 CHAPTER XIII. What has happened to Daldborough in Captain Ragh's absence? This had occurred which the captain's utmost dexterity might have found it hard to remedy. As soon as the Shays had left North Chingles, Mrs. Ragh received the message which her husband had charged the servant to deliver. She hastened into the parlour bewildered by her stormy interview with the captain, and penitently conscious that she had done wrong, without knowing what the wrong was. If Magdalene's mind had been unoccupied by the one idea of the marriage which now filled it, if she had possessed composure enough to listen to Mrs. Ragh's rambling narrative of what had happened during her interview with the housekeeper, Mrs. LeCount's visit to the wardrobe must sooner or later have formed part of the disclosure, and Magdalene, although she might never have guessed the truth, must at least have been warned that there was some element of danger lurking treacherously in the alpaca dress. As it was, no such consequence as this followed Mrs. Ragh's appearance in the parlour, or no such consequence, was now possible. Events which had happened earlier in the morning, events which had happened for days and weeks past, had vanished as completely from Magdalene's mind as if they had never taken place. The horror of the coming Monday, the merciless certainty implied in the appointment of the day and hour, petrified all feeling in her, and annihilated all thought. Mrs. Ragh made three separate attempts to enter on the subject of the housekeeper's visit. The first time she might as well have addressed herself to the wind or to the sea. The second attempt seemed likely to be more successful. Magdalene's side listened for a moment indifferently, and then dismissed the subject. It doesn't matter, she said, the end has come all the same. I'm not angry with you, say no more. Later in the day, from not knowing what else to talk about, Mrs. Ragh tried again. This time Magdalene turned on her impatiently. For God's sake, don't worry me about trifles, I can't bear it." Mrs. Ragh closed her lips on the spot, and returned to the subject no more. Magdalene, who had been kind to her at all other times, had angrily forbidden it. The captain, utterly ignorant of Mrs. LaCount's interest in the secrets of the wardrobe, had never so much as approached it. All the information that he had extracted from his wife's mental confusion, he had extracted by putting direct questions, derived purely from the resources of his own knowledge. He had insisted on plain answers without excuses of any kind. He had carried his point, as usual, and his departure the same morning had left him no chance of reopening the question, even if his irritation against his wife had permitted him to do so. There the alpaca dress hung, neglected in the dark, the unnoticed, unsuspected centre of dangers that were still to come. Toward the afternoon Mrs. Ragh took courage to start a suggestion of her own. She pleaded for a little turn in the fresh air. Magdalene passively put on her hat, passively accompanied her companion along the public walk until they reached its northward extremity. Here the beach was left solitary, and here they sat down side by side on the shingle. It was a bright, exhilarating day, pleasure boats were sailing on the calm blue water, old bro was idling happily afloat and ashore. Mrs. Ragh recovered her spirits in the gaiety of the prospect. She amused herself like a child by tossing pebbles into the sea. From time to time she stole a questioning glance at Magdalene and saw no encouragement in her manner, no change to cordiality in her face. She sat silent on the slope of the shingle, with her elbow on her knee and her head resting on her hand, looking out over the sea, looking with rapt attention and yet with eyes that seemed to notice nothing. Mrs. Ragh wearied of the pebbles, and lost her interest in looking at the pleasure-boats. Her great head began to nod heavily, and she dozed in the warm, drowsy air. When she woke the pleasure-boats were far off, their sails were white specks in a distance. The idlers on the beach were thinned in number, the sun was low in the heaven, the blue sea was darker and rippled by a breeze. Changes on sky and earth and ocean told of the waning day, change was everywhere, except close at her side. There Magdalene sat in the same position, with weary eyes that still looked over the sea, and still saw nothing. "'Oh, do speak to me,' said Mrs. Ragh. Magdalene started and looked about her vacantly. "'It's late,' she said, shivering under the first sensation that reached her of the rising breeze. "'Come home, you want your tea?' They walked home in silence. "'Don't be angry with me for asking,' said Mrs. Ragh, as they sat together at the tea table. "'Are you troubled, my dear, in your mind?' "'Yes,' replied Magdalene. "'Don't notice me. My trouble will soon be over.' She waited patiently until Mrs. Ragh had made an end of the meal, and then went upstairs to her own room. "'Monday,' she said, as she sat down at her toilet-table, "'something may happen before Monday comes?' Her fingers wandered mechanically among the brushes and combs, the tiny bottles and cases placed on the table. She set them in order, now in one way and now in another, then, on a sudden, pushed them away from her in a heap. For a minute or two her hands remained idle. That interval passed, they grew restless again, and pulled the two little drawers backward and forward in their grooves. Something the object laid in one of them was a prayer-book which had belonged to her at Coombrayvon, and which she had saved with her other relics of the past when she and her sister had taken their farewell of home. She opened the prayer-book, after a long hesitation, at the marriage-service, shut it again before she had read a line and put it back hurriedly in one of the drawers. After turning the key in the locks she rose and walked to the window. "'Horrible sea,' she said, turning from it with a shudder of disgust. The lonely dreary horrible sea.' She went back to the drawer, and took the prayer-book out for a second time, half opened it again at the marriage-service, and impatiently threw it back into the drawer. This time, after turning the lock, she took the key away, walked with it in her hand to the open window, and threw it violently from her into the garden. It fell on a bed, thickly planted with flowers. It was invisible. It was lost. The sense of its loss seemed to relieve her. Something may happen on Friday, something may happen on Saturday, something may happen on Sunday, three days still. She closed the green shutters outside the window and drew the curtains to darken the room still more. Her head felt heavy, her eyes were burning hot. She threw herself on her bed with a sullen impulse to sleep away the time. The quiet of the house helped her. The darkness of the room helped her. The stupor of mind into which she had fallen had its effect on her senses. She dropped into a broken sleep. Her restless hands moved incessantly, her head tossed from side to side of the pillow, but still she slept. Air-long words fell by ones and twos from her lips, words whispered in her sleep, growing more and more continuous, more and more articulate, the longer the sleep lasted, words which seemed to calm her restlessness, and to hush her into deeper repose. She smiled. She was in the happy land of dreams. Frank's name escaped her. Do you love me, Frank? She whispered. Oh, my darling, say it again, say it again! The time passed, the room grew darker, and still she slumbered and dreamed. Toward sunset, without any noise inside the house or out to account for it, she started up on the bed, awake again in an instant. The drowsy obscurity of the room struck her with terror. She ran to the window, pushed open the shutters, and leaned far out into the evening air and the evening light. Her eyes devoured the trivial sights on the beach, her ears drank in the welcome murmur of the sea—anything to deliver her from the waking impression which her dreams had left. No more darkness, no more repose, sleep that came mercifully to others, came treacherously to her. The room had only closed her eyes on the future, to open them on the past. She went down again into the parlour, eager to talk, no matter how idly, no matter on what trifles. The room was empty. Perhaps Mrs. Ragh had gone to her work. Perhaps she was too tired to talk. Magdalen took her hat from the table and went out. The sea that she had shrunk from a few hours since looked friendly now. How lovely it was in