y of blindfolding
that woman (to use your own admirable expression) is as clear to me
as to you. If it is to be done in the way I propose, make your mind
easy--Wragge, inflated by Joyce, is the man to do it.

"You now have my whole budget of news. Am I, or am I not, worthy of your
confidence in me? I say nothing of my devouring anxiety to know what
your objects really are--that anxiety will be satisfied when we meet.
Never yet, my dear girl, did I long to administer a productive pecuniary
Squeeze to any human creature, as I long to administer it to Mr. Noel
Vanstone. I say no more. _Verbum sap._ Pardon the pedantry of a Latin
quotation, and believe me,

"Entirely yours,

"HORATIO WRAGGE.

"P.S.--I await my instructions, as you requested. You have only to say
whether I shall return to London for the purpose of escorting you to
this place, or whether I shall wait here to receive you. The house is in
perfect order, the weather is charming, and the sea is as smooth as Mrs.
Lecount's apron. She has just passed the window, and we have exchanged
bows. A sharp woman, my dear Magdalen; but Joyce and I together may
prove a trifle too much for her."

XIII.

_Extract from the "East Suffolk Argus."_

"ALDBOROUGH.--We notice with pleasure the arrival of visitors to this
healthful and far-famed watering-place earlier in the season than usual
during the present year. _Esto Perpetua_ is all we have to say.

"VISITORS' LIST.--Arrivals since our last. North Shingles Villa--Mrs.
Bygrave; Miss Bygrave."

THE FOURTH SCENE.

ALDBOROUGH, SUFFOLK.

CHAPTER I.

THE most striking spectacle presented to a stranger by the shores of
Suffolk is the extraordinary defenselessness of the land against the
encroachments of the sea.

At Aldborough, as elsewhere on this coast, local traditions are, for the
most part, traditions which have been literally drowned. The site of
the old town, once a populous and thriving port, has almost entirely
disappeared in the sea. The German Ocean has swallowed up streets,
market-places, jetties, and public walks; and the merciless waters,
consummating their work of devastation, closed, no longer than eighty
years since, over the salt-master's cottage at Aldborough, now famous in
memory only as the birthplace of the poet CRABBE.

Thrust back year after year by the advancing waves, the inhabitants have
receded, in the present century, to the last morsel of land which is
firm enough to be bu