xuriated in
his moments of stolen happiness with a speechless and stealthy delight
which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met
with, in his father's narrow circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous
pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest
impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which
their lap-dogs might have rivaled him; the deepest interest he could
create in them was the interest they might have felt in a new trinket or
a new dress. The only women who had hitherto invited his admiration, and
taken his compliments seriously had been women whose charms were on
the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. For
the first time in his life he had now passed hours of happiness in the
society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her afterward
without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him in his own esteem.

Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change produced in his look and
manner by the new feeling awakened in him was not a change which could
be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the second day she pointedly asked
him whether he had not made an arrangement to call on the Bygraves.
He denied it as before. "Perhaps you are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?"
persisted the housekeeper. He was at the end of his resources; he was
impatient to be rid of her inquiries; he trusted to his friend at North
Shingles to help him; and this time he answered Yes. "If you see the
young lady," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, "don't forget that note of mine,
sir, which you have in your waistcoat-pocket." No more was said on
either side, but by that night's post the housekeeper wrote to Miss
Garth. The letter merely acknowledged, with thanks, the receipt of Miss
Garth's communication, and informed her that in a few days Mrs. Lecount
hoped to be in a position to write again and summon Mr. Pendril to
Aldborough.

Late in the evening, when the parlor at North Shingles began to get
dark, and when the captain rang the bell for candles as usual, he was
surprised by hearing Magdalen's voice in the passage telling the servant
to take the lights downstairs again. She knocked at the door immediately
afterward, and glided into the obscurity of the room like a ghost.

"I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow," she said.
"My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you will not object to
dispense with the candles for a few minutes."