its cool evening blue, what a godlike joy in the happy multitude of waves leaping up to the light of heaven. She stayed out until the night fell and the stars appeared. The night steadied her. By slow degrees her mind recovered its balance, and she looked her position unflinchingly in the face. The vain hope that accident might defeat the very end which, of our own free will, she had ceaselessly plotted and toiled, vanished and left her, self-dissipated in its own weakness. She knew the true alternative, and faced it. On one side was the revolting ordeal of the marriage. On the other, the abandonment of her purpose. Was it too late to choose between the sacrifice of the purpose and the sacrifice of herself? Yes. Too late. The backward path had closed behind her. Time that no wish could change, time that no prayers could recall had made her purpose a part of herself. Once she had governed it, now it governed her. The more she shrank, the harder she struggled, the more mercilessly it drove her on. No other feeling in her was strong enough to master it, not even the horror that was maddening her—the horror of her marriage. At nine o'clock, she went back to the house. "'Walking again,' said Mrs. Ragh, meeting her at the door, "'come in and sit down, my dear, how tired you must be!' Magdalen smiled and patted Mrs. Ragh kindly on the shoulder. "'You forget how strong I am,' she said. "'Nothing hurts me.' She lit her candle and went upstairs again into her room. As she returned to the old place by her toilet-table, the vain hope in the three days of delay, the vain hope of deliverance by accident, came back to her, this time in a form more tangible than the form which it had hitherto worn. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Something may happen to him, something may happen to me, something serious, something fatal. One of us may die.' A sudden change came over her face. She shivered, though there was no cold in the air. She started, though there was no noise to alarm her. One of us may die. I may be the one.' She fell into deep thought, roused herself after a while, and opening the door, called to Mrs. Ragh to come and speak to her. "'You are right in thinking I should fatigue myself,' she said. "'My walk has been a little too much for me. I feel tired, and I am going to bed. Good night.' She kissed Mrs. Ragh and softly closed the door again. After a few turns backward and forward in the room, she abruptly opened her writing-case and began a letter to her sister. The letter grew and grew under her hands. She filled sheet after sheet of note-paper. Her heart was full of her subject. It was her own story, addressed to Nora. She shed no tears. She was composed to a quiet sadness. Her pen ran smoothly on. After writing for more than two hours she left off while the letter was still unfinished. There was no signature attached to it. There was a blank space reserved to be filled up at some other time. After putting away the case with the sheets of writing secured inside it, she walked to the window for air, and stood there looking out. The moon was waning over the sea. The breeze of the earlier hours had died out. On earth and ocean, the spirit of the night brooded in a deep and awful calm. Her head drooped low on her bosom, and all the view waned before her eyes with the waning moon. She saw no sea, no sky. Death, the tempter, was busy at her heart. Death, the tempter, pointed homeward to the grave of her dead parents in Koum Revan Churchill. Nineteen last birthday, she thought. Only nineteen. She moved away from the window, hesitated, and then looked out again at the view. The beautiful night, she said gratefully. Oh, the beautiful night! She left the window and lay down on her bed. Sleep that had come treacherously before came mercifully now, came deep and dreamless, the image of her last waking thought, the image of death. Early the next morning Mrs. Ragh went into Magdalene's room, and found that she had risen betimes. She was sitting before the glass, drawing the comb slowly through and through her hair, thoughtful and quiet. "'How do you feel this morning, my dear?' asked Mrs. Ragh. "'Quite well again?' "'Yes.'" After replying in the affirmative, she stopped, considered for a moment, and suddenly contradicted herself. "'No,' she said. "'Not quite well. I am suffering a little from toothache.'" As she altered her first answer in these words, she gave a twist to her hair with the comb, so that it fell forward and hid her face. At breakfast she was very silent, and she took nothing but a cup of tea. "'Let me go to the chemist and get you something,' said Mrs. Ragh. "'No, thank you. Do let me. No!' She refused for the second time sharply and angrily. As usual Mrs. Ragh submitted and let her have her own way. When breakfast was over she rose without a word of explanation, and went out. Mrs. Ragh watched her from the window, and saw that she took the direction of the chemist's shop. On reaching the chemist's door she stopped, paused before entering the shop, and looked in at the window, hesitated, and walked away a little, hesitated again, and took the first turning which led back to the beach. Without looking about her, without caring what place she chose, she seated herself on the shingle. The only persons who were near to her, in a position she now occupied, were a nurse-made and two little boys. The youngest of the two had a tiny toy ship in his hand. After looking at Magdalen for a little while with the quaintest gravity and attention, the boys suddenly approached her, and opened the way to an acquaintance by putting his toy compositely on her lap. "'Look at my ship,' said the child, crossing his hands on Magdalen's knee. She was not usually patient with children. In happier days she would not have met the boy's advance toward her, as she met it now. The hard despair in her eyes left them suddenly. Her fast-closed lips parted and trembled. She put the ship back into the child's hands, and lifted him on her lap. "'Will you give me a kiss?' she said faintly. The boy looked at his ship as if he would rather have kissed the ship. She repeated the question, repeated it almost humbly. The child put his hand up to her neck, and kissed her. "'If I was your sister, would you love me?' All the misery of her friendless position, all the wasted tenderness of her heart, poured from her in those words. "'Would you love me?' she repeated, hiding her face on the bosom of the child's frock. "'Yes,' said the boy, "'look at my ship.'" She looked at the ship through her gathering tears. "'What do you call it?' she asked, trying hard to find her way even to the interest of a child. "'I call it Uncle Kirk's ship,' said the boy. "'Uncle Kirk has gone away.'" The name recalls nothing to her memory. No remembrances, but old remembrances lived in her now. "'Gone,' she repeated absently, thinking what she should say to her little friend next. "'Yes,' said the boy, "'gone to China.'" Even from the lips of a child that word struck her to the heart. She put Kirk's little nephew off her lap, and instantly left the beach. As she turned back to the house, the struggle of the past night renewed itself in her mind. But the sense of relief which the child had brought to her, the reviving tenderness which she had felt while he sat on her knee, influenced her still. She was conscious of a dawning hope, opening freshly on her thoughts, as the boy's innocent eyes had opened on her face when he came to her on the beach. Was it too late to turn back? Once more she asked herself that question, and now for the first time she asked it in doubt. She ran up to her own room with the lurking distrust in her changed self which warned her to act and not to think. Without waiting to remove her shawl or to take off her hat, she opened her writing case, and addressed these lines to Captain Ragh as fast as her pen could trace them. You will find the money I promised you enclosed in this. My resolution has failed me. The horror of marrying him is more than I can face. I have left, Aldebra. Pity my weakness, and forget me, let us never meet again. With throbbing heart, with eager, trembling fingers, she drew her little white silk bag from her bosom, and took out the banknotes to enclose them in the letter. Her hand searched impetuously, her hand had lost its discrimination of touch. She grasped the whole contents of the bag in one handful of papers, and drew them out violently, tearing some and disarranging the folds of others. As she threw them down before her on the table, the first object that met her eye was