magdalen returned and found him at his post. His flow of language seemed
at last to have run dry. "I told you what