They went into the house. Magdalen was perfectly satisfied with all the

captain’s arrangements; she accepted the room which he had set apart

for her; approved of the woman servant whom he had engaged; presented

herself at tea-time the moment she was summoned but still showed no

interest whatever in the new scene around her. Soon after the table was

cleared, although the daylight had not yet faded out, Mrs. Wragge’s

customary drowsiness after fatigue of any kind overcame her, and she

received her husband’s orders to leave the room (taking care that she

left it “up at heel”), and to betake herself (strictly in the character

of Mrs. Bygrave) to bed. As soon as they were left alone, the captain

looked hard at Magdalen, and waited to be spoken to. She said nothing.

He ventured next on opening the conversation by a polite inquiry after

the state of her health. “You look fatigued,” he remarked, in his most

insinuating manner. “I am afraid the journey has been too much for

you.”

“No,” she said, looking out listlessly through the window; “I am not

more tired than usual. I am always weary now; weary at going to bed,

weary at getting up. If you would like to hear what I have to say to

you to-night, I am willing and ready to say it. Can’t we go out? It is

very hot here; and the droning of those men’s voices is beyond all

endurance.” She pointed through the window to a group of boatmen

idling, as only nautical men can idle, against the garden wall. “Is

there no quiet walk in this wretched place?” she asked, impatiently.

“Can’t we breathe a little fresh air, and escape being annoyed by

strangers?”

“There is perfect solitude within half an hour’s walk of the house,”

replied the ready captain.

“Very well. Come out, then.”

With a weary sigh she took up her straw bonnet and her light muslin

scarf from the side-table upon which she had thrown them on coming in,

and carelessly led the way to the door. Captain Wragge followed her to

the garden gate, then stopped, struck by a new idea.

“Excuse me,” he whispered, confidentially. “In my wife’s existing state

of ignorance as to who she is, we had better not trust her alone in the

house with a new servant. I’ll privately turn the key on her, in case

she wakes before we come back. Safe bind, safe find—you know the

proverb!—I will be with you again in a moment.”

He hastened back to the house, and Magdalen seated herself on the

garden wall to await his return.

She had hardly settled herself in that position when two gentlemen

walking together, whose approach along the public path she had not

previously noticed, passed close by her.

The dress of one of the two strangers showed him to be a clergyman. His

companion’s station in life was less easily discernible to ordinary

observation. Practiced eyes would probably have seen enough in his

look, his manner, and his walk to show that he was a sailor. He was a

man in the prime of life; tall, spare, and muscular; his face

sun-burned to a deep brown; his black hair just turning gray; his eyes

dark, deep and firm—the eyes of a man with an iron resolution and a

habit of command. He was the nearest of the two to Magdalen, as he and

his friend passed the place where she was sitting; and he looked at her

with a sudden surprise at her beauty, with an open, hearty, undisguised

admiration, which was too evidently sincere, too evidently beyond his

own control, to be justly resented as insolent; and yet, in her humor

at that moment, Magdalen did resent it. She felt the man’s resolute

black eyes strike through her with an electric suddenness; and frowning

at him impatiently, she turned away her head and looked back at the

house.

The next moment she glanced round again to see if he had gone on. He

had advanced a few yards—had then evidently stopped—and was now in the

very act of turning to look at her once more. His companion, the

clergyman, noticing that Magdalen appeared to be annoyed, took him

familiarly by the arm, and, half in jest, half in earnest, forced him

to walk on. The two disappeared round the corner of the next house. As

they turned it, the sun-burned sailor twice stopped his companion

again, and twice looked back.

“A friend of yours?” inquired Captain Wragge, joining Magdalen at that

moment.

“Certainly not,” she replied; “a perfect stranger. He stared at me in

the most impertinent manner. Does he belong to this place?”

“I’ll find out in a moment,” said the compliant captain, joining the

group of boatmen, and putting his questions right and left, with the

easy familiarity which distinguished him. He returned in a few minutes

with a complete budget of information. The clergyman was well known as

the rector of a place situated some few miles inland. The dark man with

him was his wife’s brother, commander of a ship in the

merchant-service. He was supposed to be staying with his relatives, as

their guest for a short time only, preparatory to sailing on another

voyage. The clergyman’s name was Strickland, and the merchant-captain’s

name was Kirke; and that was all the boatmen knew about either of them.

“It is of no consequence who they are,” said Magdalen, carelessly. “The

man’s rudeness merely annoyed me for the moment. Let us have done with

him. I have something else to think of, and so have you. Where is the

solitary walk you mentioned just now? Which way do we go?”

The captain pointed southward toward Slaughden, and offered his arm.

Magdalen hesitated before she took it. Her eyes wandered away

inquiringly to Noel Vanstone’s house. He was out in the garden, pacing

backward and forward over the little lawn, with his head high in the

air, and with Mrs. Lecount demurely in attendance on him, carrying her

master’s green fan. Seeing this, Magdalen at once took Captain Wragge’s

right arm, so as to place herself nearest to the garden when they

passed it on their walk.

“The eyes of our neighbors are on us; and the least your niece can do

is to take your arm,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “Come! let us go

on.”

“They are looking this way,” whispered the captain. “Shall I introduce

you to Mrs. Lecount?”

“Not to-night,” she answered. “Wait, and hear what I have to say to you

first.”

They passed the garden wall. Captain Wragge took off his hat with a

smart flourish, and received a gracious bow from Mrs. Lecount in

return. Magdalen saw the housekeeper survey her face, her figure, and

her dress, with that reluctant interest, that distrustful curiosity,

which women feel in observing each other. As she walked on beyond the

house, the sharp voice of Noel Vanstone reached her through the evening

stillness. “A fine girl, Lecount,” she heard him say. “You know I am a

judge of that sort of thing—a fine girl!”

As those words were spoken, Captain Wragge looked round at his

companion in sudden surprise. Her hand was trembling violently on his

arm, and her lips were fast closed with an expression of speechless

pain.

Slowly and in silence the two walked on until they reached the southern

limit of the houses, and entered on a little wilderness of shingle and

withered grass—the desolate end of Aldborough, the lonely beginning of

Slaughden.

It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward, was the gray majesty of the

sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into

the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle

water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive

circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass, closed

the view darkly on all that lay beyond. Westward, a lurid streak of

sunset glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened the fringing trees on

the far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little

gleaming water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to the eye, the sullen

flow of the tidal river Alde ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks;

and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the bleak water-side, lay

the lost little port of Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and

warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered coasting-vessels

deserted on the oozy river-shore. No fall of waves was heard on the

beach, no trickling of waters bubbled audibly from the idle stream. Now

and then the cry of a sea-bird rose from the region of the marsh; and

at intervals, from farmhouses far in the inland waste, the faint

winding of horns to call the cattle home traveled mournfully through

the evening calm.

Magdalen drew her hand from the captain’s arm, and led the way to the

mound of the martello tower. “I am weary of walking,” she said. “Let us

stop and rest here.”

She seated herself on the slope, and resting on her elbow, mechanically

pulled up and scattered from her into the air the tufts of grass

growing under her hand. After silently occupying herself in this way

for some minutes, she turned suddenly on Captain Wragge. “Do I surprise

you?” she asked, with a startling abruptness. “Do you find me changed?”

The captain’s ready tact warned him that the time had come to be plain

with her, and to reserve his flowers of speech for a more appropriate

occasion.

“If you ask the question, I must answer it,” he replied. “Yes, I do

find you changed.”

She pulled up another tuft of grass. “I suppose you can guess the

reason?” she said.

The captain was wisely silent. He only answered by a bow.

“I have lost all care for myself,” she went on, tearing faster and

faster at the tufts of grass. “Saying that is not saying much, perhaps,

but it may help you to understand me. There are things I would have

died sooner than do at one time—things it would have turned me cold to

think of. I don’t care now whether I do them or not. I am nothing to

myself; I am no more interested in myself than I am in these handfuls

of grass. I suppose I have lost something. What is it? Heart?

Conscience? I don’t know. Do you? What nonsense I am talking! Who cares

what I have lost? It has gone; and there’s an end of it. I suppose my

outside is the best side of me—and that’s left, at any rate. I have not

lost my good looks, have I? There! there! never mind answering; don’t

trouble yourself to pay me compliments. I have been admired enough

to-day. First the sailor, and then Mr. Noel Vanstone—enough for any

woman’s vanity, surely! Have I any right to call myself a woman?

Perhaps not: I am only a girl in my teens. Oh, me, I feel as if I was

forty!” She scattered the last fragments of grass to the winds; and

turning her back on the captain, let her head droop till her cheek

touched the turf bank. “It feels soft and friendly,” she said, nestling

to it with a hopeless tenderness horrible to see. “It doesn’t cast me

off. Mother Earth! The only mother I have left!”

Captain Wragge looked at her in silent surprise. Such experience of

humanity as he possessed was powerless to sound to its depths the

terrible self-abandonment which had burst its way to the surface in her

reckless words—which was now fast hurrying her to actions more reckless

still. “Devilish odd!” he thought to himself, uneasily. “Has the loss

of her lover turned her brain?” He considered for a minute longer and

then spoke to her. “Leave it till to-morrow,” suggested the captain

confidentially. “You are a little tired to-night. No hurry, my dear

girl—no hurry.”

She raised her head instantly, and looked round at him with the same

angry resolution, with the same desperate defiance of herself, which he

had seen in her face on the memorable day at York when she had acted

before him for the first time. “I came here to tell you what is in my

mind,” she said; “and I _will_ tell it!” She seated herself upright on

the slope; and clasping her hands round her knees, looked out steadily,

straight before her, at the slowly darkening view. In that strange

position, she waited until she had composed herself, and then addressed

the captain, without turning her head to look round at him, in these

words:

“When you and I first met,” she began, abruptly, “I tried hard to keep

my thoughts to myself. I know enough by this time to know that I

failed. When I first told you at York that Michael Vanstone had ruined

us, I believe you guessed for yourself that I, for one, was determined

not to submit to it. Whether you guessed or not, it is so. I left my

friends with that determination in my mind; and I feel it in me now

stronger, ten times stronger, than ever.”

“Ten times stronger than ever,” echoed the captain. “Exactly so—the

natural result of firmness of character.”

“No—the natural result of having nothing else to think of. I had

something else to think of before you found me ill in Vauxhall Walk. I

have nothing else to think of now. Remember that, if you find me for

the future always harping on the same string. One question first. Did

you guess what I meant to do on that morning when you showed me the

newspaper, and when I read the account of Michael Vanstone’s death?”

“Generally,” replied Captain Wragge—“I guessed, generally, that you

proposed dipping your hand into his purse and taking from it (most

properly) what was your own. I felt deeply hurt at the time by your not

permitting me to assist you. Why is she so reserved with me? (I

remarked to myself)—why is she so unreasonably reserved?”

“You shall have no reserve to complain of now,” pursued Magdalen. “I

tell you plainly, if events had not happened as they did, you _would_

have assisted me. If Michael Vanstone had not died, I should have gone

to Brighton, and have found my way safely to his acquaintance under an

assumed name. I had money enough with me to live on respectably for

many months together. I would have employed that time—I would have

waited a whole year, if necessary, to destroy Mrs. Lecount’s influence

over him—and I would have ended by getting that influence, on my own

terms, into my own hands. I had the advantage of years, the advantage

of novelty, the advantage of downright desperation, all on my side, and

I should have succeeded. Before the year was out—before half the year

was out—you should have seen Mrs. Lecount dismissed by her master, and

you should have seen me taken into the house in her place, as Michael

Vanstone’s adopted daughter—as the faithful friend—who had saved him

from an adventuress in his old age. Girls no older than I am have tried

deceptions as hopeless in appearance as mine, and have carried them

through to the end. I had my story ready; I had my plans all

considered; I had the weak point in that old man to attack in my way,

which Mrs. Lecount had found out before me to attack in hers, and I

tell you again I should have succeeded.”

“I think you would,” said the captain. “And what next?”

“Mr. Michael Vanstone would have changed his man of business next. You

would have succeeded to the place; and those clever speculations on

which he was so fond of venturing would have cost him the fortunes of

which he had robbed my sister and myself. To the last farthing, Captain

Wragge, as certainly as you sit there, to the last farthing! A bold

conspiracy, a shocking deception—wasn’t it? I don’t care! Any

conspiracy, any deception, is justified to my conscience by the vile

law which has left us helpless. You talked of my reserve just now. Have

I dropped it at last? Have I spoken out at the eleventh hour?”

The captain laid his hand solemnly on his heart, and launched himself

once more on his broadest flow of language.