her own handwriting. Faded already was time. She looked closer, and saw the words she had copied from her dead father's letter, and saw the lawyer's brief and terrible commentary on them confronting her at the bottom of the page. Mr. Vanstone's daughters are nobody's children, and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy. Her throbbing heart stopped, her trembling hands grew icily quiet. All the past rose before her in mute, overwhelming reproach. She took up the lines which her own hand had written hardly a minute since, and looked at the ink still wet on the letters with a vacant incredulity. The colour that had risen on her cheeks faded from them once more, the hard despair looked out again cold and glittering in her tearless eye. She folded the banknotes carefully, and put them back in her bag. She pressed the copy of her father's letter to her lips, and returned it to its place with the banknotes. When the bag was in her bosom again, she waited a little, with her face hidden in her hands, then deliberately tore up the lines addressed to Captain Ragh. Before the ink was dry, the letter lay in fragments on the floor. "'No,' she said, as the last morsel of the torn paper dropped from her hand. "'On the way I go, there is no turning back.' She rose composedly, and left the room. While descending the stairs she met Mrs. Ragh coming up. "'Going out again, my dear,' asked Mrs. Ragh, "'may I go with you?' Magdalen's attention wandered. Instead of answering the question she absently answered her own thoughts. "'Thousands of women marry for money,' she said, "'why shouldn't I?' The helpless perplexity of Mrs. Ragh's face as she spoke those words roused her to a sense of present things. "'My poor dear,' she said, "'my puzzle, you don't I?' Never mind what I say, all girls talk nonsense, and I'm no better than the rest of them. Come, I'll give you a treat. You shall enjoy yourself while the Captain is away. We will have a long drive by ourselves. Put on your smart bonnet, and come with me to the hotel. I'll tell the landlady to put a nice cold dinner into a basket. You shall have all the things you like, and I'll wait on you. When you are an old, old woman, you will remember me kindly, won't you? You will say, "'She wasn't a bad girl, hundreds worse than she was, live and prosper, and nobody blames them.' There, there, go and put your bonnet on. Oh, my God, what is my heart made of? How it lives and lives when other girls' hearts would have died in them long ago!' In half an hour more she and Mrs. Ragh were seated together in the carriage. One of the horses was restive at starting. "'Flog him,' she cried angrily at the driver. "'What are you frightened about, flog him?' "'Suppose the carriage was upset,' she said, turning suddenly to her companion, and suppose I was thrown out and killed on the spot. "'Nonsense, don't look at me in that way, I'm like your husband. I have a dash of humour, and I'm only joking.'" They were out the whole day. When they reached home again it was after dark. A long succession of hours passed in the fresh air, left them both with the same sense of fatigue. Again that night Magdalene slept the deep, dreamless sleep of the night before. And so the Friday closed. Her last thought at night had been the thought which had sustained her throughout the day. She had laid her head on the pillow with the same reckless resolution to submit to the coming trial which had already expressed itself in words when she and Mrs. Ragh met by accident on the stairs. When she woke on the morning of Saturday the resolution was gone. The Friday's thoughts, the Friday's events even, were blotted out of her mind. Once again, creeping chill through the flow of her young blood, she felt the slow and deadly prompting of despair which had come to her in the waning moonlight which had whispered to her in the awful calm. I saw the end as the end must be, she said to herself, on Thursday night. I have been wrong ever since." When she and her companion met that morning she reiterated her complaint of suffering from the toothache. She repeated her refusal to allow Mrs. Ragh to procure a remedy. She left the house after breakfast in the direction of the chemist's shop exactly as she had left it on the morning before. This time she entered the shop without an instant's hesitation. I have got an attack of toothache," she said abruptly to an elderly man who stood behind the counter. May I look at the tooth, Miss? There is no necessity to look. It is a hollow tooth that I think I have caught cold in it. The chemist recommended various remedies which were in vogue fifteen years since. She declined purchasing any of them. I have always found Lordenham relieved the pain better than anything else, she said, trifling with the bottles on the counter, and looking at them while she spoke, instead of looking at the chemist. Let me have some Lordenham. Certainly, Miss. Excuse my asking the question, it is only a matter of form. You are staying at Oldborough, I think. Yes, I am Miss Bygrave of North Chingles. The chemist bowed, and turning to his shelves filled an ordinary half-ounce bottle with Lordenham immediately. In ascertaining his customer's name and address beforehand, the owner of the shop had taken a precaution which was natural to a careful man, but which was by no means universal under similar circumstances in the state of the law at that time. Shall I put you up a little cotton wool with the Lordenham? He asked, after he had placed a label on the bottle, and had written a word on it in large letters. If you please, what have you just written on the bottle? She put the question sharply with something of distrust as well as curiosity in her manner. The chemist answered the question by turning the label toward her. She saw written on it in large letters, poison. I like to be on the safe side, Miss," said the old man, smiling, very worthy people in other respects are often sadly careless where poisons are concerned. She began trifling again with the bottles on the counter and put another question with an ill-concealed anxiety to hear the answer. Is there danger, she asked, in such a little drop of Lordenham as that? There is death in it, Miss," replied the chemist quietly. Death to a child or to a person in delicate health? Death to the strongest man in England, let him be who he may. With that answer the chemist sealed up the bottle in its wrapping of white paper, and handed the Lordenham to Magdalene across the counter. She laughed as she took it from him and paid for it. There will be no fear of accidents at North Shingles, she said, I shall keep the bottle locked up in my dressing-case. If it doesn't relieve the pain I must come to you again and try some other remedy. Good morning. Good morning, Miss. She went straight back to the house without once looking up, without noticing any one who passed her. She brushed by Miss's rag in the passage, as she might have brushed by a piece of furniture. She ascended the stairs and caught her foot twice in her dress, from sheer inattention to the common precaution of holding it up. The trivial daily interests of life had lost their hold on her, already. In the privacy of her own room she took the bottle from its wrapping, and threw the paper and the cotton wool into the fireplace. At the moment when she did this there was a knock at the door. She hid the little bottle and looked up impatiently. Miss's rag came into the room. Have you got something for your toothache, my dear? Yes. Can I do anything to help you? No. Miss's rag still lingered uneasily near the door. Her manner showed plainly that she had something more to say. What is it? asked Madeline sharply. Don't be angry, said Miss's rag. I'm not settled in my mind about the captain. He's a great writer, and he hasn't written. He's as quick as lightning, and he hasn't come back. Here's Saturday and no signs of him. Has he run away, do you think, has anything happened to him? I should think not. Go downstairs. I'll come and speak to you about it directly. As soon as she was alone again, Madeline rose from her chair, advanced toward a cupboard in the room which locked, and paused for a moment with her hand on the key in doubt. Miss's rag's appearance had disturbed the whole current of her thoughts. Miss's rag's last question, trifling as it was, had checked her on the verge of the precipice. Had roused the old vain hope in her once more of release by accident. Why not? she said. Why may something not have happened to one of them? She placed the Lordenum in the cupboard, locked it, and