er the letter.
What I feared at that time has come true. Your sister has defied all my
efforts to check her; she has disappeared in company with my master, Mr.
Noel Vanstone; and she is now in a position of danger which may lead to
her disgrace and ruin at a moment's notice. It is my interest to recover
my master, it is your interest to save your sister. Tell me--for time is
precious--have you any news of her?'

"Norah answered, as well as her terror and distress would allow her, 'I
have had a letter, but there was no address on it.'

"Mrs. Lecount asked, 'Was there no postmark on the envelope?'

"Norah said, 'Yes; Allonby.'

"'Allonby is better than nothing,' said Mrs. Lecount. 'Allonby may help
you to trace her. Where is Allonby?'

"Norah told her. It all passed in a minute. I had been too much confused
and startled to interfere before, but I composed myself sufficiently to
interfere now.

"'You have entered into no particulars,' I said. 'You have only
frightened us--you have told us nothing.'

"'You shall hear the particulars, ma'am,' said Mrs. Lecount; 'and you
and Miss Vanstone shall judge for yourselves if I have frightened you
without a cause.'

"Upon this, she entered at once upon a long narrative, which I cannot--I
might almost say, which I dare not--repeat. You will understand the
horror we both felt when I tell you the end. If Mrs. Lecount's
statement is to be relied on, Magdalen has carried her mad resolution
of recovering her father's fortune to the last and most desperate
extremity--she has married Michael Vanstone's son under a false name.
Her husband is at this moment still persuaded that her maiden name was
Bygrave, and that she is really the niece of a scoundrel who assisted
her imposture, and whom I recognize, by the description of him, to have
been Captain Wragge.

"I spare you Mrs. Lecount's cool avowal, when she rose to leave us,
of her own mercenary motives in wishing to discover her master and to
enlighten him. I spare you the hints she dropped of Magdalen's purpose
in contracting this infamous marriage. The one aim and object of my
letter is to implore you to assist me in quieting Norah's anguish of
mind. The shock she has received at hearing this news of her sister is
not the worst result of what has happened. She has persuaded herself
that the answers she innocently gave, in her distress, to Mrs. Lecount's
questions on the subject of her letter--the answers wrung from her under
the