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 ordinary 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."