put the key in her packet. Time enough still, she thought, before Monday. I'll wait until the captain comes back. After some consultation downstairs it was agreed that the servant should sit up that night in expectation of her master's return. The day passed quietly without events of any kind. Madeline dreamed away the hours over a book. A weary patience of expectation was all she felt now. The poignant torment of thought was dulled and blunted at last. She passed the day and the evening in the parlour, vaguely conscious of a strange feeling of aversion to going back to her own room. As the night advanced, as the noises ceased indoors and out, her restlessness began to return. She endeavoured to quiet herself by reading. Books failed to fix her attention. The newspaper was lying in a corner of the room. She tried the newspaper next. She looked mechanically at the headings of the articles. She listlessly turned over page after page until her wandering attention was arrested by the narrative of an execution in a distant part of England. There was nothing to strike her in the story of the crime, and yet she read it. It was a common, horribly common act of bloodshed, the murder of a woman in farm service by a man in the same employment who was jealous of her. He had been convicted on no extraordinary evidence. He had been hanged under no unusual circumstances. He had made his confession when he knew there was no hope for him, like other criminals of his class, and the newspaper had printed it at the end of the article in these terms. I kept company with the deceased for a year or thereabouts. I said I would marry her when I had money enough. She said I had money enough now. We had a quarrel. She refused to walk out with me any more. She wouldn't draw me my beer. She took up with my fellow-servant David Crouch. I went to her on the Saturday, and said I would marry her as soon as we could be asked in church if she would give up Crouch. She laughed at me. She turned me out with the wash-house, and the rest of them saw her turn me out. I was not easy in my mind. I went and sat on the gate—the gate in the meadow they called Pettit's Peace. I thought I would shoot her. I went and fetched my gun and loaded it. I went out into Pettit's Peace again. I was hard put to it to make up my mind. I thought I would try my luck—I mean, whether to kill her or not—by throwing up the spud of the plow into the air. I said to myself, if it falls flat, I'll spare her. If it falls point in the earth, I'll kill her. I took a good swing with it and shied it up. It fell point in the earth. I went and shot her. It was a bad job, but I did it. I did it, as they said I did at the trial. I hope the Lord will have mercy on me. I wish my mother to have my old clothes. I have no more to say. In the happier days of her life Magdalyn would have passed over the narrative of the execution and the printed confession which accompanied it unread. The subject would have failed to attract her. She read the horrible story now, read it with an interest unintelligible to herself. Her attention, which had wandered over higher and better things, followed every sentence of the murderer's hideously direct confession from beginning to end. If the man or the woman had been known to her, if the place had been familiar to her memory, she could hardly have followed the narrative more closely, or have felt a more distinct impression of it left on her mind. She laid down the paper, wandering at herself. She took it up once more and tried to read some other portion of the contents. The effort was useless, her attention wandered again. She threw the paper away and went out into the garden. The night was dark, the stars were few and faint. She could just pace backward and forward between the house door and the gate. The confession in the newspaper had taken a fearful hold on her mind. As she paced the walk the black night opened over the sea and showed her the murderer in the field hurling the spud of the plow into the air. She ran shuddering back to the house. The murderer followed her into the parlour. She seized the candle and went up into her room. The vision of her own distempered fancy followed her to the place where the Lordenum was hidden and vanished there. It was midnight and there was no sign yet of the captain's return. She took from the writing-case the long letter which she had written to Nora and slowly read it through. The letter quieted her. When she reached the blank space left at the end she hurriedly turned back and began it over again. One o'clock struck from the church-clock and still the captain never appeared. She read the letter for the second time. She turned back obstinately, despairingly, and began it for the third time. As she once more reached the last page she looked at her watch. It was a quarter to two. She had just put the watch back in the belt of her dress when they came to her, far offing the stillness of the morning, a sound of wheels. She dropped the letter and clasped her cold hands in her lap and listened. The sound came on faster and faster, nearer and nearer, the trivial sound to all other ears, the sound of doom to hers. It passed the side of the house, it travelled a little further on, and stopped. She heard a loud knocking, then the opening of a window, then voices, then a long silence, then the wheels again coming back, then the opening of the door below, and the sound of the captain's voice in the passage. She could endure it no longer. She opened her door a little way and called to him. He ran upstairs instantly, astonished that she was not in bed. She spoke to him through the narrow opening of the door, keeping herself hidden behind it, for she was afraid to let him see her face. "'Has anything gone wrong?' she asked. "'Make your mind easy,' he answered. Nothing has gone wrong. "'Is no accident likely to happen between this and Monday?' "'None whatever. The marriage is a certainty.' "'A certainty?' "'Yes.' "'Good night.' She put her hand out through the door. He took it with some little surprise. It was not often in his experience that she gave him her hand of her own accord. "'You have sat up too long,' he said, as he felt the clasp of her cold fingers. "'I am afraid you will have a bad night. I am afraid you will not sleep.' She softly closed the door. "'I shall sleep,' she said, sounder than you think for. It was past two o'clock when she shut herself up alone in her room. Her chair stood in its customary place by the toilet-table. She sat down for a few minutes thoughtfully, then opened her letter to Nora, and turned to the end where the blank space was left. The last lines written above the space ran thus, "'I have laid my whole heart to bear to you. I have hidden nothing. It has come to this. The end I have toiled for at such terrible cost to myself is an end which I must reach or die. It is wickedness, madness, what you will, but it is so. There are now two journeys before me to choose between. If I can marry him, the journey to the church. If the profanation of myself is more than I can bear, the journey to the grave. Under that last sentence she wrote these lines. "'My choice is made. If the cruel law will let you lay me with my father and mother in the church out at home. Farewell, my love. Be always innocent. Be always happy. If Frank ever asks about me, say I died for giving him. Don't grieve long for me, Nora, and not worth it.' She sealed the letter and addressed it to her sister. The tears gathered in her eyes as she laid it on the table. She waited until her sight was clear again, and then took the banknotes once more from the little bag in her bosom. After wrapping them in a sheet of note-paper, she wrote Captain Ragh's name on the enclosure and added these words below it. "'Lock the door of my room, and leave me till my sister comes. The money I promised you is in this. You are not to blame. It is my fault and mine only. If you have any friendly remembrance of me, be kind to your wife for my sake.' After placing the enclosure by the letter to Nora, she rose and looked round the room. Some few little things in it were not in their places. She set them in order, and drew the curtains on either side at the head of her bed. Her own dress was the next object of her scrutiny. It was all as neat, as pure, as prettily arranged as ever. Nothing about her was disordered, but her hair. Some tresses had fallen loose on one side of her head. She carefully put them back in their places with the help of her glass. "'How pale I look,' she thought with a faint smile. Shall I be