“You fill me with unavailing regret,” he said. “If that old man had

lived, what a crop I might have reaped from him! What enormous

transactions in moral agriculture it might have been my privilege to

carry on! _Ars longa,_” said Captain Wragge, pathetically drifting into

Latin—“_vita brevis!_ Let us drop a tear on the lost opportunities of

the past, and try what the present can do to console us. One conclusion

is clear to my mind—the experiment you proposed to try with Mr. Michael

Vanstone is totally hopeless, my dear girl, in the case of his son. His

son is impervious to all common forms of pecuniary temptation. You may

trust my solemn assurance,” continued the captain, speaking with an

indignant recollection of the answer to his advertisement in the Times,

“when I inform you that Mr. Noel Vanstone is emphatically the meanest

of mankind.”

“I can trust my own experience as well,” said Magdalen. “I have seen

him, and spoken to him—I know him better than you do. Another

disclosure, Captain Wragge, for your private ear! I sent you back

certain articles of costume when they had served the purpose for which

I took them to London. That purpose was to find my way to Noel Vanstone

in disguise, and to judge for myself of Mrs. Lecount and her master. I

gained my object; and I tell you again, I know the two people in that

house yonder whom we have now to deal with better than you do.”

Captain Wragge expressed the profound astonishment, and asked the

innocent questions appropriate to the mental condition of a person

taken completely by surprise.

“Well,” he resumed, when Magdalen had briefly answered him, “and what

is the result on your own mind? There must be a result, or we should

not be here. You see your way? Of course, my dear girl, you see your

way?”

“Yes,” she said, quickly. “I see my way.”

The captain drew a little nearer to her, with eager curiosity expressed

in every line of his vagabond face.

“Go on,” he said, in an anxious whisper; “pray go on.”

She looked out thoughtfully into the gathering darkness, without

answering, without appearing to have heard him. Her lips closed, and

her clasped hands tightened mechanically round her knees.

“There is no disguising the fact,” said Captain Wragge, warily rousing

her into speaking to him. “The son is harder to deal with than the

father—”

“Not in my way,” she interposed, suddenly.

“Indeed!” said the captain. “Well! they say there is a short cut to

everything, if we only look long enough to find it. You have looked

long enough, I suppose, and the natural result has followed—you have

found it.”

“I have not troubled myself to look; I have found it without looking.”

“The deuce you have!” cried Captain Wragge, in great perplexity. “My

dear girl, is my view of your present position leading me altogether

astray? As I understand it, here is Mr. Noel Vanstone in possession of

your fortune and your sister’s, as his father was, and determined to

keep it, as his father was?”

“Yes.”

“And here are you—quite helpless to get it by persuasion—quite helpless

to get it by law—just as resolute in his case as you were in his

father’s, to take it by stratagem in spite of him?”

“Just as resolute. Not for the sake of the fortune—mind that! For the

sake of the right.”

“Just so. And the means of coming at that right which were hard with

the father—who was not a miser—are easy with the son, who is?”

“Perfectly easy.”

“Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life!” cried the

captain, at the end of his patience. “Hang me if I know what you mean!”

She looked round at him for the first time—looked him straight and

steadily in the face.

“I will tell you what I mean,” she said. “I mean to marry him.”

Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified

by astonishment.

“Remember what I told you,” said Magdalen, looking away from him again.

“I have lost all care for myself. I have only one end in life now, and

the sooner I reach it—and die—the better. If—” She stopped, altered her

position a little, and pointed with one hand to the fast-ebbing stream

beneath her, gleaming dim in the darkening twilight—“if I had been what

I once was, I would have thrown myself into that river sooner than do

what I am going to do now. As it is, I trouble myself no longer; I

weary my mind with no more schemes. The short way and the vile way lies

before me. I take it, Captain Wragge, and marry him.”

“Keeping him in total ignorance of who you are?” said the captain,

slowly rising to his feet, and slowly moving round, so as to see her

face. “Marrying him as my niece, Miss Bygrave?”

“As your niece, Miss Bygrave.”

“And after the marriage—?” His voice faltered, as he began the

question, and he left it unfinished.

“After the marriage,” she said, “I shall stand in no further need of

your assistance.”

The captain stooped as she gave him that answer, looked close at her,

and suddenly drew back, without uttering a word. He walked away some

paces, and sat down again doggedly on the grass. If Magdalen could have

seen his face in the dying light, his face would have startled her. For

the first time, probably, since his boyhood, Captain Wragge had changed

color. He was deadly pale.

“Have you nothing to say to me?” she asked. “Perhaps you are waiting to

hear what terms I have to offer? These are my terms; I pay all our

expenses here; and when we part, on the day of the marriage, you take a

farewell gift away with you of two hundred pounds. Do you promise me

your assistance on those conditions?”

“What am I expected to do?” he asked, with a furtive glance at her, and

a sudden distrust in his voice.

“You are expected to preserve my assumed character and your own,” she

answered, “and you are to prevent any inquiries of Mrs. Lecount’s from

discovering who I really am. I ask no more. The rest is my

responsibility—not yours.”

“I have nothing to do with what happens—at any time, or in any

place—after the marriage?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“I may leave you at the church door if I please?”

“At the church door, with your fee in your pocket.”

“Paid from the money in your own possession?”

“Certainly! How else should I pay it?”

Captain Wragge took off his hat, and passed his handkerchief over his

face with an air of relief.

“Give me a minute to consider it,” he said.

“As many minutes as you like,” she rejoined, reclining on the bank in

her former position, and returning to her former occupation of tearing

up the tufts of grass and flinging them out into the air.

The captain’s reflections were not complicated by any unnecessary

divergences from the contemplation of his own position to the

contemplation of Magdalen’s. Utterly incapable of appreciating the

injury done her by Frank’s infamous treachery to his engagement—an

injury which had severed her, at one cruel blow, from the aspiration

which, delusion though it was, had been the saving aspiration of her

life—Captain Wragge accepted the simple fact of her despair just as he

found it, and then looked straight to the consequences of the proposal

which she had made to him.

In the prospect _before_ the marriage he saw nothing more serious

involved than the practice of a deception, in no important degree

different—except in the end to be attained by it—from the deceptions

which his vagabond life had long since accustomed him to contemplate

and to carry out. In the prospect _after_ the marriage he dimly

discerned, through the ominous darkness of the future, the lurking

phantoms of Terror and Crime, and the black gulfs behind them of Ruin

and Death. A man of boundless audacity and resource, within his own

mean limits; beyond those limits, the captain was as deferentially

submissive to the majesty of the law as the most harmless man in

existence; as cautious in looking after his own personal safety as the

veriest coward that ever walked the earth. But one serious question now

filled his mind. Could he, on the terms proposed to him, join the

conspiracy against Noel Vanstone up to the point of the marriage, and

then withdraw from it, without risk of involving himself in the

consequences which his experience told him must certainly ensue?

Strange as it may seem, his decision in this emergency was mainly

influenced by no less a person than Noel Vanstone himself. The captain

might have resisted the money-offer which Magdalen had made to him—for

the profits of the Entertainment had filled his pockets with more than

three times two hundred pounds. But the prospect of dealing a blow in

the dark at the man who had estimated his information and himself at

the value of a five pound note proved too much for his caution and his

self-control. On the small neutral ground of self-importance, the best

men and the worst meet on the same terms. Captain Wragge’s indignation,

when he saw the answer to his advertisement, stooped to no

retrospective estimate of his own conduct; he was as deeply offended,

as sincerely angry as if he had made a perfectly honorable proposal,

and had been rewarded for it by a personal insult. He had been too full

of his own grievance to keep it out of his first letter to Magdalen. He

had more or less forgotten himself on every subsequent occasion when

Noel Vanstone’s name was mentioned. And in now finally deciding the

course he should take, it is not too much to say that the motive of

money receded, for the first time in his life, into the second place,

and the motive of malice carried the day.

“I accept the terms,” said Captain Wragge, getting briskly on his legs

again. “Subject, of course, to the conditions agreed on between us. We

part on the wedding-day. I don’t ask where you go: you don’t ask where

I go. From that time forth we are strangers to each other.”

Magdalen rose slowly from the mound. A hopeless depression, a sullen

despair, showed itself in her look and manner. She refused the

captain’s offered hand; and her tones, when she answered him, were so

low that he could hardly hear her.

“We understand each other,” she said; “and we can now go back. You may

introduce me to Mrs. Lecount to-morrow.”

“I must ask a few questions first,” said the captain, gravely. “There

are more risks to be run in this matter, and more pitfalls in our way,

than you seem to suppose. I must know the whole history of your morning

call on Mrs. Lecount before I put you and that woman on speaking terms

with each other.”

“Wait till to-morrow,” she broke out impatiently. “Don’t madden me by

talking about it to-night.”

The captain said no more. They turned their faces toward Aldborough,

and walked slowly back.

By the time they reached the houses night had overtaken them. Neither

moon nor stars were visible. A faint noiseless breeze blowing from the

land had come with the darkness. Magdalen paused on the lonely public

walk to breathe the air more freely. After a while she turned her face

from the breeze and looked out toward the sea. The immeasurable silence

of the calm waters, lost in the black void of night, was awful. She

stood looking into the darkness, as if its mystery had no secrets for

her—she advanced toward it slowly, as if it drew her by some hidden

attraction into itself.

“I am going down to the sea,” she said to her companion. “Wait here,

and I will come back.”

He lost sight of her in an instant; it was as if the night had

swallowed her up. He listened, and counted her footsteps by the

crashing of them on the shingle in the deep stillness. They retreated

slowly, further and further away into the night. Suddenly the sound of

them ceased. Had she paused on her course or had she reached one of the

strips of sand left bare by the ebbing tide?

He waited, and listened anxiously. The time passed, and no sound

reached him. He still listened, with a growing distrust of the

darkness. Another moment, and there came a sound from the invisible

shore. Far and faint from the beach below, a long cry moaned through

the silence. Then all was still once more.

In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and to

call to her. Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly

advancing caught his ear. He waited an instant, and the figure of a man

passed quickly along the walk between him and the sea. It was too dark

to discern anything of the stranger’s face; it was only possible to see

that he was a tall man—as tall as that officer in the merchant-service

whose name was Kirke.

The figure passed on northward, and was instantly lost to view. Captain

Wragge crossed the path, and, advancing a few steps down the beach,

stopped and listened again. The crash of footsteps on the shingle

caught his ear once more. Slowly, as the sound had left him, that sound

now came back. He called, to guide her to him. She came on till he

could just see her—a shadow ascending the shingly slope, and growing

out of the blackness of the night.

“You alarmed me,” he whispered, nervously. “I was afraid something had

happened. I heard you cry out as if you were in pain.”

“Did you?” she said, carelessly. “I _was_ in pain. It doesn’t

matter—it’s over now.”

Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she answered him.

It was the little white silk bag which she had always kept hidden in

her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which it held—one of the

relics which she had not had the heart to part with before—was gone

from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange shore, she had torn from

her the fondest of her virgin memories, the dearest of her virgin

hopes. Alone, on a strange shore, she had taken the lock of Frank’s

hair from its once-treasured place, and had cast it away from her to

the sea and the night.

CHAPTER II.

The tall man who had passed Captain Wragge in the dark proceeded

rapidly along the public walk, struck off across a little waste patch

of ground, and entered the open door of the Aldborough Hotel. The light

in the passage, falling full on his face as he passed it, proved the

truth of Captain Wragge’s surmise, and showed the stranger to be Mr.

Kirke, of the merchant service.

Meeting the landlord in the passage, Mr. Kirke nodded to him with the

familiarity of an old customer. “Have you got the paper?” he asked; “I

want to look at the visitors’ list.”

“I have got it in my room, sir,” said the landlord, leading the way

into a parlor at the back of the house. “Are there any friends of yours

staying here, do you think?”

Without replying, the seaman turned to the list as soon as the

newspaper was placed in his hand, and ran his finger down it, name by

name. The finger suddenly stopped at this line: “Sea-view Cottage; Mr.

Noel Vanstone.” Kirke of the merchant-service repeated the name to

himself, and put down the paper thoughtfully.

“Have you found anybody you know, captain?” asked the landlord.

“I have found a name I know—a name my father used often to speak of in

his time. Is this Mr. Vanstone a family man? Do you know if there is a

young lady in the house?”

“I can’t say, captain. My wife will be here directly; she is sure to

know. It must have been some time ago, if your father knew this Mr.

Vanstone?”

“It _was_ some time ago. My father knew a subaltern officer of that

name when he was with his regiment in Canada. It would be curious if

the person here turned out to be the same man, and if that young lady

was his daughter.”

