"
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!
CHAPTER 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.
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