paler still when they find me in the morning?' She went straight to the place where the Lordenham was hidden, and took it out. The bottle was so small that it lay easily in the palm of her hand. She let it remain there for a little while, and stood looking at it. "'Death,' she said, in this drop of brown drink. Death!' As the words passed her lips, an agony of unutterable horror seized on her in an instant. She crossed the room unsteadily, with a maddening confusion in her head, with a suffocating anguish at her heart. She caught at the table to support herself. The faint clink of the bottle as it fell, harmlessly from her loosened grasp, and rolled against some porcelain object on the table, struck through her brain like the stroke of a knife. The sound of her own voice sunk to a whisper, her voice only uttering that one word, death, rushed in her ears like the rushing of a wind. She dragged herself to the bedside and rested her head against it, sitting on the floor. "'Oh, my life! My life!' she thought. "'What is my life worth that I cling to it like this?' An interval passed, and she felt her strength returning. She raised herself on her knees and hid her face on the bed. She tried to pray, to pray to be forgiven for seeking the refuge of death. Frantic words burst from her lips, words which would have risen to cries if she had not stifled them in the bed-clothes. She started to her feet. Despair strengthened her with a head-long fury against herself. In one moment she was back at the table. In another the poison was once more in her hand. She removed the cork and lifted the bottle to her mouth. At the first cold touch of the glass on her lips, her strong young life leaped up in her leaping blood and fought with the whole frenzy of its loathing against the close terror of death. Every active power in the exuberant vital force that was in her rose in revolt against the destruction which her own will would feign have wreaked on her own life. She paused for the second time. She paused in spite of herself. There, in the glorious perfection of her youth and health, there trembling on the verge of human existence she stood, with the kiss of the destroyer close at her lips, and nature faithful to its sacred trust fighting for the salvation of her to the last. No word passed her lips. Her cheeks flushed deep. Her breath came thick and fast. With the poison still in her hand, with the sense that she might faint in another moment, she made for the window and threw back the curtain that covered it. The new day had risen. The broad grey dawn flowed in on her over the quiet eastern sea. She saw the waters heaving, large and silent in the misty calm. She felt the fresh breath of the morning flutter cool on her face. Her strength returned. Her mind cleared a little. At the sight of the sea her memory recalled the walk in the garden overnight, and the picture which her distempered fancy had painted on the black void. In thought she saw the picture again, the murderer hurling the spud of the plow into the air and setting the life or death of the woman who had deserted him on the hazard of the falling point. The infection of that terrible superstition seized on her mind as suddenly as the new day had burst on her view. The premise of release which she saw in it from the horror of her own hesitation roused the last energies of her despair. She resolved to end the struggle by setting her life or death on the hazard of a chance. On what chance? The sea showed it to her. Dimly distinguishable through the mist, she saw a little fleet of coasting vessels slowly drifting toward the house, all following the same direction with the favouring set of the tide. In half an hour, perhaps in less, the fleet would have passed her window. The hands of her watch pointed to four o'clock. She seated herself close at the side of the window, with her back toward the quarter from which the vessels were drifting down on her, with the poison placed on the windowsill and the watch on her lap. For one half hour to come she determined to wait there and count the vessels as they went by. If in that time an even number passed her, the sign given should be a sign to live. If the uneven number prevailed, the end should be death. With that final resolution she rested her head against the window and waited for the ships to pass. The first came high, dark, and near in the mist, gliding silently over the silent sea. An interval, and the second followed, with the third close after it. Another interval, longer and longer drawn out, and nothing passed. She looked at her watch, twelve minutes, and three ships, three. The fourth came, slower than the rest, larger than the rest, further off in the mist than the rest. The interval followed, a long interval once more. Then the next vessel passed, darkest and nearest of all, five. The next uneven number, five. She looked at her watch again, nineteen minutes and five ships, twenty minutes, twenty-one, two, three, and no sixth vessel. Twenty-four, and the sixth came by. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and the next uneven number, the fatal seven, glided into view, two minutes to the end of the half hour, and seven ships. Twenty-nine, and nothing followed in the wake of the seventh ship. The minute hand of the watch moved on half way to thirty, and still the white heaving sea was a misty black. Without moving her head from the window she took the poison in one hand, and raised the watch in the other. As the quick seconds counted each other out, her eyes, as quick as they, looked from the watch to the sea, from the sea to the watch, looked for the last time at the sea, and saw the eighth ship. She never moved, she never spoke. The death of thought, the death of feeling, seemed to have come to her already. She put back the poison mechanically on the ledge of the window, and watched as in a dream the ship gliding smoothly on its silent way, gliding till it melted dimly into shadow, gliding till it was lost in the mist, the strain on her mind relaxed when the messenger of life had passed from her sight. Providence, she whispered faintly to herself, or chance, her eyes closed and her head fell back. When the sense of life returned to her, the morning sun was warm on her face, the blue heaven looked down on her, and the sea was a sea of gold. She fell on her knees at the window, and burst into tears. Toward noon that day, the captain, waiting below stairs and hearing no movement in Macklin's room, felt uneasy at the long silence. He desired the new maid to follow him upstairs, and, pointing to the door, told her to go in softly and see whether her mistress was awake. The maid entered the room, remained there a moment, and came out again, closing the door gently. She looks beautiful, sir, said the girl, and she's sleeping as quietly as a new born child. End of Chapter 13, Scene 4. Scene 4, Chapter 14 of No Name. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The morning of her husband's return to North Shingles was a morning memorable forever in the domestic calendar of Mrs. Ragh. She dated from that occasion the first announcement which reached her of Macklin's marriage. It had been Mrs. Ragh's earthly lot to pass her life in a state of perpetual surprise. Never yet, however, had she wandered in such a maze of astonishment as the maze in which she lost herself when the captain coolly told her the truth. She had been sharp enough to suspect Mr. Nelvan Stone of coming to the house in the character of a sweetheart on approval. And she had dimly interpreted certain expressions of impatience which had fallen from Macklin's lips as boating ill for the success of his suit, but her utmost penetration had never reached as far as a suspicion of the impending marriage. She rose from one climax of amazement to another as her husband proceeded with his disclosure. A wedding in the family at a day's notice, and that wedding Macklin's, and not a single new dress ordered for anybody, the bride included. And the oriental cashmere robe totally unavailable on the occasion when she might have worn it to the greatest advantage. Mrs. Ragh dropped crookedly into a chair and beat her disorderly hands on her unsymmetrical knees in utter forgetfulness of the captain's presence and the captain's terrible eye. It would not have surprised her to hear that the world had come to an end, and that the only mortal whom destiny had overlooked in winding up the affairs of this earthly planet was herself. Leaving his wife to recover her composure by her own unaided efforts, Captain Ragh withdrew to