“Excuse me, captain—but the young lady seems to hang a little on your

mind,” said the landlord, with a pleasant smile.

Mr. Kirke looked as if the form which his host’s good-humor had just

taken was not quite to his mind. He returned abruptly to the subaltern

officer and the regiment in Canada. “That poor fellow’s story was as

miserable a one as ever I heard,” he said, looking back again absently

at the visitors’ list.

“Would there be any harm in telling it, sir?” asked the landlord.

“Miserable or not, a story’s a story, when you know it to be true.”

Mr. Kirke hesitated. “I hardly think I should be doing right to tell

it,” he said. “If this man, or any relations of his, are still alive,

it is not a story they might like strangers to know. All I can tell you

is, that my father was the salvation of that young officer under very

dreadful circumstances. They parted in Canada. My father remained with

his regiment; the young officer sold out and returned to England, and

from that moment they lost sight of each other. It would be curious if

this Vanstone here was the same man. It would be curious—”

He suddenly checked himself just as another reference to “the young

lady” was on the point of passing his lips. At the same moment the

landlord’s wife came in, and Mr. Kirke at once transferred his

inquiries to the higher authority in the house.

“Do you know anything of this Mr. Vanstone who is down here on the

visitors’ list?” asked the sailor. “Is he an old man?”

“He’s a miserable little creature to look at,” replied the landlady;

“but he’s not old, captain.”

“Then he’s not the man I mean. Perhaps he is the man’s son? Has he got

any ladies with him?”

The landlady tossed her head, and pursed up her lips disparagingly.

“He has a housekeeper with him,” she said. “A middle-aged person—not

one of my sort. I dare say I’m wrong—but I don’t like a dressy woman in

her station of life.”

Mr. Kirke began to look puzzled. “I must have made some mistake about

the house,” he said. “Surely there’s a lawn cut octagon-shape at

Sea-view Cottage, and a white flag-staff in the middle of the

gravel-walk?”

“That’s not Sea-view, sir! It’s North Shingles you’re talking of. Mr.

Bygrave’s. His wife and his niece came here by the coach to-day. His

wife’s tall enough to be put in a show, and the worst-dressed woman I

ever set eyes on. But Miss Bygrave is worth looking at, if I may

venture to say so. She’s the finest girl, to my mind, we’ve had at

Aldborough for many a long day. I wonder who they are! Do you know the

name, captain?”

“No,” said Mr. Kirke, with a shade of disappointment on his dark,

weather-beaten face; “I never heard the name before.”

After replying in those words, he rose to take his leave. The landlord

vainly invited him to drink a parting glass; the landlady vainly

pressed him to stay another ten minutes and try a cup of tea. He only

replied that his sister expected him, and that he must return to the

parsonage immediately.

On leaving the hotel Mr. Kirke set his face westward, and walked inland

along the highroad as fast as the darkness would let him.

“Bygrave?” he thought to himself. “Now I know her name, how much am I

the wiser for it! If it had been Vanstone, my father’s son might have

had a chance of making acquaintance with her.” He stopped, and looked

back in the direction of Aldborough. “What a fool I am!” he burst out

suddenly, striking his stick on the ground. “I was forty last

birthday.” He turned and went on again faster than ever—his head down;

his resolute black eyes searching the darkness on the land as they had

searched it many a time on the sea from the deck of his ship.

After more than an hour’s walking he reached a village, with a

primitive little church and parsonage nestled together in a hollow. He

entered the house by the back way, and found his sister, the

clergyman’s wife, sitting alone over her work in the parlor.

“Where is your husband, Lizzie?” he asked, taking a chair in a corner.

“William has gone out to see a sick person. He had just time enough

before he went,” she added, with a smile, “to tell me about the young

lady; and he declares he will never trust himself at Aldborough with

you again until you are a steady, married man.” She stopped, and looked

at her brother more attentively than she had looked at him yet.

“Robert!” she said, laying aside her work, and suddenly crossing the

room to him. “You look anxious, you look distressed. William only

laughed about your meeting with the young lady. Is it serious? Tell me;

what is she like?”

He turned his head away at the question.

She took a stool at his feet, and persisted in looking up at him. “Is

it serious, Robert?” she repeated, softly.

Kirke’s weather-beaten face was accustomed to no concealments—it

answered for him before he spoke a word. “Don’t tell your husband till

I am gone,” he said, with a roughness quite new in his sister’s

experience of him. “I know I only deserve to be laughed at; but it

hurts me, for all that.”

“Hurts you?” she repeated, in astonishment.

“You can’t think me half such a fool, Lizzie, as I think myself,”

pursued Kirke, bitterly. “A man at my age ought to know better. I

didn’t set eyes on her for as much as a minute altogether; and there I

have been hanging about the place till after nightfall on the chance of

seeing her again—skulking, I should have called it, if I had found one

of my men doing what I have been doing myself. I believe I’m bewitched.

She’s a mere girl, Lizzie—I doubt if she’s out of her teens—I’m old

enough to be her father. It’s all one; she stops in my mind in spite of

me. I’ve had her face looking at me, through the pitch darkness, every

step of the way to this house; and it’s looking at me now—as plain as I

see yours, and plainer.”

He rose impatiently, and began to walk backward and forward in the

room. His sister looked after him, with surprise as well as sympathy

expressed in her face. From his boyhood upward she had always been

accustomed to see him master of himself. Years since, in the failing

fortunes of the family, he had been their example and their support.

She had heard of him in the desperate emergencies of a life at sea,

when hundreds of his fellow-creatures had looked to his steady

self-possession for rescue from close-threatening death—and had not

looked in vain. Never, in all her life before, had his sister seen the

balance of that calm and equal mind lost as she saw it lost now.

“How can you talk so unreasonably about your age and yourself?” she

said. “There is not a woman alive, Robert, who is good enough for you.

What is her name?”

“Bygrave. Do you know it?”

“No. But I might soon make acquaintance with her. If we only had a

little time before us; if I could only get to Aldborough and see

her—but you are going away to-morrow; your ship sails at the end of the

week.”

“Thank God for that!” said Kirke, fervently.

“Are you glad to be going away?” she asked, more and more amazed at

him.

“Right glad, Lizzie, for my own sake. If I ever get to my senses again,

I shall find my way back to them on the deck of my ship. This girl has

got between me and my thoughts already: she shan’t go a step further,

and get between me and my duty. I’m determined on that. Fool as I am, I

have sense enough left not to trust myself within easy hail of

Aldborough to-morrow morning. I’m good for another twenty miles of

walking, and I’ll begin my journey back tonight.”

His sister started up, and caught him fast by the arm. “Robert!” she

exclaimed; “you’re not serious? You don’t mean to leave us on foot,

alone in the dark?”

“It’s only saying good-by, my dear, the last thing at night instead of

the first thing in the morning,” he answered, with a smile. “Try and

make allowances for me, Lizzie. My life has been passed at sea; and I’m

not used to having my mind upset in this way. Men ashore are used to

it; men ashore can take it easy. I can’t. If I stopped here I shouldn’t

rest. If I waited till to-morrow, I should only be going back to have

another look at her. I don’t want to feel more ashamed of myself than I

do already. I want to fight my way back to my duty and myself, without

stopping to think twice about it. Darkness is nothing to me—I’m used to

darkness. I have got the high-road to walk on, and I can’t lose my way.

Let me go, Lizzie! The only sweetheart I have any business with at my

age is my ship. Let me get back to her!”

His sister still kept her hold of his arm, and still pleaded with him

to stay till the morning. He listened to her with perfect patience and

kindness, but she never shook his determination for an instant.

“What am I to say to William?” she pleaded. “What will he think when he

comes back and finds you gone?”

“Tell him I have taken the advice he gave us in his sermon last Sunday.

Say I have turned my back on the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

“How can you talk so, Robert! And the boys, too—you promised not to go

without bidding the boys good-by.”

“That’s true. I made my little nephews a promise, and I’ll keep it.” He

kicked off his shoes as he spoke, on the mat outside the door. “Light

me upstairs, Lizzie; I’ll bid the two boys good-by without waking

them.”

She saw the uselessness of resisting him any longer; and, taking the

candle, went before him upstairs.

The boys—both young children—were sleeping together in the same bed.

The youngest was his uncle’s favorite, and was called by his uncle’s

name. He lay peacefully asleep, with a rough little toy ship hugged

fast in his arms. Kirke’s eyes softened as he stole on tiptoe to the

child’s side, and kissed him with the gentleness of a woman. “Poor

little man!” said the sailor, tenderly. “He is as fond of his ship as I

was at his age. I’ll cut him out a better one when I come back. Will

you give me my nephew one of these days, Lizzie, and will you let me

make a sailor of him?”

“Oh, Robert, if you were only married and happy, as I am!”

“The time has gone by, my dear. I must make the best of it as I am,

with my little nephew there to help me.”

He left the room. His sister’s tears fell fast as she followed him into

the parlor. “There is something so forlorn and dreadful in your leaving

us like this,” she said. “Shall I go to Aldborough to-morrow, Robert,

and try if I can get acquainted with her for your sake?”

“No!” he replied. “Let her be. If it’s ordered that I am to see that

girl again, I _shall_ see her. Leave it to the future, and you leave it

right.” He put on his shoes, and took up his hat and stick. “I won’t

overwalk myself,” he said, cheerfully. “If the coach doesn’t overtake

me on the road, I can wait for it where I stop to breakfast. Dry your

eyes, my dear, and give me a kiss.”

She was like her brother in features and complexion, and she had a

touch of her brother’s spirit; she dashed away the tears, and took her

leave of him bravely.

“I shall be back in a year’s time,” said Kirke, falling into his old

sailor-like way at the door. “I’ll bring you a China shawl, Lizzie, and

a chest of tea for your store-room. Don’t let the boys forget me, and

don’t think I’m doing wrong to leave you in this way. I know I am doing

right. God bless you and keep you, my dear—and your husband, and your

children! Good-by!”

He stooped and kissed her. She ran to the door to look after him. A

puff of air extinguished the candle, and the black night shut him out

from her in an instant.

Three days afterward the first-class merchantman _Deliverance_, Kirke,

commander, sailed from London for the China Sea.

CHAPTER III.

The threatening of storm and change passed away with the night. When

morning rose over Aldborough, the sun was master in the blue heaven,

and the waves were rippling gayly under the summer breeze.

At an hour when no other visitors to the watering—place were yet astir,

the indefatigable Wragge appeared at the door of North Shingles Villa,

and directed his steps northward, with a neatly-bound copy of “Joyce’s

Scientific Dialogues” in his hand. Arriving at the waste ground beyond

the houses, he descended to the beach and opened his book. The

interview of the past night had sharpened his perception of the

difficulties to be encountered in the coming enterprise. He was now

doubly determined to try the characteristic experiment at which he had

hinted in his letter to Magdalen, and to concentrate on himself—in the

character of a remarkably well-informed man—the entire interest and

attention of the formidable Mrs. Lecount.

Having taken his dose of ready-made science (to use his own expression)

the first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, Captain Wragge

joined his small family circle at breakfast-time, inflated with

information for the day. He observed that Magdalen’s face showed plain

signs of a sleepless night. She made no complaint: her manner was

composed, and her temper perfectly under control. Mrs. Wragge—refreshed

by some thirteen consecutive hours of uninterrupted repose—was in

excellent spirits, and up at heel (for a wonder) with both shoes. She

brought with her into the room several large sheets of tissue-paper,

cut crisply into mysterious and many-varying forms, which immediately

provoked from her husband the short and sharp question, “What have you

got there?”

“Patterns, captain,” said Mrs. Wragge, in timidly conciliating tones.

“I went shopping in London, and bought an Oriental Cashmere Robe. It

cost a deal of money; and I’m going to try and save, by making it

myself. I’ve got my patterns, and my dress-making directions written

out as plain as print. I’ll be very tidy, captain; I’ll keep in my own

corner, if you’ll please to give me one; and whether my head Buzzes, or

whether it don’t, I’ll sit straight at my work all the same.”

“You will do your work,” said the captain, sternly, “when you know who

you are, who I am, and who that young lady is—not before. Show me your

shoes! Good. Show me you cap! Good. Make the breakfast.”

When breakfast was over, Mrs. Wragge received her orders to retire into

an adjoining room, and to wait there until her husband came to release

her. As soon as her back was turned, Captain Wragge at once resumed the

conversation which had been suspended, by Magdalen’s own desire, on the

preceding night. The questions he now put to her all related to the

subject of her visit in disguise to Noel Vanstone’s house. They were

the questions of a thoroughly clear-headed man—short, searching, and

straight to the point. In less than half an hour’s time he had made

himself acquainted with every incident that had happened in Vauxhall

Walk.

