ost striking object of all--on the
site where thousands of lights once sparkled; where sweet sounds of
music made night tuneful till morning dawned; where the beauty and
fashion of London feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a
century--spreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish;
the deserted dead body of Vauxhall Gardens mouldering in the open air.

On the same day when Captain Wragge completed the last entry in his
Chronicle of Events, a woman appeared at the window of one of the houses
in Vauxhall Walk, and removed from the glass a printed paper which
had been wafered to it announcing that Apartments were to be let. The
apartments consisted of two rooms on the first floor. They had just been
taken for a week certain by two ladies who had paid in advance--those
two ladies being Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge.

As soon as the mistress of the house had left the room, Magdalen walked
to the window, and cautiously looked out from it at the row of buildings
opposite. They were of superior pretensions in size and appearance to
the other houses in the Walk: the date at which they had been erected
was inscribed on one of them, and was stated to be the year 1759. They
stood back from the pavement, separated from it by little strips of
garden-ground. This peculiarity of position, added to the breadth of the
roadway interposing between them and the smaller houses opposite,
made it impossible for Magdalen to see the numbers on the doors, or
to observe more of any one who might come to the windows than the bare
general outline of dress and figure. Nevertheless, there she stood,
anxiously fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly opposite to
her--the house she had looked for before entering the lodgings; the
house inhabited at that moment by Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.

After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or more,
she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect which her
behavior might have produced on her traveling companion.

Not the slightest cause appeared for any apprehension in that quarter.
Mrs. Wragge was seated at the table absorbed in the arrangement of
a series of smart circulars and tempting price-lists, issued by
advertising trades-people, and flung in at the cab-windows as they left
the London terminus. "I've often heard tell of light reading," said Mrs.
Wragge, restlessly shifting the positions of the circulars as a child
restlessly shifts t