wait for Macklin's appearance in the lower regions of the house. It was close on one o'clock before the sound of footsteps in the room above warned him that she was awake and stirring. He called it once for the maid whose name he had ascertained to be Louisa, and sent her upstairs to her mistress for the second time. Macklin was standing by her dressing-table when a faint tap at the door suddenly roused her. The tap was followed by the sound of a meek voice, which announced itself as the voice of her maid, and inquired if Miss Bygrave needed any assistance that morning. Not at present, said Macklin, as soon as she had recovered the surprise of finding herself unexpectedly provided with an attendant. I will ring when I want you. After dismissing the woman with that answer she accidentally looked from the door to the window. Any speculations on the subject of the new servant in which she might otherwise have engaged were instantly suspended by the sight of the bottle of Lordenham, still standing on the ledge of the window where she had left it at sunrise. She took it once more in her hand, with a strange confusion of feeling, with a vague doubt even yet whether the sight of it reminded her of a terrible reality or a terrible dream. Her first impulse was to rid herself of it on the spot. She raised the bottle to throw the contents out of the window, and paused in sudden distrust of the impulse that had come to her. I have accepted my new life, she thought. How do I know what that life may have in store for me? She turned from the window and went back to the table. I may be forced to drink it yet, she said, and put the Lordenham in her dressing-case. Her mind was not at ease when she had done this. There seemed to be some indefinable ingratitude in the act. Still, she made no attempt to remove the bottle from its hiding place. She hurried on her toilet. She hastened the time when she could ring for the maid, and forget herself and her waking thoughts in a new subject. After touching the bell, she took from the table her letter to Nora and her letter to the captain, put them both into her dressing-case with the Lordenham, and locked it securely with the key which she kept attached to her watch-chain. Magdalene's first impression of her attendant was not an agreeable one. She could not investigate the girl with the experienced eye of the landlady at the London Hotel, who had characterised the stranger as a young person overtaken by misfortune, and who had shown plainly, by her look and manner, of what nature she suspected that misfortune to be. But with this drawback, Magdalene was perfectly competent to detect the tokens of sickness and sorrow lurking under the surface of the new maid's activity and politeness. She suspected the girl was ill-tempered, she disliked her name, and she was indisposed to welcome any servant who had been engaged by Nelvanstowne. But after the first few minutes, Luisa grew on her liking. She answered all the questions put to her with perfect directness. She appeared to understand her duties thoroughly, and she never spoke until she was spoken to first. After making all the inquiries that occurred to her at the time, and after determining to give them made a fair trial, Magdalene rose to leave the room. The very air in it was still heavy to her, with the oppression of the past night. Have you anything more to say to me? she asked, turning to the servant with her hand on the door. I beg your pardon, miss, said Luisa, very respectfully and very quietly. I think my master told me that the marriage was to be tomorrow. Magdalene repressed the shudder that stole over her at that reference to the marriage on the lips of a stranger, and answered in the affirmative. It's a very short time, miss, to prepare in, if you would be so kind as to give me my orders about the packing before you go downstairs. There are no such preparations to make as you suppose, said Magdalene hastily. The few things I have here can all be packed at once if you like. I shall wear the same dress tomorrow, which I have on today, leave out the straw bonnet under light shawl, and put everything else into my boxes. I have no new dresses to pack, I have nothing ordered for the occasion of any sort. She tried to add some commonplace phrases of explanation, accounting as probably as might be, for the absence of the usual wedding outfit and wedding dress. But no further reference to the marriage would pass her lips, and without another word, she abruptly left the room. The meek and melancholy Louisa stood lost in astonishment. Something wrong here, she thought. I'm half afraid of my new place already. She sighed resignedly, shook her head, and went to the wardrobe. She first examined the drawers underneath, took out the various articles of linen laid inside, and placed them on chairs. Opening the upper part of the wardrobe next, she rained the dresses in it, side by side, on the bed. Her last proceeding was to push the empty boxes into the middle of the room, and to compare the space at her disposal with the articles of dress which she had to pack. She completed her preliminary calculations with the ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her business, and began the packing forthwith. Just as she had placed the first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened, and the house servant, eager for gossip, came in. What do you want? asked Louisa quietly. Did you ever hear of anything like this? said the house servant, entering on her subject immediately. Like what? Like this marriage, to be sure. Your London bread, they tell me. Did you ever hear of a young lady being married without a single new thing to her back? No wedding veil, no wedding breakfast, and no wedding favors for the servants? It's flying in the face of Providence, that's what I say. I'm only a poor servant, I know, but it's wicked. Damn right, wicked, and I don't care who hears me. Louisa went on with the packing. Look at her dresses, persisted the house servant, waving her hand indignantly at the bed. I'm only a poor girl, but I wouldn't marry the best man alive without a new gown to my back. Look here, look at this dowdy brown thing here, an alpaca. You're not going to pack this alpaca thing are you? Why is hardly fit for a servant? I don't know that I'd take a gift of it if it was offered me. It would do for me if I took it up in the skirt and let it out in the waist, and it wouldn't look so bad with a bit of bright trimming would it? Let that dress alone if you please, said Louisa, as quietly as ever. What did you say? inquired the other, doubting whether her ears had not deceived her. I said, let that dress alone, it belongs to my mistress, and I have my mistress's orders to pack up everything in the room. You're not helping me by coming here? You're very much in my way. Well, said the house servant, you may be London bread as they say, but if these are your London manners, give me Suffolk. She opened the door with an angry snatch at the handle, shut it violently, opened it again, and looked in. Give me Suffolk, said the house servant, with a parting nod of her head to point the edge of her sarcasm. Louisa proceeded impenetrably with her packing up. Having neatly disposed of the linen in the smaller box, she turned her attention to the dresses next. After passing them carefully in review, to ascertain which was the least valuable of the collection, and to place that one at the bottom of the trunk for the rest to lie on, she made her choice with very little difficulty. The first gown which she put into the box was the brown alpaca dress. Meanwhile Magdalene had joined the captain downstairs. Although he could not fail to notice the languor in her face and the listlessness of all her movements, he was relieved to find that she met him with perfect composure. She was even self-possessed enough to ask him for news of his journey, with no other signs of agitation than a passing change of colour and a little trembling of the lips. So much for the past, said Captain Rag, when his narrative of the expedition to London by way of St Crocs had come to an end. Now for the present, the bridegroom. If it makes no difference, she interposed, call him Mr Noel Van Stone. With all my heart, Mr Noel Van Stone is coming here this afternoon to dine and spend the evening. He will be tiresome in the last degree, but, like all tiresome people, he is not to be got rid of on any terms. Before he comes I have a last word or two of caution for your privateer. By this time tomorrow we shall have parted, without any certain