The conclusions which the captain drew, after gaining his information,

were clear and easily stated.

On the adverse side of the question, he expressed his conviction that

Mrs. Lecount had certainly detected her visitor to be disguised; that

she had never really left the room, though she might have opened and

shut the door; and that on both the occasions, therefore, when Magdalen

had been betrayed into speaking in her own voice, Mrs. Lecount had

heard her. On the favorable side of the question, he was perfectly

satisfied that the painted face and eyelids, the wig, and the padded

cloak had so effectually concealed Magdalen’s identity, that she might

in her own person defy the housekeeper’s closest scrutiny, so far as

the matter of appearance was concerned. The difficulty of deceiving

Mrs. Lecount’s ears, as well as her eyes, was, he readily admitted, not

so easily to be disposed of. But looking to the fact that Magdalen, on

both the occasions when she had forgotten herself, had spoken in the

heat of anger, he was of opinion that her voice had every reasonable

chance of escaping detection, if she carefully avoided all outbursts of

temper for the future, and spoke in those more composed and ordinary

tones which Mrs. Lecount had not yet heard. Upon the whole, the captain

was inclined to pronounce the prospect hopeful, if one serious obstacle

were cleared away at the outset—that obstacle being nothing less than

the presence on the scene of action of Mrs. Wragge.

To Magdalen’s surprise, when the course of her narrative brought her to

the story of the ghost, Captain Wragge listened with the air of a man

who was more annoyed than amused by what he heard. When she had done,

he plainly told her that her unlucky meeting on the stairs of the

lodging-house with Mrs. Wragge was, in his opinion, the most serious of

all the accidents that had happened in Vauxhall Walk.

“I can deal with the difficulty of my wife’s stupidity,” he said, “as I

have often dealt with it before. I can hammer her new identity _into_

her head, but I can’t hammer the ghost _out_ of it. We have no security

that the woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet may not come back to

her recollection at the most critical time, and under the most awkward

circumstances. In plain English, my dear girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall

under our feet at every step we take.”

“If we are aware of the pitfall,” said Magdalen, “we can take our

measures for avoiding it. What do you propose?”

“I propose,” replied the captain, “the temporary removal of Mrs.

Wragge. Speaking purely in a pecuniary point of view, I can’t afford a

total separation from her. You have often read of very poor people

being suddenly enriched by legacies reaching them from remote and

unexpected quarters? Mrs. Wragge’s case, when I married her, was one of

these. An elderly female relative shared the favors of fortune on that

occasion with my wife; and if I only keep up domestic appearances, I

happen to know that Mrs. Wragge will prove a second time profitable to

me on that elderly relative’s death. But for this circumstance, I

should probably long since have transferred my wife to the care of

society at large—in the agreeable conviction that if I didn’t support

her, somebody else would. Although I can’t afford to take this course,

I see no objection to having her comfortably boarded and lodged out of

our way for the time being—say, at a retired farm-house, in the

character of a lady in infirm mental health. _You_ would find the

expense trifling; _I_ should find the relief unutterable. What do you

say? Shall I pack her up at once, and take her away by the next coach?”

“No!” replied Magdalen, firmly. “The poor creature’s life is hard

enough already; I won’t help to make it harder. She was affectionately

and truly kind to me when I was ill, and I won’t allow her to be shut

up among strangers while I can help it. The risk of keeping her here is

only one risk more. I will face it, Captain Wragge, if you won’t.”

“Think twice,” said the captain, gravely, “before you decide on keeping

Mrs. Wragge.”

“Once is enough,” rejoined Magdalen. “I won’t have her sent away.”

“Very good,” said the captain, resignedly. “I never interfere with

questions of sentiment. But I have a word to say on my own behalf. If

my services are to be of any use to you, I can’t have my hands tied at

starting. This is serious. I won’t trust my wife and Mrs. Lecount

together. I’m afraid, if you’re not, and I make it a condition that, if

Mrs. Wragge stops here, she keeps her room. If you think her health

requires it, you can take her for a walk early in the morning, or late

in the evening; but you must never trust her out with the servant, and

never trust her out by herself. I put the matter plainly, it is too

important to be trifled with. What do you say—yes or no?”

“I say yes,” replied Magdalen, after a moment’s consideration. “On the

understanding that I am to take her out walking, as you propose.”

Captain Wragge bowed, and recovered his suavity of manner. “What are

our plans?” he inquired. “Shall we start our enterprise this afternoon?

Are you ready for your introduction to Mrs. Lecount and her master?”

“Quite ready.”

“Good again. We will meet them on the Parade, at their usual hour for

going out—two o’clock. It is not twelve yet. I have two hours before

me—just time enough to fit my wife into her new Skin. The process is

absolutely necessary, to prevent her compromising us with the servant.

Don’t be afraid about the results; Mrs. Wragge has had a copious

selection of assumed names hammered into her head in the course of her

matrimonial career. It is merely a question of hammering hard

enough—nothing more. I think we have settled everything now. Is there

anything I can do before two o’clock? Have you any employment for the

morning?”

“No,” said Magdalen. “I shall go back to my own room, and try to rest.”

“You had a disturbed night, I am afraid?” said the captain, politely

opening the door for her.

“I fell asleep once or twice,” she answered, carelessly. “I suppose my

nerves are a little shaken. The bold black eyes of that man who stared

so rudely at me yesterday evening seemed to be looking at me again in

my dreams. If we see him to-day, and if he annoys me any more, I must

trouble you to speak to him. We will meet here again at two o’clock.

Don’t be hard with Mrs. Wragge; teach her what she must learn as

tenderly as you can.”

With those words she left him, and went upstairs.

She lay down on her bed with a heavy sigh, and tried to sleep. It was

useless. The dull weariness of herself which now possessed her was not

the weariness which finds its remedy in repose. She rose again and sat

by the window, looking out listlessly over the sea.

A weaker nature than hers would not have felt the shock of Frank’s

desertion as she had felt it—as she was feeling it still. A weaker

nature would have found refuge in indignation and comfort in tears. The

passionate strength of Magdalen’s love clung desperately to the sinking

wreck of its own delusion-clung, until she tore herself from it, by

plain force of will. All that her native pride, her keen sense of wrong

could do, was to shame her from dwelling on the thoughts which still

caught their breath of life from the undying devotion of the past;

which still perversely ascribed Frank’s heartless farewell to any cause

but the inborn baseness of the man who had written it. The woman never

lived yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the

object of that love was unworthy of her. All she can do is to struggle

against it in secret—to sink in the contest if she is weak; to win her

way through it if she is strong, by a process of self-laceration which

is, of all moral remedies applied to a woman’s nature, the most

dangerous and the most desperate; of all moral changes, the change that

is surest to mark her for life. Magdalen’s strong nature had sustained

her through the struggle; and the issue of it had left her what she now

was.

After sitting by the window for nearly an hour, her eyes looking

mechanically at the view, her mind empty of all impressions, and

conscious of no thoughts, she shook off the strange waking stupor that

possessed her, and rose to prepare herself for the serious business of

the day.

She went to the wardrobe and took down from the pegs two bright,

delicate muslin dresses, which had been made for summer wear at

Combe-Raven a year since, and which had been of too little value to be

worth selling when she parted with her other possessions. After placing

these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe

once more. It only contained one other summer dress—the plain alpaca

gown which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel

Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount. This she left in its place, resolving not to

wear it—less from any dread that the housekeeper might recognize a

pattern too quiet to be noticed, and too common to be remembered, than

from the conviction that it was neither gay enough nor becoming enough

for her purpose. After taking a plain white muslin scarf, a pair of

light gray kid gloves, and a garden-hat of Tuscan straw, from the

drawers of the wardrobe, she locked it, and put the key carefully in

her pocket.

Instead of at once proceeding to dress herself, she sat idly looking at

the two muslin gowns; careless which she wore, and yet inconsistently

hesitating which to choose. “What does it matter!” she said to herself,

with a reckless laugh; “I am equally worthless in my own estimation,

whichever I put on.” She shuddered, as if the sound of her own laughter

had startled her, and abruptly caught up the dress which lay nearest to

her hand. Its colors were blue and white—the shade of blue which best

suited her fair complexion. She hurriedly put on the gown, without

going near her looking-glass. For the first time in her life she shrank

from meeting the reflection of herself—except for a moment, when she

arranged her hair under her garden-hat, leaving the glass again

immediately. She drew her scarf over her shoulders and fitted on her

gloves, with her back to the toilet-table. “Shall I paint?” she asked

herself, feeling instinctively that she was turning pale. “The rouge is

still left in my box. It can’t make my face more false than it is

already.” She looked round toward the glass, and again turned away from

it. “No!” she said. “I have Mrs. Lecount to face as well as her master.

No paint.” After consulting her watch, she left the room and went

downstairs again. It wanted ten minutes only of two o’clock.

Captain Wragge was waiting for her in the parlor—respectable, in a

frock-coat, a stiff summer cravat, and a high white hat; specklessly

and cheerfully rural, in a buff waistcoat, gray trousers, and gaiters

to match. His collars were higher than ever, and he carried a brand-new

camp-stool in his hand. Any tradesman in England who had seen him at

that moment would have trusted him on the spot.

“Charming!” said the captain, paternally surveying Magdalen when she

entered the room. “So fresh and cool! A little too pale, my dear, and a

great deal too serious. Otherwise perfect. Try if you can smile.”

“When the time comes for smiling,” said Magdalen, bitterly, “trust my

dramatic training for any change of face that may be necessary. Where

is Mrs. Wragge?”

“Mrs. Wragge has learned her lesson,” replied the captain, “and is

rewarded by my permission to sit at work in her own room. I sanction

her new fancy for dressmaking, because it is sure to absorb all her

attention, and to keep her at home. There is no fear of her finishing

the Oriental Robe in a hurry, for there is no mistake in the process of

making it which she is not certain to commit. She will sit incubating

her gown—pardon the expression—like a hen over an addled egg. I assure

you, her new whim relieves me. Nothing could be more convenient, under

existing circumstances.”

He strutted away to the window, looked out, and beckoned to Magdalen to

join him. “There they are!” he said, and pointed to the Parade.

Noel Vanstone slowly walked by, as she looked, dressed in a complete

suit of old-fashioned nankeen. It was apparently one of the days when

the state of his health was at the worst. He leaned on Mrs. Lecount’s

arm, and was protected from the sun by a light umbrella which she held

over him. The housekeeper—dressed to perfection, as usual, in a quiet,

lavender-colored summer gown, a black mantilla, an unassuming straw

bonnet, and a crisp blue veil—escorted her invalid master with the

tenderest attention; sometimes directing his notice respectfully to the

various objects of the sea view; sometimes bending her head in graceful

acknowledgment of the courtesy of passing strangers on the Parade, who

stepped aside to let the invalid pass by. She produced a visible effect

among the idlers on the beach. They looked after her with unanimous

interest, and exchanged confidential nods of approval which said, as

plainly as words could have expressed it, “A very domestic person! a

truly superior woman!”

Captain Wragge’s party-colored eyes followed Mrs. Lecount with a

steady, distrustful attention. “Tough work for us _there_,” he

whispered in Magdalen’s ear; “tougher work than you think, before we

turn that woman out of her place.”

“Wait,” said Magdalen, quietly. “Wait and see.”

She walked to the door. The captain followed her without making any

further remark. “I’ll wait till you’re married,” he thought to

himself—“not a moment longer, offer me what you may.”

At the house door Magdalen addressed him again.

“We will go that way,” she said, pointing southward, “then turn, and

meet them as they come back.”

Captain Wragge signified his approval of the arrangement, and followed

Magdalen to the garden gate. As she opened it to pass through, her

attention was attracted by a lady, with a nursery-maid and two little

boys behind her, loitering on the path outside the garden wall. The

lady started, looked eagerly, and smiled to herself as Magdalen came

out. Curiosity had got the better of Kirke’s sister, and she had come

to Aldborough for the express purpose of seeing Miss Bygrave.

Something in the shape of the lady’s face, something in the expression

of her dark eyes, reminded Magdalen of the merchant-captain whose

uncontrolled admiration had annoyed her on the previous evening. She

instantly returned the stranger’s scrutiny by a frowning, ungracious

look. The lady colored, paid the look back with interest, and slowly

walked on.

