fore 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. Wragge coming up. "Going out again, my dear?" asked Mrs.
Wragge. "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. Wragge's face as she spoke those words
roused her to a sense of present things. "My poor dear!" she said; "I
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. Wragge were seated together in the
carriage. One of the horses was restive at starting. "Flog him," she
cried angrily to 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 humor, and I'm only joking."

They were out the whole day. When they reached home again, it was after
dark. The long succession of hours passed in the fresh air left them
both with the same sense of fatigue. Again that night Magdalen 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. Wragge met by accident on
the stairs