No Name Wilkie Collins (e book reader android TXT) 📖

was still in full progress. The housekeeper’s eyes brightened; she had expressly calculated on this result. After a moment’s thinking, she addressed her master with another question: “You will probably visit Mr. Bygrave again, sir?”

“Of course I shall visit him⁠—if I please.”

“And perhaps see Miss Bygrave, if she gets better?”

“Why not? I should be glad to know why not? Is it necessary to ask your leave first, Lecount?”

“By no means, sir. As you have often said (and as I have often agreed with you), you are master. It may surprise you to hear it, Mr. Noel, but I have a private reason for wishing that you should see Miss Bygrave again.”

Mr. Noel started a little, and looked at his housekeeper with some curiosity.

“I have a strange fancy of my own, sir, about that young lady,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount. “If you will excuse my fancy, and indulge it, you will do me a favor for which I shall be very grateful.”

“A fancy?” repeated her master, in growing surprise. “What fancy?”

“Only this, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.

She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel of notepaper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, and respectfully placed it in Noel Vanstone’s hands.

“If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. Noel,” she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, “you will kindly put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat pocket; you will open and read it, for the first time, when you are next in Miss Bygrave’s company, and you will say nothing of what has now passed between us to any living creature, from this time to that. I promise to explain my strange request, sir, when you have done what I ask, and when your next interview with Miss Bygrave has come to an end.”

She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room.

Noel Vanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and from the door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonishment. A mystery in his own house! under his own nose! What did it mean?

It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning. While the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North Shingles, the housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under his feet. The folded paper contained nothing less than a carefully written extract from the personal description of Magdalen in Miss Garth’s letter. With a daring ingenuity which even Captain Wragge might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had found her instrument for exposing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting person of the victim himself!

VII

Late that evening, when Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge came back from their walk in the dark, the captain stopped Magdalen on her way upstairs to inform her of the proceedings of the day. He added the expression of his opinion that the time had come for bringing Noel Vanstone, with the least possible delay, to the point of making a proposal. She merely answered that she understood him, and that she would do what was required of her. Captain Wragge requested her in that case to oblige him by joining a walking excursion in Mr. Noel Vanstone’s company at seven o’clock the next morning. “I will be ready,” she replied. “Is there anything more?” There was nothing more. Magdalen bade him good night and returned to her own room.

She had shown the same disinclination to remain any longer than was necessary in the captain’s company throughout the three days of her seclusion in the house.

During all that time, instead of appearing to weary of Mrs. Wragge’s society, she had patiently, almost eagerly, associated herself with her companion’s one absorbing pursuit. She who had often chafed and fretted in past days under the monotony of her life in the freedom of Combe-Raven, now accepted without a murmur the monotony of her life at Mrs. Wragge’s worktable. She who had hated the sight of her needle and thread in old times⁠—who had never yet worn an article of dress of her own making⁠—now toiled as anxiously over the making of Mrs. Wragge’s gown, and bore as patiently with Mrs. Wragge’s blunders, as if the sole object of her existence had been the successful completion of that one dress. Anything was welcome to her⁠—the trivial difficulties of fitting a gown: the small, ceaseless chatter of the poor half-witted creature who was so proud of her assistance, and so happy in her company⁠—anything was welcome that shut her out from the coming future, from the destiny to which she stood self-condemned. That sorely-wounded nature was soothed by such a trifle now as the grasp of her companion’s rough and friendly hand⁠—that desolate heart was cheered, when night parted them, by Mrs. Wragge’s kiss.

The captain’s isolated position in the house produced no depressing effect on the captain’s easy and equal spirits. Instead of resenting Magdalen’s systematic avoidance of his society, he looked to results, and highly approved of it. The more she neglected him for his wife the more directly useful she became in the character of Mrs. Wragge’s self-appointed guardian. He had more than once seriously contemplated revoking the concession which had been extorted from him, and removing his wife, at his own sole responsibility, out of harm’s way; and he had only abandoned the idea on discovering that Magdalen’s resolution to keep Mrs. Wragge in her own company was really serious. While the two were together, his main anxiety was set at rest. They kept their door locked by his own desire while he was out of the house, and, whatever Mrs. Wragge might do, Magdalen was to be trusted not to open it until he came back. That night Captain Wragge enjoyed his cigar with a mind at ease, and sipped his brandy-and-water in happy ignorance of the pitfall which Mrs. Lecount had prepared for him in the morning.

Punctually at seven o’clock Noel Vanstone made his appearance. The moment he entered the room Captain Wragge detected a change in his visitor’s look and manner. “Something wrong!” thought the captain. “We have not done with