“A hard, bold, bad girl,” thought Kirke’s sister. “What could Robert be

thinking of to admire her? I am almost glad he is gone. I hope and

trust he will never set eyes on Miss Bygrave again.”

“What boors the people are here!” said Magdalen to Captain Wragge.

“That woman was even ruder than the man last night. She is like him in

the face. I wonder who she is?”

“I’ll find out directly,” said the captain. “We can’t be too cautious

about strangers.” He at once appealed to his friends, the boatmen. They

were close at hand, and Magdalen heard the questions and answers

plainly.

“How are you all this morning?” said Captain Wragge, in his easy

jocular way. “And how’s the wind? Nor’-west and by west, is it? Very

good. Who is that lady?”

“That’s Mrs. Strickland, sir.”

“Ay! ay! The clergyman’s wife and the captain’s sister. Where’s the

captain to-day?”

“On his way to London, I should think, sir. His ship sails for China at

the end of the week.”

China! As that one word passed the man’s lips, a pang of the old sorrow

struck Magdalen to the heart. Stranger as he was, she began to hate the

bare mention of the merchant-captain’s name. He had troubled her dreams

of the past night; and now, when she was most desperately and

recklessly bent on forgetting her old home-existence, he had been

indirectly the cause of recalling her mind to Frank.

“Come!” she said, angrily, to her companion. “What do we care about the

man or his ship? Come away.”

“By all means,” said Captain Wragge. “As long as we don’t find friends

of the Bygraves, what do we care about anybody?”

They walked on southward for ten minutes or more, then turned and

walked back again to meet Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.

CHAPTER IV.

Captain Wragge and Magdalen retraced their steps until they were again

within view of North Shingles Villa before any signs appeared of Mrs.

Lecount and her master. At that point the housekeeper’s

lavender-colored dress, the umbrella, and the feeble little figure in

nankeen walking under it, became visible in the distance. The captain

slackened his pace immediately, and issued his directions to Magdalen

for her conduct at the coming interview in these words:

“Don’t forget your smile,” he said. “In all other respects you will do.

The walk has improved your complexion, and the hat becomes you. Look

Mrs. Lecount steadily in the face; show no embarrassment when you

speak; and if Mr. Noel Vanstone pays you pointed attention, don’t take

too much notice of him while his housekeeper’s eye is on you. Mind one

thing! I have been at Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues all the morning; and

I am quite serious in meaning to give Mrs. Lecount the full benefit of

my studies. If I can’t contrive to divert her attention from you and

her master, I won’t give sixpence for our chance of success. Small-talk

won’t succeed with that woman; compliments won’t succeed; jokes won’t

succeed—ready-made science may recall the deceased professor, and

ready-made science may do. We must establish a code of signals to let

you know what I am about. Observe this camp-stool. When I shift it from

my left hand to my right, I am talking Joyce. When I shift it from my

right hand to my left, I am talking Wragge. In the first case, don’t

interrupt me—I am leading up to my point. In the second case, say

anything you like; my remarks are not of the slightest consequence.

Would you like a rehearsal? Are you sure you understand? Very good—take

my arm, and look happy. Steady! here they are.”

The meeting took place nearly midway between Sea-view Cottage and North

Shingles. Captain Wragge took off his tall white hat and opened the

interview immediately on the friendliest terms.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Lecount,” he said, with the frank and cheerful

politeness of a naturally sociable man. “Good-morning, Mr. Vanstone; I

am sorry to see you suffering to-day. Mrs. Lecount, permit me to

introduce my niece—my niece, Miss Bygrave. My dear girl, this is Mr.

Noel Vanstone, our neighbor at Sea-view Cottage. We must positively be

sociable at Aldborough, Mrs. Lecount. There is only one walk in the

place (as my niece remarked to me just now, Mr. Vanstone); and on that

walk we must all meet every time we go out. And why not? Are we formal

people on either side? Nothing of the sort; we are just the reverse.

You possess the Continental facility of manner, Mr. Vanstone—I match

you with the blunt cordiality of an old-fashioned Englishman—the ladies

mingle together in harmonious variety, like flowers on the same bed—and

the result is a mutual interest in making our sojourn at the sea-side

agreeable to each other. Pardon my flow of spirits; pardon my feeling

so cheerful and so young. The Iodine in the sea-air, Mrs. Lecount—the

notorious effect of the Iodine in the sea-air!”

“You arrived yesterday, Miss Bygrave, did you not?” said the

housekeeper, as soon as the captain’s deluge of language had come to an

end.

She addressed those words to Magdalen with a gentle motherly interest

in her youth and beauty, chastened by the deferential amiability which

became her situation in Noel Vanstone’s household. Not the faintest

token of suspicion or surprise betrayed itself in her face, her voice,

or her manner, while she and Magdalen now looked at each other. It was

plain at the outset that the true face and figure which she now saw

recalled nothing to her mind of the false face and figure which she had

seen in Vauxhall Walk. The disguise had evidently been complete enough

even to baffle the penetration of Mrs. Lecount.

“My aunt and I came here yesterday evening,” said Magdalen. “We found

the latter part of the journey very fatiguing. I dare say you found it

so, too?”

She designedly made her answer longer than was necessary for the

purpose of discovering, at the earliest opportunity, the effect which

the sound of her voice produced on Mrs. Lecount.

The housekeeper’s thin lips maintained their motherly smile; the

housekeeper’s amiable manner lost none of its modest deference, but the

expression of her eyes suddenly changed from a look of attention to a

look of inquiry. Magdalen quietly said a few words more, and then

waited again for results. The change spread gradually all over Mrs.

Lecount’s face, the motherly smile died away, and the amiable manner

betrayed a slight touch of restraint. Still no signs of positive

recognition appeared; the housekeeper’s expression remained what it had

been from the first—an expression of inquiry, and nothing more.

“You complained of fatigue, sir, a few minutes since,” she said,

dropping all further conversation with Magdalen and addressing her

master. “Will you go indoors and rest?”

The proprietor of Sea-view Cottage had hitherto confined himself to

bowing, simpering and admiring Magdalen through his half-closed

eyelids. There was no mistaking the sudden flutter and agitation in his

manner, and the heightened color in his wizen little face. Even the

reptile temperament of Noel Vanstone warmed under the influence of the

sex: he had an undeniably appreciative eye for a handsome woman, and

Magdalen’s grace and beauty were not thrown away on him.

“Will you go indoors, sir, and rest?” asked the housekeeper, repeating

her quest ion.

“Not yet, Lecount,” said her master. “I fancy I feel stronger; I fancy

I can go on a little.” He turned simpering to Magdalen, and added, in a

lower tone: “I have found a new interest in my walk, Miss Bygrave.

Don’t desert us, or you will take the interest away with you.”

He smiled and smirked in the highest approval of the ingenuity of his

own compliment—from which Captain Wragge dexterously diverted the

housekeeper’s attention by ranging himself on her side of the path and

speaking to her at the same moment. They all four walked on slowly.

Mrs. Lecount said nothing more. She kept fast hold of her master’s arm,

and looked across him at Magdalen with the dangerous expression of

inquiry more marked than ever in her handsome black eyes. That look was

not lost on the wary Wragge. He shifted his indicative camp-stool from

the left hand to the right, and opened his scientific batteries on the

spot.

“A busy scene, Mrs. Lecount,” said the captain, politely waving his

camp-stool over the sea and the passing ships. “The greatness of

England, ma’am—the true greatness of England. Pray observe how heavily

some of those vessels are laden! I am often inclined to wonder whether

the British sailor is at all aware, when he has got his cargo on board,

of the Hydrostatic importance of the operation that he has performed.

If I were suddenly transported to the deck of one of those ships (which

Heaven forbid, for I suffer at sea); and if I said to a member of the

crew: ‘Jack! you have done wonders; you have grasped the Theory of

Floating Vessels’—how the gallant fellow would stare! And yet on that

theory Jack’s life depends. If he loads his vessel one-thirtieth part

more than he ought, what happens? He sails past Aldborough, I grant

you, in safety. He enters the Thames, I grant you again, in safety. He

gets on into the fresh water as far, let us say, as Greenwich; and—down

he goes! Down, ma’am, to the bottom of the river, as a matter of

scientific certainty!”

Here he paused, and left Mrs. Lecount no polite alternative but to

request an explanation.

“With infinite pleasure, ma’am,” said the captain, drowning in the

deepest notes of his voice the feeble treble in which Noel Vanstone

paid his compliments to Magdalen. “We will start, if you please, with a

first principle. All bodies whatever that float on the surface of the

water displace as much fluid as is equal in weight to the weight of the

bodies. Good. We have got our first principle. What do we deduce from

it? Manifestly this: That, in order to keep a vessel above water, it is

necessary to take care that the vessel and its cargo shall be of less

weight than the weight of a quantity of water—pray follow me here!—of a

quantity of water equal in bulk to that part of the vessel which it

will be safe to immerse in the water. Now, ma’am, salt-water is

specifically thirty times heavier than fresh or river water, and a

vessel in the German Ocean will not sink so deep as a vessel in the

Thames. Consequently, when we load our ship with a view to the London

market, we have (Hydrostatically speaking) three alternatives. Either

we load with one-thirtieth part less than we can carry at sea; or we

take one-thirtieth part out at the mouth of the river; or we do neither

the one nor the other, and, as I have already had the honor of

remarking—down we go! Such,” said the captain, shifting the camp-stool

back again from his right hand to his left, in token that Joyce was

done with for the time being; “such, my dear madam, is the Theory of

Floating Vessels. Permit me to add, in conclusion, you are heartily

welcome to it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “You have unintentionally saddened

me; but the information I have received is not the less precious on

that account. It is long, long ago, Mr. Bygrave, since I have heard

myself addressed in the language of science. My dear husband made me

his companion—my dear husband improved my mind as you have been trying

to improve it. Nobody has taken pains with my intellect since. Many

thanks, sir. Your kind consideration for me is not thrown away.”

She sighed with a plaintive humility, and privately opened her ears to

the conversation on the other side of her.

A minute earlier she would have heard her master expressing himself in

the most flattering terms on the subject of Miss Bygrave’s appearance

in her sea-side costume. But Magdalen had seen Captain Wragge’s signal

with the camp-stool, and had at once diverted Noel Vanstone to the

topic of himself and his possessions by a neatly-timed question about

his house at Aldborough.

“I don’t wish to alarm you, Miss Bygrave,” were the first words of Noel

Vanstone’s which caught Mrs. Lecount’s attention, “but there is only

one safe house in Aldborough, and that house is mine. The sea may

destroy all the other houses—it can’t destroy Mine. My father took care

of that; my father was a remarkable man. He had My house built on

piles. I have reason to believe they are the strongest piles in

England. Nothing can possibly knock them down—I don’t care what the sea

does—nothing can possibly knock them down.”

“Then, if the sea invades us,” said Magdalen, “we must all run for

refuge to you.”

Noel Vanstone saw his way to another compliment; and, at the same

moment, the wary captain saw his way to another burst of science.

“I could almost wish the invasion might happen,” murmured one of the

gentlemen, “to give me the happiness of offering the refuge.”

“I could almost swear the wind had shifted again!” exclaimed the other.

“Where is a man I can ask? Oh, there he is. Boatman! How’s the wind

now? Nor’west and by west still—hey? And southeast and by south

yesterday evening—ha? Is there anything more remarkable, Mrs. Lecount,

than the variableness of the wind in this climate?” proceeded the

captain, shifting the camp-stool to the scientific side of him. “Is

there any natural phenomenon more bewildering to the scientific

inquirer? You will tell me that the electric fluid which abounds in the

air is the principal cause of this variableness. You will remind me of

the experiment of that illustrious philosopher who measured the

velocity of a great storm by a flight of small feathers. My dear madam,

I grant all your propositions—”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount; “you kindly attribute to

me a knowledge that I don’t possess. Propositions, I regret to say, are

quite beyond me.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, ma’am,” continued the captain, politely

unconscious of the interruption. “My remarks apply to the temperate

zone only. Place me on the coasts beyond the tropics—place me where the

wind blows toward the shore in the day-time, and toward the sea by

night—and I instantly advance toward conclusive experiments. For

example, I know that the heat of the sun during the day rarefies the

air over the land, and so causes the wind. You challenge me to prove

it. I escort you down the kitchen stairs (with your kind permission);

take my largest pie-dish out of the cook’s hands; I fill it with cold

water. Good! that dish of cold water represents the ocean. I next

provide myself with one of our most precious domestic conveniences, a

hot-water plate; I fill it with hot water and I put it in the middle of

the pie-dish. Good again! the hot-water plate represents the land

rarefying the air over it. Bear that in mind, and give me a lighted

candle. I hold my lighted candle over the cold water, and blow it out.

