purpose of recovering the lost inheritance, at any risk, from the man who had beggared and insulted his brother's children. And that man was still a shadow to her! So little did she know of him that she was even ignorant at that moment of his place of abode.
She rose and paced the room with the noiseless, negligent grace of a wild creature of the forest in its cage. 'How can I reach him in the dark?' she said to herself. 'How can I find out—?' She stopped suddenly. Before the question had shaped itself to an end in her thoughts, Captain Wragge was back in her mind again.
A man well used to working in the dark; a man with endless resources of audacity and cunning; a man who would hesitate at no mean employment that could be offered to him, if it was employment that filled his pockets— was this the instrument for which, in its present need, her hand was waiting? Two of the necessities to be met, before she could take a single step in advance, were plainly present to her—the necessity of knowing more of her father's brother than she knew now; and the necessity of throwing him off his guard by concealing herself personally during the process of inquiry. Resolutely self-dependent as she was, the inevitable spy's work at the outset must be work delegated to another. In her position, was there any ready human creature within reach but the vagabond downstairs? Not one. She thought of it anxiously, she thought of it long. Not one! There the choice was, steadily confronting her: the choice of taking the Rogue, or of turning her back on the Purpose.
She paused in the middle of the room. 'What can he do at his worst?' she said to herself. 'Cheat me. Well! if my money governs him for me, what then? Let him have my money!' She returned mechanically to her place by the window. A moment more decided her. A moment more, and she took the first fatal step downward-she determined to face the risk, and try Captain Wragge.
At nine o'clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen's door, and informed her (with the captain's kind compliments) that breakfast was ready.
She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The ex-waitress at Darch's Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little black spots.
'There it is!' said Mrs. Wragge. 'Omelette with herbs. The landlady helped me. And that's what we've made of it. Don't you ask the captain for any when he comes in—don't, there's a good soul. It isn't nice. We had some accidents with it. It's been under the grate. It's been spilled on the stairs. It's scalded the landlady's youngest boy —he went and sat on it. Bless you, it isn't half as nice as it looks! Don't you ask for any. Perhaps he won't notice if you say nothing about it. What do you think of my wrapper? I should so like to have a white one. Have you got a white one? How is it trimmed? Do tell me!'
The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious for the promised expression of Magdalen's decision to pay his customary attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling her that she had his full permission to 'give it to the dogs.'
'How does my little proposal look by daylight?' he asked, placing chairs for Magdalen and himself. 'Which is it to be: 'Captain Wragge, take charge of me?' or, 'Captain Wragge, good-morning?''
'You shall hear directly,' replied Magdalen. 'I have something to say first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view besides the object of earning my living on the stage—'
'I beg your pardon,' interposed Captain Wragge. 'Did you say, earning your living?'
'Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions to gain our daily bread.'
'What!!!' cried the captain, starting to his feet. 'The daughters of my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their own living? Impossible—wildly, extravagantly impossible!' He sat down again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury on him.
'You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,' she said, quietly. 'I will tell you what has happened before I go any further.' She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find, and with as few details as possible.
Captain Wragge's profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer's offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until that moment.
'Do I understand,' he inquired, 'that you are entirely deprived of present resources?'
'I have sold my jewelry and my dresses,' said Magdalen, impatient of his mean harping on the pecuniary string. 'If my want of experience keeps me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can afford to pay me.'
Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces, the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune, at—say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation of this judicious man.
'Just so,' he said, in his most business-like manner. 'There is not the least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theater, if you possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance.'
'I must accept more assistance than you have already offered—or none,' said Magdalen. 'I have more serious difficulties before me than the difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the stage.'
'You don't say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!'
She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.
'There are certain inquiries,' she said, 'which I am interested in making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of the person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my being seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much greater importance than the service you offered last night.'
Captain Wragge's vagabond face became gravely and deeply attentive.
'May I ask,' he said, 'what the nature of the inquiries is likely to be?'
Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael Vanstone's name in informing the captain of the loss of her inheritance. She must inevitably mention it to him again if she employed his services. He would doubtless discover it for himself, by a plain process of inference, before she said many words more, frame them as carefully as she might. Under these circumstances, was there any intelligible reason for shrinking from direct reference to Michael Vanstone? No intelligible reason—and yet she shrank.
'For instance,' pursued Captain Wragge, 'are they inquiries about a man or a woman; inquiries about an enemy