knowledge, on either side of our ever-meeting again. I am anxious to serve your interests faithfully to the last. I am anxious you should feel that I have done all I could for your future security when we say good-bye. Magdalen looked at him in surprise. He spoke in altered tones. He was agitated. He was strangely in earnest. Something in his look and manner took her memory back to the first night at Oldborough, when she had opened her mind to him in the darkening solitude, when they too had sat together alone on the slope of the Martello Tower. I have no reason to think otherwise than kindly of you, she said. Captain Ragh suddenly left his chair and took a turn backward and forward in the room. Magdalen's last words seem to have produced some extraordinary disturbance in him. Damn it! he broke out. I can't let you say that. You have reason to think ill of me. I have cheated you. You never got your fair share of profit from the entertainment from first to last. There, now the murder's out. Magdalen smiled and signed him to come back to his chair. I know you cheated me, she said quietly. You were in the exercise of your profession, Captain Ragh. I expected it when I joined you. I made no complaint at the time, and I make none now. If the money you took is at any recompense for all the trouble I have given you, you are heartily welcome to it. Will you shake hands on that? asked the Captain, with an awkwardness and hesitation strongly at variance with his customary ease of manner. Magdalen gave him her hand. He wrung it hard. You are a strange girl, he said, trying to speak lightly. You have laid a hold on me that I don't quite understand. I am half uncomfortable at taking the money from you now. And yet you don't want it, do you? he hesitated. He hesitated. I almost wish, he said, I had never met you on the walls of York. It is too late to wish that, Captain Ragh, say no more. You only distress me, say no more. We have other subjects to talk about. What were those words of caution which you had for my private ear? The Captain took another turn in the room and struggled back again into his everyday character. He produced from his pocketbook Mrs. La Count's letter to her master and handed it to Magdalen. There is the letter that might have ruined us if it had ever reached its address, he said. Read it carefully. I have a question to ask you when you have done. Magdalen read the letter. What is this proof, she inquired, which Mrs. La Count relies on so confidently. The very question I was going to ask you, said Captain Ragh, consult your memory of what happened when you tried that experiment in Vauxhall Walk. Did Mrs. La Count get no other chance against you than the chances you have told me of already? She discovered that my face was disguised, and she heard me speak in my own voice. And nothing more. Nothing more. Very good. Then my interpretation of the letter is clearly the right one. The proof Mrs. La Count relies on is my wife's infernal ghost story, which is, in plain English, the story of Miss Bygrave having been seen in Miss Van Stone's disguise. The witness being the very person who is afterward presented at Oldborough in the character of Miss Bygrave's aunt. An excellent chance for Mrs. La Count if she can only lay her hand at the right time on Mrs. Ragh, and no chance at all if she can't. Make your mind easy on that point. Mrs. La Count and my wife have seen the last of each other. In the meantime, don't neglect the warning I gave you in giving you this letter. Tear it up for fear of accidents, but don't forget it. Trust me to remember it, replied Magdalen, destroying the letter while she spoke. Have you anything more to tell me? I have some information to give you, said Captain Ragh, which may be useful because it relates to your future security. Mind, I want to know nothing about your proceedings when tomorrow is over. We settled that when we first discussed this matter. I ask no questions and I make no guesses. All I want to do now is to warn you of your legal position after your marriage, and to leave you to make what use you please of your knowledge at your own sole discretion. I took a lawyer's opinion on the point when I was in London thinking it might be useful to you. It is sure to be useful. What did the lawyer say? To put it plainly, this is what he said. If Noel Van Stone ever discovers that you have knowingly married him under a false name, he can apply to the ecclesiastical court to have his marriage declared null and void. The issue of the application would rest with the judges, but if he could prove that he had been intentionally deceived, the legal opinion is that his case would be a strong one. Suppose I chose to apply on my side, said Magdalene eagerly. What then? You might make the application, replied the captain, but remember one thing, you would come into court with the acknowledgement of your own deception. I leave you to imagine what the judges would think of that. Did the lawyer tell you anything else? One thing besides, said Captain Ragh, whatever the law might do with the marriage in the lifetime of both the parties to it, on the death of either one of them, no application made by the survivor would avail. And as to the case of that survivor, the marriage would remain valid. You understand? If he dies, or if you die, and if no application has been made to the court, he the survivor, or you the survivor, would have no power of disputing the marriage. But in the lifetime of both of you, if he claimed to have the marriage dissolved, the chances are all in favour of his carrying his point. He looked at Magdalene with a furtive curiosity as he said these words. She turned her head aside, absently tying her watch chain into a loop, and untying it again. Evidently thinking, with the closest attention over what he had last said to her. Captain Ragh walked uneasily to the window and looked out. The first object that caught his eye was Mr. Nolvan Stone approaching from sea view. He returned instantly to his former place in the room, and addressed himself to Magdalene once more. Here is Mr. Nolvan Stone, he said, One last caution before he comes in. Be on your guard with him about your age. He put the question to me before he got the licence. I took the shortest way out of the difficulty, and told him you were twenty-one, and he made the declaration accordingly. Never mind about me, after tomorrow I am invisible. But in your own interests don't forget, if the subject turns up, that you were of age when you were married. There is nothing more you are provided with every necessary warning that I can give you. Whatever happens in the future, remember I have done my best. He hurried to the door, without waiting for an answer, and went out into the garden to receive his guest. Nolvan Stone made his appearance at the gate, solemnly carrying his bridal offering to North Shingles with both hands. The object in question was an ancient casket, one of his father's bargains. Inside the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch set in silver, another of his father's bargains, bridal presents both, possessing the inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in his pocket. He shook his head portentiously when the captain inquired after his health and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night. Ungovernable apprehensions of LeCount's sudden reappearance had beset him as soon as he found himself alone at Seaview. Seaview was redolent of LeCount. Seaview, though built on piles and the strongest house in England, was henceforth odious to him. He had felt this all night. He had also felt his responsibilities. There was the ladies made to begin with. Now he had hired her, he began to think she wouldn't do. She might fall sick on his hands. She might have deceived him by a false character. She and the landlady of the hotel might have been in league together. Horrible, really horrible to think of. Then there was the other responsibility, perhaps the heavier of the two, the responsibility of deciding where he was to go and spend his honeymoon tomorrow. He would have preferred one of his father's empty houses. But except a voxel walk, which he supposed would be objected to, and at Oldborough, which was, of course, out of the question, all the houses were let. He would put himself in Mr Bygrave's hands. Where had Mr Bygrave spent his own honeymoon? Given the British islands to choose from, where would Mr Bygrave pitch his tent on a careful review of all the circumstances? At this point, the bridegroom's question suddenly came to an