The smoke immediately moves from the dish to the plate. Before you have

time to express your satisfaction, I light the candle once more, and

reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the pie-dish with hot-water, and

the plate with cold; I blow the candle out again, and the smoke moves

this time from the plate to the dish. The smell is disagreeable—but the

experiment is conclusive.”

He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount with

his ingratiating smile. “You don’t find me long-winded, ma’am—do you?”

he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the housekeeper was

privately opening her ears once more to the conversation on the other

side of her.

“I am amazed, sir, by the range of your information,” replied Mrs.

Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexity—but thus far with

no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an Englishman, and

possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had at least paid her

the implied compliment of addressing that knowledge to herself; and she

felt it the more sensibly, from having hitherto found her scientific

sympathies with her deceased husband treated with no great respect by

the people with whom she came in contact. “Have you extended your

inquiries, sir,” she proceeded, after a momentary hesitation, “to my

late husband’s branch of science? I merely ask, Mr. Bygrave, because

(though I am only a woman) I think I might exchange ideas with you on

the subject of the reptile creation.”

Captain Wragge was far too sharp to risk his ready-made science on the

enemy’s ground. The old militia-man shook his wary head.

“Too vast a subject, ma’am,” he said, “for a smatterer like me. The

life and labors of such a philosopher as your husband, Mrs. Lecount,

warn men of my intellectual caliber not to measure themselves with a

giant. May I inquire,” proceeded the captain, softly smoothing the way

for future intercourse with Sea-view Cottage, “whether you possess any

scientific memorials of the late Professor?”

“I possess his Tank, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, modestly casting her eyes

on the ground, “and one of his Subjects—a little foreign Toad.”

“His Tank!” exclaimed the captain, in tones of mournful interest; “and

his Toad! Pardon my blunt way of speaking my mind, ma’am. You possess

an object of public interest; and, as one of the public, I acknowledge

my curiosity to see it.”

Mrs. Lecount’s smooth cheeks colored with pleasure. The one assailable

place in that cold and secret nature was the place occupied by the

memory of the Professor. Her pride in his scientific achievements, and

her mortification at finding them but little known out of his own

country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain Wragge burned his

adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human vanity to better

purpose than he was burning it now.

“You are very good, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “In honoring my husband’s

memory, you honor me. But though you kindly treat me on a footing of

equality, I must not forget that I fill a domestic situation. I shall

feel it a privilege to show you my relics, if you will allow me to ask

my master’s permission first.”

She turned to Noel Vanstone; her perfectly sincere intention of making

the proposed request, mingling—in that strange complexity of motives

which is found so much oftener in a woman’s mind than in a man’s—with

her jealous distrust of the impression which Magdalen had produced on

her master.

“May I make a request, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount, after waiting a moment

to catch any fragments of tenderly-personal talk that might reach her,

and after being again neatly baffled by Magdalen—thanks to the

camp-stool. “Mr. Bygrave is one of the few persons in England who

appreciate my husband’s scientific labors. He honors me by wishing to

see my little world of reptiles. May I show it to him?”

“By all means, Lecount,” said Noel Vanstone, graciously. “You are an

excellent creature, and I like to oblige you. Lecount’s Tank, Mr.

Bygrave, is the only Tank in England—Lecount’s Toad is the oldest Toad

in the world. Will you come and drink tea at seven o’clock to-night?

And will you prevail on Miss Bygrave to accompany you? I want her to

see my house. I don’t think she has any idea what a strong house it is.

Come and survey my premises, Miss Bygrave. You shall have a stick and

rap on the walls; you shall go upstairs and stamp on the floors, and

then you shall hear what it all cost.” His eyes wrinkled up cunningly

at the corners, and he slipped another tender speech into Magdalen’s

ear, under cover of the all-predominating voice in which Captain Wragge

thanked him for the invitation. “Come punctually at seven,” he

whispered, “and pray wear that charming hat!”

Mrs. Lecount’s lips closed ominously. She set down the captain’s niece

as a very serious drawback to the intellectual luxury of the captain’s

society.

“You are fatiguing yourself, sir,” she said to her master. “This is one

of your bad days. Let me recommend you to be careful; let me beg you to

walk back.”

Having carried his point by inviting the new acquaintances to tea, Noel

Vanstone proved to be unexpectedly docile. He acknowledged that he was

a little fatigued, and turned back at once in obedience to the

housekeeper’s advice.

“Take my arm, sir—take my arm on the other side,” said Captain Wragge,

as they turned to retrace their steps. His party-colored eyes looked

significantly at Magdalen while he spoke, and warned her not to stretch

Mrs. Lecount’s endurance too far at starting. She instantly understood

him; and, in spite of Noel Vanstone’s reiterated assertions that he

stood in no need of the captain’s arm, placed herself at once by the

housekeeper’s side. Mrs. Lecount recovered her good-humor, and opened

another conversation with Magdalen by making the one inquiry of all

others which, under existing circumstances, was the hardest to answer.

“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.

Thus far Captain Wragge had remained silent; carefully noting in his

mind the promising possibilities of a separation between Mrs. Lecount

and her master which Noel Vanstone’s little fretful outbreak had just

disclosed to him. An ominous trembling in the housekeeper’s thin lips,

as her master openly exposed her family affairs before strangers, and

openly set her jealously at defiance, now warned him to interfere. If

the misunderstanding were permitted to proceed to extremities, there

was a chance that the invitation for that evening to Sea-view Cottage

might be put off. Now, as ever, equal to the occasion, Captain Wragge

called his useful information once more to the rescue. Under the

learned auspices of Joyce, he plunged, for the third time, into the

ocean of science, and brought up another pearl. He was still haranguing

(on Pneumatics this time), still improving Mrs. Lecount’s mind with his

politest perseverance and his smoothest flow of language—when the

walking party stopped at Noel Vanstone’s door.

“Bless my soul, here we are at your house, sir!” said the captain,

interrupting himself in the middle of one of his graphic sentences. “I

won’t keep you standing a moment. Not a word of apology, Mrs. Lecount,

I beg and pray! I will put that curious point in Pneumatics more

clearly before you on a future occasion. In the meantime I need only

repeat that you can perform the experiment I have just mentioned to

your own entire satisfaction with a bladder, an exhausted receiver, and

a square box. At seven o’clock this evening, sir—at seven o’clock, Mrs.

Lecount. We have had a remarkably pleasant walk, and a most instructive

interchange of ideas. Now, my dear girl, your aunt is waiting for us.”

While Mrs. Lecount stepped aside to open the garden gate, Noel Vanstone

seized his opportunity and shot a last tender glance at Magdalen, under

shelter of the umbrella, which he had taken into his own hands for that

express purpose. “Don’t forget,” he said, with the sweetest smile;

“don’t forget, when you come this evening, to wear that charming hat!”

Before he could add any last words, Mrs. Lecount glided back to her

place, and the sheltering umbrella changed hands again immediately.

“An excellent morning’s work!” said Captain Wragge, as he and Magdalen

walked on together to North Shingles. “You and I and Joyce have all

three done wonders. We have secured a friendly invitation at the first

day’s fishing for it.”

He paused for an answer; and, receiving none, observed Magdalen more

attentively than he had observed her yet. Her face had turned deadly

pale again; her eyes looked out mechanically straight before her in

heedless, reckless despair.

“What is the matter?” he asked, with the greatest surprise. “Are you

ill?”

She made no reply; she hardly seemed to hear him.

“Are you getting alarmed about Mrs. Lecount?” he inquired next. “There

is not the least reason for alarm. She may fancy she has heard

something like your voice before, but your face evidently bewilders

her. Keep your temper, and you keep her in the dark. Keep her in the

dark, and you will put that two hundred pounds into my hands before the

autumn is over.”

He waited again for an answer, and again she remained silent. The

captain tried for the third time in another direction.

“Did you get any letters this morning?” he went on. “Is there bad news

again from home? Any fresh difficulties with your sister?”

“Say nothing about my sister!” she broke out passionately. “Neither you

nor I are fit to speak of her.”

She said those words at the garden-gate, and hurried into the house by

herself. He followed her, and heard the door of her own room violently

shut to, violently locked and double-locked. Solacing his indignation

by an oath, Captain Wragge sullenly went into one of the parlors on the

ground-floor to look after his wife. The room communicated with a

smaller and darker room at the back of the house by means of a quaint

little door with a window in the upper half of it. Softly approaching

this door, the captain lifted the white muslin curtain which hung over

the window, and looked into the inner room.

There was Mrs. Wragge, with her cap on one side, and her shoes down at

heel; with a row of pins between her teeth; with the Oriental Cashmere

Robe slowly slipping off the table; with her scissors suspended

uncertain in one hand, and her written directions for dressmaking held

doubtfully in the other—so absorbed over the invincible difficulties of

her employment as to be perfectly unconscious that she was at that

moment the object of her husband’s superintending eye. Under other

circumstances she would have been soon brought to a sense of her

situation by the sound of his voice. But Captain Wragge was too anxious

about Magdalen to waste any time on his wife, after satisfying himself

that she was safe in her seclusion, and that she might be trusted to

remain there.

He left the parlor, and, after a little hesitation in the passage,

stole upstairs and listened anxiously outside Magdalen’s door. A dull

sound of sobbing—a sound stifled in her handkerchief, or stifled in the

bed-clothes—was all that caught his ear. He returned at once to the

ground-floor, with some faint suspicion of the truth dawning on his

mind at last.

“The devil take that sweetheart of hers!” thought the captain. “Mr.

Noel Vanstone has raised the ghost of him at starting.”

CHAPTER V.

When Magdalen appeared in the parlor shortly before seven o’clock, not

a trace of discomposure was visible in her manner. She looked and spoke

as quietly and unconcernedly as usual.

The lowering distrust on Captain Wragge’s face cleared away at the

sight of her. There had been moments during the afternoon when he had

seriously doubted whether the pleasure of satisfying the grudge he owed

to Noel Vanstone, and the prospect of earning the sum of two hundred

pounds, would not be dearly purchased by running the risk of discovery

to which Magdalen’s uncertain temper might expose him at any hour of

the day. The plain proof now before him of her powers of self-control

relieved his mind of a serious anxiety. It mattered little to the

captain what she suffered in the privacy of her own chamber, as long as

she came out of it with a face that would bear inspection, and a voice

that betrayed nothing.

On the way to Sea-view Cottage, Captain Wragge expressed his intention

of asking the housekeeper a few sympathizing questions on the subject

of her invalid brother in Switzerland. He was of opinion that the

critical condition of this gentleman’s health might exercise an

important influence on the future progress of the conspiracy. Any

chance of a separation, he remarked, between the housekeeper and her

master was, under existing circumstances, a chance which merited the

closest investigation. “If we can only get Mrs. Lecount out of the way

at the right time,” whispered the captain, as he opened his host’s

garden gate, “our man is caught!”

In a minute more Magdalen was again under Noel Vanstone’s roof; this

time in the character of his own invited guest.

The proceedings of the evening were for the most part a repetition of

the proceedings during the morning walk. Noel Vanstone vibrated between

his admiration of Magdalen’s beauty and his glorification of his own

possessions. Captain Wragge’s inexhaustible outbursts of

information—relieved by delicately-indirect inquiries relating to Mrs.

Lecount’s brother—perpetually diverted the housekeeper’s jealous

vigilance from dwelling on the looks and language of her master. So the

evening passed until ten o’clock. By that time the captain’s ready-made

science was exhausted, and the housekeeper’s temper was forcing its way

to the surface. Once more Captain Wragge warned Magdalen by a look,

and, in spite of Noel Vanstone’s hospitable protest, wisely rose to say

good-night.

“I have got my information,” remarked the captain on the way back.

“Mrs. Lecount’s brother lives at Zurich. He is a bachelor; he possesses

a little money, and his sister is his nearest relation. If he will only

be so obliging as to break up altogether, he will save us a world of

trouble with Mrs. Lecount.”

It was a fine moonlight night. He looked round at Magdalen, as he said

those words, to see if her intractable depression of spirits had seized

on her again.

No! her variable humor had changed once more. She looked about her with

a flaunting, feverish gayety; she scoffed at the bare idea of any

serious difficulty with Mrs. Lecount; she mimicked Noel Vanstone’s

high-pitched voice, and repeated Noel Vanstone’s high-flown

compliments, with a bitter enjoyment of turning him into ridicule.

