put me all right again: I'm only a little tired with talking.
And then turn the frying-pan, then turn the frying-pan, then turn the
frying-pan over. It sounds like poetry, don't it?"

Her voice sank, and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same moment the
door of the room below opened, and the captain's mellifluous bass notes
floated upstairs, charged with the customary stimulant to his wife's
faculties.

"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain. "Mrs. Wragge!"

She started to her feet at that terrible summons. "Oh, what did he tell
me to do?" she asked, distractedly. "Lots of things, and I've forgotten
them all!"

"Say you have done them when he asks you," suggested Magdalen. "They
were things for me--things I don't want. I remember all that is
necessary. My room is the front room on the third floor. Go downstairs
and say I am coming directly."

She took up the candle and pushed Mrs. Wragge out on the landing. "Say
I am coming directly," she whispered again--and went upstairs by herself
to the third story.

The room was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former days
Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the
servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a few minutes
alone; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that account. She locked
herself in and walked mechanically, with a woman's first impulse in
a strange bedroom, to the rickety little table and the dingy little
looking-glass. She waited there for a moment, and then turned away with
weary contempt. "What does it matter how pale I am?" she thought to
herself. "Frank can't see me--what does it matter now!"

She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to collect herself.
But the events of the day had worn her out. The past, when she tried
to remember it, only made her heart ache. The future, when she tried
to penetrate it, was a black void. She rose again, and stood by the
uncurtained window--stood looking out, as if there was some hidden
sympathy for her own desolation in the desolate night.

"Norah!" she said to herself, tenderly; "I wonder if Norah is thinking
of me? Oh, if I could be as patient as she is! If I could only forget
the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!"

Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the little
cage of a room backward and forward, softly. "No: never till the debt
is paid!" Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. "Still at sea, poor
fellow; further and further away fro