Once more her own indomitable earnestness had
betrayed her. Once more the inborn nobility of that perverted nature had
risen superior to the deception which it had stooped to practice. The
scheme of the moment vanished from her mind's view; and the resolution
of her life burst its way outward in her own words, in her own tones,
pouring hotly and more hotly from her heart. She saw the abject manikin
before her cowering, silent, in his chair. Had his fears left him sense
enough to perceive the change in her voice? No: _his_ face spoke the
truth--his fears had bewildered him. This time the chance of the moment
had befriended her. The door behind her chair had not opened again
yet. "No ears but his have heard me," she thought, with a sense of
unutterable relief. "I have escaped Mrs. Lecount."
She had done nothing of the kind. Mrs. Lecount had never left the room.
After opening the door and closing it again, without going out,
the housekeeper had noiselessly knelt down behind Magdalen's chair.
Steadying herself against the post of the folding-door, she took a pair
of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Vanstone (from whose view
she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen's attention by speaking
to her, and then bent forward, with the scissors ready in her hand.
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