After first
reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to come
and read them too.
"A few minutes since," said the captain, pointing complacently to his
own composition with the feather end of his pen, "I had the honor of
suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. There it is!"
He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor. Noel Vanstone
sat down, and read these lines:
"MY DEAR MADAM--Since I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform you that
your brother has suffered a relapse. The symptoms are so serious, that
it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his bedside. I am
making every effort to resist the renewed progress of the malady, and I
have not yet lost all hope of success. But I cannot reconcile it to my
conscience to leave you in ignorance of a serious change in my patient
for the worse, which _may_ be attended by fatal results. With much
sympathy, I remain, etc. etc."
Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which this letter
might produce. Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, even Noel Vanstone
might feel some compunction at practicing such a deception as was
here suggested on a woman who stood toward him in the position of Mrs.
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