name was
Kirke; and that was all the boatmen knew about either of them.

"It is of no consequence who they are," said Magdalen, carelessly. "The
man's rudeness merely annoyed me for the moment. Let us have done with
him. I have something else to think of, and so have you. Where is the
solitary walk you mentioned just now? Which way do we go?"

The captain pointed southward toward Slaughden, and offered his arm.

Magdalen hesitated before she took it. Her eyes wandered away
inquiringly to Noel Vanstone's house. He was out in the garden, pacing
backward and forward over the little lawn, with his head high in the
air, and with Mrs. Lecount demurely in attendance on him, carrying her
master's green fan. Seeing this, Magdalen at once took Captain Wragge's
right arm, so as to place herself nearest to the garden when they passed
it on their walk.

"The eyes of our neighbors are on us; and the least your niece can do is
to take your arm," she said, with a bitter laugh. "Come! let us go on."

"They are looking this way," whispered the captain. "Shall I introduce
you to Mrs. Lecount?"

"Not to-night," she answered. "Wait, and hear what I have to say to you
first."

They passed the garden wall. Captain Wragge took off his hat with a
smart flourish, and received a gracious bow from Mrs. Lecount in return.
Magdalen saw the housekeeper survey her face, her figure, and her dress,
with that reluctant interest, that distrustful curiosity, which women
feel in observing each other. As she walked on beyond the house, the
sharp voice of Noel Vanstone reached her through the evening stillness.
"A fine girl, Lecount," she heard him say. "You know I am a judge of
that sort of thing--a fine girl!"

As those words were spoken, Captain Wragge looked round at his companion
in sudden surprise. Her hand was trembling violently on his arm, and her
lips were fast closed with an expression of speechless pain.

Slowly and in silence the two walked on until they reached the southern
limit of the houses, and entered on a little wilderness of shingle and
withered grass--the desolate end of Aldborough, the lonely beginning of
Slaughden.

It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward, was the gray majesty of the
sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into
the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle
water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive
circle of a martello tower