s the inevitable consequence? I suspend my proceedings; my
resources evaporate; and my fair relative finds me the pauper gentleman
whom she now sees before her."

"Your books?" said Magdalen. "What books do you mean?"

"You shall see," replied the captain. "Trust me, or not, as you like--I
trust _you_ implicitly. You shall see."

With those words he retired into the back room. While he was gone,
Magdalen stole another look at Mrs. Wragge. Was she still self-isolated
from her husband's deluge of words? Perfectly self-isolated. She had
advanced the imaginary omelette to the last stage of culinary progress;
and she was now rehearsing the final operation of turning it over--with
the palm of her hand to represent the dish, and the cookery-book to
impersonate the frying-pan. "I've got it," said Mrs. Wragge, nodding
across the room at Magdalen. "First put the frying-pan on the dish, and
then tumble both of them over."

Captain Wragge returned, carrying a neat black dispatch-box, adorned
with a bright brass lock. He produced from the box five or six plump
little books, bound in commercial calf and vellum, and each fitted
comfortably with its own little lock.

"Mind!" said the moral agriculturist, "I take no credit to myself for
this: it is my nature to be orderly, and orderly I am. I must have
everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my
commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of Letters,
Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one of them.
I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry
in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room--is there a
chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at _me_. Am I dusty? am I
dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I
not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of the man, my dear
girl--the nature of the man!"

He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable
correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could
estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of
figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black
ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. Although Captain
Wragge's inborn sense of order was in him--as it is in others--a sense
too inveterately mechanical to exercise any elevating moral influence
over his actions, it had produced its legitimate effect on hi