I have sold my jewelry and my dresses," said Magdalen, impatient of his
mean harping on the pecuniary string. "If my want of experience keeps
me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can afford to
pay me."

Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces,
the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune,
at--say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds
Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation
of this judicious man.

"Just so," he said, in his most business-like manner. "There is not the
least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theater, if you
possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance."

"I must accept more assistance than you have already offered--or none,"
said Magdalen. "I have more serious difficulties before me than the
difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the
stage."

"You don't say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!"

She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.

"There are certain inquiries," she said, "which I am interested in
making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of the
person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I wish
to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my being
seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much greater
importance than the service you offered last night."

Captain Wragge's vagabond face became gravely and deeply attentive.

"May I ask," he said, "what the nature of the inquiries is likely to
be?"

Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael Vanstone's
name in informing the captain of the loss of her inheritance. She must
inevitably mention it to him again if she employed his services.
He would doubtless discover it for himself, by a plain process of
inference, before she said many words more, frame them as carefully as
she might. Under these circumstances, was there any intelligible reason
for shrinking from direct reference to Michael Vanstone? No intelligible
reason--and yet she shrank.

"For instance," pursued Captain Wragge, "are they inquiries about a man
or a woman; inquiries about an enemy or a friend--?"

"An enemy," she answered, quickly.

Her reply might still have kept the captain in the dark--but her eyes
enlightened him. "Michael Vanstone!" thought the wary