The landlady's husband was away all day, employed at a railway station.

Her second daughter was charged with the care of the kitchen in the elder sister's absence.

The younger children were at school, and would be back at one o'clock to dinner.

The landlady herself "got up fine linen for ladies," and expected to be occupied over her work all that morning in a little room built out at the back of the premises.
Thus there was every facility for Magdalen's leaving the house in disguise, and leaving it unobserved, provided she went out before the children came back to dinner at one o'clock.
By eleven o'clock the apartments were set in order, and the landlady had retired to pursue her own employments.

Magdalen softly locked the door of her room, drew the blind over the window, and entered at once on her preparations for the perilous experiment of the day.
The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for the amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to deceive the searching eyes of two strangers.