Instead of running into the house as before, she sauntered carelessly

by her companion’s side, humming little snatches of song, and kicking

the loose pebbles right and left on the garden-walk. Captain Wragge

hailed the change in her as the best of good omens. He thought he saw

plain signs that the family spirit was at last coming back again.

“Well,” he said, as he lit her bedroom candle for her, “when we all

meet on the Parade tomorrow, we shall see, as our nautical friends say,

how the land lies. One thing I can tell you, my dear girl—I have used

my eyes to very little purpose if there is not a storm brewing tonight

in Mr. Noel Vanstone’s domestic atmosphere.”

The captain’s habitual penetration had not misled him. As soon as the

door of Sea-view Cottage was closed on the parting guests, Mrs. Lecount

made an effort to assert the authority which Magdalen’s influence was

threatening already.

She employed every artifice of which she was mistress to ascertain

Magdalen’s true position in Noel Vanstone’s estimation. She tried again

and again to lure him into an unconscious confession of the pleasure

which he felt already in the society of the beautiful Miss Bygrave; she

twined herself in and out of every weakness in his character, as the

frogs and efts twined themselves in and out of the rock-work of her

Aquarium. But she made one serious mistake which very clever people in

their intercourse with their intellectual inferiors are almost

universally apt to commit—she trusted implicitly to the folly of a

fool. She forgot that one of the lowest of human qualities—cunning—is

exactly the capacity which is often most largely developed in the

lowest of intellectual natures. If she had been honestly angry with her

master, she would probably have frightened him. If she had opened her

mind plainly to his view, she would have astonished him by presenting a

chain of ideas to his limited perceptions which they were not strong

enough to grasp; his curiosity would have led him to ask for an

explanation; and by practicing on that curiosity, she might have had

him at her mercy. As it was, she set her cunning against his, and the

fool proved a match for her. Noel Vanstone, to whom all large-minded

motives under heaven were inscrutable mysteries, saw the small-minded

motive at the bottom of his housekeeper’s conduct with as instantaneous

a penetration as if he had been a man of the highest ability. Mrs.

Lecount left him for the night, foiled, and knowing she was foiled—left

him, with the tigerish side of her uppermost, and a low-lived longing

in her elegant finger-nails to set them in her master’s face.

She was not a woman to be beaten by one defeat or by a hundred. She was

positively determined to think, and think again, until she had found a

means of checking the growing intimacy with the Bygraves at once and

forever. In the solitude of her own room she recovered her composure,

and set herself for the first time to review the conclusions which she

had gathered from the events of the day.

There was something vaguely familiar to her in the voice of this Miss

Bygrave, and, at the same time, in unaccountable contradiction,

something strange to her as well. The face and figure of the young lady

were entirely new to her. It was a striking face, and a striking

figure; and if she had seen either at any former period, she would

certainly have remembered it. Miss Bygrave was unquestionably a

stranger; and yet—

She had got no further than this during the day; she could get no

further now: the chain of thought broke. Her mind took up the

fragments, and formed another chain which attached itself to the lady

who was kept in seclusion—to the aunt, who looked well, and yet was

nervous; who was nervous, and yet able to ply her needle and thread. An

incomprehensible resemblance to some unremembered voice in the niece;

an unintelligible malady which kept the aunt secluded from public view;

an extraordinary range of scientific cultivation in the uncle,

associated with a coarseness and audacity of manner which by no means

suggested the idea of a man engaged in studious pursuits—were the

members of this small family of three what they seemed on the surface

of them?

With that question on her mind, she went to bed.

As soon as the candle was out, the darkness seemed to communicate some

inexplicable perversity to her thoughts. They wandered back from

present things to past, in spite of her. They brought her old master

back to life again; they revived forgotten sayings and doings in the

English circle at Zurich; they veered away to the old man’s death-bed

at Brighton; they moved from Brighton to London; they entered the bare,

comfortless room at Vauxhall Walk; they set the Aquarium back in its

place on the kitchen table, and put the false Miss Garth in the chair

by the side of it, shading her inflamed eyes from the light; they

placed the anonymous letter, the letter which glanced darkly at a

conspiracy, in her hand again, and brought her with it into her

master’s presence; they recalled the discussion about filling in the

blank space in the advertisement, and the quarrel that followed when

she told Noel Vanstone that the sum he had offered was preposterously

small; they revived an old doubt which had not troubled her for weeks

past—a doubt whether the threatened conspiracy had evaporated in mere

words, or whether she and her master were likely to hear of it again.

At this point her thoughts broke off once more, and there was a

momentary blank. The next instant she started up in bed; her heart

beating violently, her head whirling as if she had lost her senses.

With electric suddenness her mind pieced together its scattered

multitude of thoughts, and put them before her plainly under one

intelligible form. In the all-mastering agitation of the moment, she

clapped her hands together, and cried out suddenly in the darkness:

“Miss Vanstone again!!!”

She got out of bed and kindled the light once more. Steady as her

nerves were, the shock of her own suspicion had shaken them. Her firm

hand trembled as she opened her dressing-case and took from it a little

bottle of sal-volatile. In spite of her smooth cheeks and her

well-preserved hair, she looked every year of her age as she mixed the

spirit with water, greedily drank it, and, wrapping her dressing-gown

round her, sat down on the bedside to get possession again of her

calmer self.

She was quite incapable of tracing the mental process which had led her

to discovery. She could not get sufficiently far from herself to see

that her half-formed conclusions on the subject of the Bygraves had

ended in making that family objects of suspicion to her; that the

association of ideas had thereupon carried her mind back to that other

object of suspicion which was represented by the conspiracy against her

master; and that the two ideas of those two separate subjects of

distrust, coming suddenly in contact, had struck the light. She was not

able to reason back in this way from the effect to the cause. She could

only feel that the suspicion had become more than a suspicion already:

conviction itself could not have been more firmly rooted in her mind.

Looking back at Magdalen by the new light now thrown on her, Mrs.

Lecount would fain have persuaded herself that she recognized some

traces left of the false Miss Garth’s face and figure in the graceful

and beautiful girl who had sat at her master’s table hardly an hour

since—that she found resemblances now, which she had never thought of

before, between the angry voice she had heard in Vauxhall Walk and the

smooth, well-bred tones which still hung on her ears after the

evening’s experience downstairs. She would fain have persuaded herself

that she had reached these results with no undue straining of the truth

as she really knew it, but the effort was in vain.

Mrs. Lecount was not a woman to waste time and thought in trying to

impose on herself. She accepted the inevitable conclusion that the

guesswork of a moment had led her to discovery. And, more than that,

she recognized the plain truth—unwelcome as it was—that the conviction

now fixed in her own mind was thus far unsupported by a single fragment

of producible evidence to justify it to the minds of others.

Under these circumstances, what was the safe course to take with her

master?

If she candidly told him, when they met the next morning, what had

passed through her mind that night, her knowledge of Noel Vanstone

warned her that one of two results would certainly happen. Either he

would be angry and disputatious; would ask for proofs; and, finding

none forthcoming, would accuse her of alarming him without a cause, to

serve her own jealous end of keeping Magdalen out of the house; or he

would be seriously startled, would clamor for the protection of the

law, and would warn the Bygraves to stand on their defense at the

outset. If Magdalen only had been concerned in the plot this latter

consequence would have assumed no great importance in the housekeeper’s

mind. But seeing the deception as she now saw it, she was far too

clever a woman to fail in estimating the captain’s inexhaustible

fertility of resource at its true value. “If I can’t meet this impudent

villain with plain proofs to help me,” thought Mrs. Lecount, “I may

open my master’s eyes to-morrow morning, and Mr. Bygrave will shut them

up again before night. The rascal is playing with all his own cards

under the table, and he will win the game to a certainty, if he sees my

hand at starting.”

This policy of waiting was so manifestly the wise policy—the wily Mr.

Bygrave was so sure to have provided himself, in case of emergency,

with evidence to prove the identity which he and his niece had assumed

for their purpose—that Mrs. Lecount at once decided to keep her own

counsel the next morning, and to pause before attacking the conspiracy

until she could produce unanswerable facts to help her. Her master’s

acquaintance with the Bygraves was only an acquaintance of one day’s

standing. There was no fear of its developing into a dangerous intimacy

if she merely allowed it to continue for a few days more, and if she

permanently checked it, at the latest, in a week’s time.

In that period what measures could she take to remove the obstacles

which now stood in her way, and to provide herself with the weapons

which she now wanted?

Reflection showed her three different chances in her favor—three

different ways of arriving at the necessary discovery.

The first chance was to cultivate friendly terms with Magdalen, and

then, taking her unawares, to entrap her into betraying herself in Noel

Vanstone’s presence. The second chance was to write to the elder Miss

Vanstone, and to ask (with some alarming reason for putting the

question) for information on the subject of her younger sister’s

whereabouts, and of any peculiarities in her personal appearance which

might enable a stranger to identify her. The third chance was to

penetrate the mystery of Mrs. Bygrave’s seclusion, and to ascertain at

a personal interview whether the invalid lady’s real complaint might

not possibly be a defective capacity for keeping her husband’s secrets.

Resolving to try all three chances, in the order in which they are here

enumerated, and to set her snares for Magdalen on the day that was now

already at hand, Mrs. Lecount at last took off her dressing-gown and

allowed her weaker nature to plead with her for a little sleep.

The dawn was breaking over the cold gray sea as she lay down in her bed

again. The last idea in her mind before she fell asleep was

characteristic of the woman—it was an idea that threatened the captain.

“He has trifled with the sacred memory of my husband,” thought the

Professor’s widow. “On my life and honor, I will make him pay for it.”

Early the next morning Magdalen began the day, according to her

agreement with the captain, by taking Mrs. Wragge out for a little

exercise at an hour when there was no fear of her attracting the public

attention. She pleaded hard to be left at home; having the Oriental

Cashmere Robe still on her mind, and feeling it necessary to read her

directions for dressmaking, for the hundredth time at least, before (to

use her own expression) she could “screw up her courage to put the

scissors into the stuff.” But her companion would take no denial, and

she was forced to go out. The one guileless purpose of the life which

Magdalen now led was the resolution that poor Mrs. Wragge should not be

made a prisoner on her account; and to that resolution she mechanically

clung, as the last token left her by which she knew her better-self.

They returned later than usual to breakfast. While Mrs. Wragge was

upstairs, straightening herself from head to foot to meet the morning

inspection of her husband’s orderly eye; and while Magdalen and the

captain were waiting for her in the parlor, the servant came in with a

note from Sea-view Cottage. The messenger was waiting for an answer,

and the note was addressed to Captain Wragge.

The captain opened the note and read these lines:

“DEAR SIR,

Mr. Noel Vanstone desires me to write and tell you that he proposes

enjoying this fine day by taking a long drive to a place on the

coast here called Dunwich. He is anxious to know if you will share

the expense of a carriage, and give him the pleasure of your

company and Miss Bygrave’s company on this excursion. I am kindly

permitted to be one of the party; and if I may say so without

impropriety, I would venture to add that I shall feel as much

pleasure as my master if you and your young lady will consent to

join us. We propose leaving Aldborough punctually at eleven

o’clock.

“Believe me, dear sir,

“your humble servant,

“VIRGINIE LECOUNT.”

“Who is the letter from?” asked Magdalen, noticing a change in Captain

Wragge’s face as he read it. “What do they want with us at Sea-view

Cottage?”

“Pardon me,” said the captain, gravely, “this requires consideration.

Let me have a minute or two to think.”

He took a few turns up and down the room, then suddenly stepped aside

to a table in a corner on which his writing materials were placed. “I

was not born yesterday, ma’am!” said the captain, speaking jocosely to

himself. He winked his brown eye, took up his pen, and wrote the

answer.

“Can you speak now?” inquired Magdalen, when the servant had left the

room. “What does that letter say, and how have you answered it?”

The captain placed the letter in her hand. “I have accepted the

invitation,” he replied, quietly.

Magdalen read the letter. “Hidden enmity yesterday,” she said, “and

open friendship to-day. What does it mean?”

“It means,” said Captain Wragge, “that Mrs. Lecount is even sharper

than I thought her. She has found you out.”

“Impossible,” cried Magdalen. “Quite impossible in the time.”

“I can’t say _how_ she has found you out,” proceeded the captain, with

perfect composure. “She may know more of your voice than we supposed

she knew. Or she may have thought us, on reflection, rather a

suspicious family; and anything suspicious in which a woman was

concerned may have taken her mind back to that morning call of yours in

Vauxhall Walk. Whichever way it may be, the meaning of this sudden

change is clear enough. She has found you out; and she wants to put her

discovery to the proof by slipping in an awkward question or two, under

cover of a little friendly talk. My experience of humanity has been a

varied one, and Mrs. Lecount is not the first sharp practitioner in

petticoats whom I have had to deal with. All the world’s a stage, my

dear girl, and one of the scenes on our little stage is shut in from

this moment.”

