ght have worn it to the greatest advantage! Mrs. Wragge
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 Wragge withdrew to wait for Magdalen'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 at once for the maid (whose name he had ascertained to be
Louisa), and sent her upstairs to her mistress for the second time.

Magdalen 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 Magdalen, 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 laudanum, 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 laudanum into 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 coul