“Mrs. Lecount has gone out, ma’am,” said the servant.
“Is Mr. Vanstone at home?” asked Magdalen, her resolution asserting itself at once against the first obstacle that opposed it.
“My master is not up yet, ma’am.”
Another check! A weaker nature would have accepted the warning. Magdalen’s nature rose in revolt against it.
“What time will Mrs. Lecount be back?” she asked.
“About one o’clock, ma’am.”
“Say, if you please, that I will call again as soon after one o’clock as possible. I particularly wish to see Mrs. Lecount. My name is Miss Garth.”
She turned and left the house. Going back to her own room was out of the question. The servant (as Magdalen knew by not hearing the door close) was looking after her; and, moreover, she would expose herself, if she went indoors, to the risk of going out again exactly at the time when the landlady’s children were sure to be about the house. She turned mechanically to the right, walked on until she recalled Vauxhall Bridge, and waited there, looking out over the river.
The interval of unemployed time now before her was nearly an hour. How should she occupy it?
As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck her when she put away the packet of Norah’s letters rose in her mind once more. A sudden impulse to test the miserable completeness of her disguise mixed with the higher and purer feeling at her heart, and strengthened her natural longing to see her sister’s face again, though she dare not discover herself and speak. Norah’s later letters had described, in the fullest details, her life as a governess—her hours for teaching, her hours of leisure, her hours for walking out with her pupils. There was just time, if she could find a vehicle at once, for Magdalen to drive to the house of Norah’s employer, with the chance of getting there a few minutes before the hour when her sister would be going out. “One look at her will tell me more than a hundred letters!” With that thought in her heart, with the one object of following Norah on her daily walk, under protection of the disguise, Magdalen hastened over the bridge, and made for the northern bank of the river.