ello tower. "I have no reason to
think otherwise than kindly of you," she said.

Captain Wragge suddenly left his chair, and took a turn backward and
forward in the room. Magdalen's last words seemed 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 to him to come back to his chair.

"I know you cheated me," she said, quietly. "You were in the exercise of
your profession, Captain Wragge. 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
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'm half uncomfortable at taking the money from
you now; and yet you don't want it, do you?" 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 Wragge. 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 every-day character. He produced from his pocketbook Mrs. Lecount'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. Lecount relies on so confidently!"

"The very question I was going to ask you," said Captain Wragge.
"Consult your memory of what happened when you tried that experiment in
Vauxhall Walk. Did Mrs. Lecount 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 rig