end, and the bridegroom's face exhibited an expression of ungovernable astonishment. His judicious friend, whose advice had been at his disposal in every other emergency, suddenly turned round on him in the emergency of the honeymoon, and flatly declined discussing the subject. No, said the captain, as Null Van Stone opened his lips to plead for a hearing. You must really excuse me. My point of view in this matter is, as usual, a peculiar one. For some time past, I have been living in an atmosphere of deception to suit your convenience. That atmosphere, my good sir, is getting close. My moral being requires ventilation. Settle the choice of a locality with my niece and leave me at my particular request in total ignorance of the subject. Mrs. LeCount is certain to come here on her return from Zurich, and is certain to ask me where you are gone. You may think it's strange, Mr. Van Stone, but when I tell her I don't know, I wish to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of feeling, for once in a way, that I am speaking the truth. With those words, he opened the sitting-room door, introduced Null Van Stone to Magdalen's presence, bowed himself out of the room again, and set forth, alone, to wile away the rest of the afternoon by taking a walk. His face showed plain tokens of anxiety, and his party-coloured eyes looked hither and thither distrustfully, as he sauntered along the shore. The time hangs heavy on our hands, thought the captain. I wish to-morrow was come and gone. The day passed and nothing happened. The evening and the night followed, placidly and uneventfully. Monday came a cloudless lovely day. Monday confirmed the captain's assertion that the marriage was a certainty. Toward ten o'clock the clerk, ascending the church steps, quoted the old proverb to the pew-opener, meeting him under the porch, happy the bride on whom the sun shines. In a quarter of an hour or more, the wedding party was in the vestry, and the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret of the marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the morning had been enough to betray it. A small congregation, almost entirely composed of women, was scattered here and there among the pews. Kirk's sister and her children were staying with a friend at Albre, and Kirk's sister was one of the congregation. As the wedding party entered the church, the haunting terror of Mrs. Le Count spread from Null Vanstone to the captain. For the first few minutes the eyes of both of them looked among the women in the pews with the same surging scrutiny, and looked away again with the same sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that look and investigated the license more closely than usual. The clerk began to doubt privately whether the old proverb about the bride was a proverb to be always depended on. The female members of the congregation murmured among themselves at the inexcusable disregard of appearances implied in the bride's dress. Kirk's sister whispered venomously in her friend's ear, thank God for today for Robert's sake. Mrs. Ragh cried silently, with the dread of some threatening calamity she knew not what. The one person present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalene herself. She stood with tearless resignation in her place before the altar, stood as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up within her. The clergyman opened the book. It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to heaven were pronounced, the children of the two dead brothers, inheritors of the implacable enmity which had parted their parents, were man and wife. From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting scene. They were back at the house while the words of the marriage service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the garden gate. In a minute more the opportunity came for which Magdalene and the captain had been on the watch, the opportunity of speaking together in private for the last time. She still preserved her icy resignation. She seemed beyond all reach now of the fear that had once mastered her, of the remorse that had once tortured her soul. With a firm hand she gave him the promised money. With a firm face she looked her last at him. I'm not to blame, he whispered eagerly. I have only done what you asked me. She bowed her head, she bent it towards him kindly and let him touch her forehead with his lips. Take care, he said. My last words are, for God's sake take care when I'm gone. She turned from him with a smile and spoke her farewell words to his wife. Mrs. Ragh tried hard to face her loss bravely, the loss of the friend whose presence had fallen like light from heaven over the dim pathway of her life. You have been very good to me, my dear. I thank you kindly. I thank you with all my heart. She could say no more. She clung to Magdalene in a passion of tears as her mother might have clung to her if her mother had lived to see that horrible day. I'm frightened for you, cried the poor creature in a wild wailing voice. Oh, my darling, I'm frightened for you. Magdalene desperately drew herself free, kissed her, and hurried out to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, the cry of that guileless love shook her as nothing else had shaken her that day. It was a refuge to get to the carriage, a refuge, though the man she had married stood there waiting for her at the door. Mrs. Ragh tried to follow her into the garden, but the captain had seen Magdalene's face as she ran out, and he steadily held his wife back in the passage. From that distance the last farewells were exchanged, as long as the carriage was in sight Magdalene looked back at them. She waved her handkerchief as she turned the corner. In a moment more the last thread which bound her to them was broken. The familiar companionship of many months was a thing of the past already. Captain Ragh closed the house door on the idlers who were looking in from the parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room and spoke to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him. She has gone her way, he said, and in another hour we shall have gone ours. Cry your cry out, I don't deny she's worth crying for. Even then, even when the dread of Magdalene's future was at its darkest in his mind, the ruling habit of the man's life clung to him. Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch box. Mechanically he opened his book of accounts and made the closing entry, the entry of his last transaction with Magdalene in black and white. By received from Miss Van Stone, wrote the captain with a gloomy brow, two hundred pounds. You won't be angry with me, said Mrs Ragh, looking timidly at her husband through her tears. I want a word of comfort, Captain. Oh, do tell me, when shall I see her again? The captain closed the book and answered in one inexorable word. Never. Between eleven and twelve o'clock that night, Mrs La Count drove into Zurich. Her brother's house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in speechless amazement when she opened the door and saw who the visitor was. Is my brother alive? asked Mrs La Count entering the house. Alive! echoed the servant. He has gone holiday-making into the country to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air. The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid and her teeth chattered in her head. Send for my brother's doctor, she said, as soon as she could speak. The doctor came. She handed him a letter before he could say a word. Did you write that letter? He looked it over rapidly and answered her without hesitation. Certainly not. It is your handwriting. It is a forgery of my handwriting. She rose from the chair with a new strength in her. When does the return mail start for Paris? she asked. In half an hour. Send instantly and take me a place in it. The servant hesitated. The doctor protested. She turned a deaf ear to them both. Send, she reiterated, or I will go myself. They obeyed. The servant went to take the place. The doctor remained and held a conversation with Mrs La Count. When the half-hour had passed he helped her into her place in the mail and charged the conductor privately to take care of his passenger. She has travelled from England without stopping, said the doctor, and she is travelling back again without rest. Be careful of her, or she will break down under the double journey. The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an end, Mrs La Count was on her way back to England. End of Chapter 14 Fourth Scene The end of the fourth scene