“I presume Mrs. Bygrave is too tired, after her journey, to come out to-day?” said Mrs. Lecount. “Shall we have the pleasure of seeing her tomorrow?”
“Probably not,” replied Magdalen. “My aunt is in delicate health.”
“A complicated case, my dear madam,” added the captain; conscious that Mrs. Wragge’s personal appearance (if she happened to be seen by accident) would offer the flattest of all possible contradictions to what Magdalen had just said of her. “There is some remote nervous mischief which doesn’t express itself externally. You would think my wife the picture of health if you looked at her, and yet, so delusive are appearances, I am obliged to forbid her all excitement. She sees no society—our medical attendant, I regret to say, absolutely prohibits it.”
“Very sad,” said Mrs. Lecount. “The poor lady must often feel lonely, sir, when you and your niece are away from her?”
“No,” replied the captain. “Mrs. Bygrave is a naturally domestic woman. When she is able to employ herself, she finds unlimited resources in her needle and thread.” Having reached this stage of the explanation, and having purposely skirted, as it were, round the confines of truth, in the event of the housekeeper’s curiosity leading her to make any private inquiries on the subject of Mrs. Wragge, the captain wisely checked his fluent tongue from carrying him into any further details. “I have great hope from the air of this place,” he remarked, in conclusion. “The Iodine, as I have already observed, does wonders.”
Mrs. Lecount acknowledged the virtues of Iodine, in the briefest possible form of words, and withdrew into the innermost sanctuary of her own thoughts. “Some mystery here,” said the housekeeper to herself. “A lady who looks the picture of health; a lady who suffers from a complicated nervous malady; and a lady whose hand is steady enough to use her needle and thread—is a living mass of contradictions I don’t quite understand. Do you make a long stay at Aldborough, sir?” she added aloud, her eyes resting for a moment, in steady scrutiny, on the captain’s face.
“It all depends, my dear madam, on Mrs. Bygrave. I trust we shall stay through the autumn. You are settled at Sea-view Cottage, I presume, for the season?”
“You must ask my master, sir. It is for him to decide, not for me.”
The answer was an unfortunate one. Noel Vanstone had been secretly annoyed by the change in the walking arrangements, which had separated him from Magdalen. He attributed that change to the meddling influence of Mrs. Lecount, and he now took the earliest opportunity of resenting it on the spot.
“I have nothing to do with our stay at Aldborough,” he broke out, peevishly. “You know as well as I do, Lecount, it all depends on you. Mrs. Lecount has a brother in Switzerland,” he went on, addressing himself to the captain—“a brother who is seriously ill. If he gets worse, she will have to go there to see him. I can’t accompany her, and I can’t be left in the house by myself. I shall have to break up my establishment at Aldborough, and stay with some friends. It all depends on you, Lecount—or on your brother, which comes to the same thing. If it depended on me,” continued Mr. Noel Vanstone, looking pointedly at Magdalen across the housekeeper, “I should stay at Aldborough all through the autumn with the greatest pleasure. With the greatest pleasure,” he reiterated, repeating the words with a tender look for Magdalen, and a spiteful accent for Mrs. Lecount.