With those words he took his copy of Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues out

of his pocket. “You’re done with already, my friend!” said the captain,

giving his useful information a farewell smack with his hand, and

locking it up in the cupboard. “Such is human popularity!” continued

the indomitable vagabond, putting the key cheerfully in his pocket.

“Yesterday Joyce was my all-in-all. To-day I don’t care that for him!”

He snapped his fingers and sat down to breakfast.

“I don’t understand you,” said Magdalen, looking at him angrily. “Are

you leaving me to my own resources for the future?”

“My dear girl!” cried Captain Wragge, “can’t you accustom yourself to

my dash of humor yet? I have done with my ready-made science simply

because I am quite sure that Mrs. Lecount has done believing in me.

Haven’t I accepted the invitation to Dunwich? Make your mind easy. The

help I have given you already counts for nothing compared with the help

I am going to give you now. My honor is concerned in bowling out Mrs.

Lecount. This last move of hers has made it a personal matter between

us. _The woman actually thinks she can take me in!!!_” cried the

captain, striking his knife-handle on the table in a transport of

virtuous indignation. “By heavens, I never was so insulted before in my

life! Draw your chair in to the table, my dear, and give me half a

minute’s attention to what I have to say next.”

Magdalen obeyed him. Captain Wragge cautiously lowered his voice before

he went on.

“I have told you all along,” he said, “the one thing needful is never

to let Mrs. Lecount catch you with your wits wool-gathering. I say the

same after what has happened this morning. Let her suspect you! I defy

her to find a fragment of foundation for her suspicions, unless we help

her. We shall see to-day if she has been foolish enough to betray

herself to her master before she has any facts to support her. I doubt

it. If she has told him, we will rain down proofs of our identity with

the Bygraves on his feeble little head till it absolutely aches with

conviction. You have two things to do on this excursion. First, to

distrust every word Mrs. Lecount says to you. Secondly, to exert all

your fascinations, and make sure of Mr. Noel Vanstone, dating from

to-day. I will give you the opportunity when we leave the carriage and

take our walk at Dunwich. Wear your hat, wear your smile; do your

figure justice, lace tight; put on your neatest boots and brightest

gloves; tie the miserable little wretch to your apron-string—tie him

fast; and leave the whole management of the matter after that to me.

Steady! here is Mrs. Wragge: we must be doubly careful in looking after

her now. Show me your cap, Mrs. Wragge! show me your shoes! What do I

see on your apron? A spot? I won’t have spots! Take it off after

breakfast, and put on another. Pull your chair to the middle of the

table—more to the left—more still. Make the breakfast.”

At a quarter before eleven Mrs. Wragge (with her own entire

concurrence) was dismissed to the back room, to bewilder herself over

the science of dressmaking for the rest of the day. Punctually as the

clock struck the hour, Mrs. Lecount and her master drove up to the gate

of North Shingles, and found Magdalen and Captain Wragge waiting for

them in the garden.

On the way to Dunwich nothing occurred to disturb the enjoyment of the

drive. Noel Vanstone was in excellent health and high good-humor.

Lecount had apologized for the little misunderstanding of the previous

night; Lecount had petitioned for the excursion as a treat to herself.

He thought of these concessions, and looked at Magdalen, and smirked

and simpered without intermission. Mrs. Lecount acted her part to

perfection. She was motherly with Magdalen and tenderly attentive to

Noel Vanstone. She was deeply interested in Captain Wragge’s

conversation, and meekly disappointed to find it turn on general

subjects, to the exclusion of science. Not a word or look escaped her

which hinted in the remotest degree at her real purpose. She was

dressed with her customary elegance and propriety; and she was the only

one of the party on that sultry summer’s day who was perfectly cool in

the hottest part of the journey.

As they left the carriage on their arrival at Dunwich, the captain

seized a moment when Mrs. Lecount’s eye was off him and fortified

Magdalen by a last warning word.

“‘Ware the cat!” he whispered. “She will show her claws on the way

back.”

They left the village and walked to the ruins of a convent near at

hand—the last relic of the once populous city of Dunwich which has

survived the destruction of the place, centuries since, by the

all-devouring sea. After looking at the ruins, they sought the shade of

a little wood between the village and the low sand-hills which overlook

the German Ocean. Here Captain Wragge maneuvered so as to let Magdalen

and Noel Vanstone advance some distance in front of Mrs. Lecount and

himself, took the wrong path, and immediately lost his way with the

most consummate dexterity. After a few minutes’ wandering (in the wrong

direction), he reached an open space near the sea; and politely opening

his camp-stool for the housekeeper’s accommodation, proposed waiting

where they were until the missing members of the party came that way

and discovered them.

Mrs. Lecount accepted the proposal. She was perfectly well aware that

her escort had lost himself on purpose, but that discovery exercised no

disturbing influence on the smooth amiability of her manner. Her day of

reckoning with the captain had not come yet—she merely added the new

item to her list, and availed herself of the camp-stool. Captain Wragge

stretched himself in a romantic attitude at her feet, and the two

determined enemies (grouped like two lovers in a picture) fell into as

easy and pleasant a conversation as if they had been friends of twenty

years’ standing.

“I know you, ma’am!” thought the captain, while Mrs. Lecount was

talking to him. “You would like to catch me tripping in my ready-made

science, and you wouldn’t object to drown me in the Professor’s Tank!”

“You villain with the brown eye and the green!” thought Mrs. Lecount,

as the captain caught the ball of conversation in his turn; “thick as

your skin is, I’ll sting you through it yet!”

In this frame of mind toward each other they talked fluently on general

subjects, on public affairs, on local scenery, on society in England

and society in Switzerland, on health, climate, books, marriage and

money—talked, without a moment’s pause, without a single

misunderstanding on either side for nearly an hour, before Magdalen and

Noel Vanstone strayed that way and made the party of four complete

again.

When they reached the inn at which the carriage was waiting for them,

Captain Wragge left Mrs. Lecount in undisturbed possession of her

master, and signed to Magdalen to drop back for a moment and speak to

him.

“Well?” asked the captain, in a whisper, “is he fast to your

apron-string?”

She shuddered from head to foot as she answered.

“He has kissed my hand,” she said. “Does that tell you enough? Don’t

let him sit next me on the way home! I have borne all I can bear—spare

me for the rest of the day.”

“I’ll put you on the front seat of the carriage,” replied the captain,

“side by side with me.”

On the journey back Mrs. Lecount verified Captain Wragge’s prediction.

She showed her claws.

The time could not have been better chosen; the circumstances could

hardly have favored her more. Magdalen’s spirits were depressed: she

was weary in body and mind; and she sat exactly opposite the

housekeeper, who had been compelled, by the new arrangement, to occupy

the seat of honor next her master. With every facility for observing

the slightest changes that passed over Magdalen’s face, Mrs. Lecount

tried her first experiment by leading the conversation to the subject

of London, and to the relative advantages offered to residents by the

various quarters of the metropolis on both sides of the river. The

ever-ready Wragge penetrated her intention sooner than she had

anticipated, and interposed immediately. “You’re coming to Vauxhall

Walk, ma’am,” thought the captain; “I’ll get there before you.”

He entered at once into a purely fictitious description of the various

quarters of London in which he had himself resided; and, adroitly

mentioning Vauxhall Walk as one of them, saved Magdalen from the sudden

question relating to that very locality with which Mrs. Lecount had

proposed startling her, to begin with. From his residences he passed

smoothly to himself, and poured his whole family history (in the

character of Mr. Bygrave) into the housekeeper’s ears—not forgetting

his brother’s grave in Honduras, with the monument by the self-taught

negro artist, and his brother’s hugely corpulent widow, on the

ground-floor of the boarding-house at Cheltenham. As a means of giving

Magdalen time to compose herself, this outburst of autobiographical

information attained its object, but it answered no other purpose. Mrs.

Lecount listened, without being imposed on by a single word the captain

said to her. He merely confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of

taking Noel Vanstone into her confidence before she had facts to help

her against Captain Wragge’s otherwise unassailable position in the

identity which he had assumed. She quietly waited until he had done,

and then returned to the charge.

“It is a coincidence that your uncle should have once resided in

Vauxhall Walk,” she said, addressing herself to Magdalen. “Mr. Noel has

a house in the same place, and we lived there before we came to

Aldborough. May I inquire, Miss Bygrave, whether you know anything of a

lady named Miss Garth?”

This time she put the question before the captain could interfere.

Magdalen ought to have been prepared for it by what had already passed

in her presence, but her nerves had been shaken by the earlier events

of the day; and she could only answer the question in the negative,

after an instant’s preliminary pause to control herself. Her hesitation

was of too momentary a nature to attract the attention of any

unsuspicious person. But it lasted long enough to confirm Mrs.

Lecount’s private convictions, and to encourage her to advance a little

further.

“I only asked,” she continued, steadily fixing her eyes on Magdalen,

steadily disregarding the efforts which Captain Wragge made to join in

the conversation, “because Miss Garth is a stranger to me, and I am

curious to find out what I can about her. The day before we left town,

Miss Bygrave, a person who presented herself under the name I have

mentioned paid us a visit under very extraordinary circumstances.”

With a smooth, ingratiating manner, with a refinement of contempt which

was little less than devilish in its ingenious assumption of the

language of pity, she now boldly described Magdalen’s appearance in

disguise in Magdalen’s own presence. She slightingly referred to the

master and mistress of Combe-Raven as persons who had always annoyed

the elder and more respectable branch of the family; she mourned over

the children as following their parents’ example, and attempting to

take a mercenary advantage of Mr. Noel Vanstone, under the protection

of a respectable person’s character and a respectable person’s name.

Cleverly including her master in the conversation, so as to prevent the

captain from effecting a diversion in that quarter; sparing no petty

aggravation; striking at every tender place which the tongue of a

spiteful woman can wound, she would, beyond all doubt, have carried her

point, and tortured Magdalen into openly betraying herself, if Captain

Wragge had not checked her in full career by a loud exclamation of

alarm, and a sudden clutch at Magdalen’s wrist.

“Ten thousand pardons, my dear madam!” cried the captain. “I see in my

niece’s face, I feel in my niece’s pulse, that one of her violent

neuralgic attacks has come on again. My dear girl, why hesitate among

friends to confess that you are in pain? What mistimed politeness! Her

face shows she is suffering—doesn’t it Mrs. Lecount? Darting pains, Mr.

Vanstone, darting pains on the left side of the head. Pull down your

veil, my dear, and lean on me. Our friends will excuse you; our

excellent friends will excuse you for the rest of the day.”

Before Mrs. Lecount could throw an instant’s doubt on the genuineness

of the neuralgic attack, her master’s fidgety sympathy declared itself

exactly as the captain had anticipated, in the most active

manifestations. He stopped the carriage, and insisted on an immediate

change in the arrangement of the places—the comfortable back seat for

Miss Bygrave and her uncle, the front seat for Lecount and himself. Had

Lecount got her smelling-bottle? Excellent creature! let her give it

directly to Miss Bygrave, and let the coachman drive carefully. If the

coachman shook Miss Bygrave he should not have a half-penny for

himself. Mesmerism was frequently useful in these cases. Mr. Noel

Vanstone’s father had been the most powerful mesmerist in Europe, and

Mr. Noel Vanstone was his father’s son. Might he mesmerize? Might he

order that infernal coachman to draw up in a shady place adapted for

the purpose? Would medical help be preferred? Could medical help be

found any nearer than Aldborough? That ass of a coachman didn’t know.

Stop every respectable man who passed in a gig, and ask him if he was a

doctor! So Mr. Noel Vanstone ran on, with brief intervals for

breathing-time, in a continually-ascending scale of sympathy and

self-importance, throughout the drive home.

Mrs. Lecount accepted her defeat without uttering a word. From the

moment when Captain Wragge interrupted her, her thin lips closed and

opened no more for the remainder of the journey. The warmest

expressions of her master’s anxiety for the suffering young lady

provoked from her no outward manifestations of anger. She took as

little notice of him as possible. She paid no attention whatever to the

captain, whose exasperating consideration for his vanquished enemy made

him more polite to her than ever. The nearer and the nearer they got to

Aldborough the more and more fixedly Mrs. Lecount’s hard black eyes

looked at Magdalen reclining on the opposite seat, with her eyes closed

and her veil down.