e.

"Go on," he said, in an anxious whisper; "pray go on."

She looked out thoughtfully into the gathering darkness, without
answering, without appearing to have heard him. Her lips closed, and her
clasped hands tightened mechanically round her knees.

"There is no disguising the fact," said Captain Wragge, warily rousing
her into speaking to him. "The son is harder to deal with than the
father--"

"Not in my way," she interposed, suddenly.

"Indeed!" said the captain. "Well! they say there is a short cut to
everything, if we only look long enough to find it. You have looked long
enough, I suppose, and the natural result has followed--you have found
it."

"I have not troubled myself to look; I have found it without looking."

"The deuce you have!" cried Captain Wragge, in great perplexity. "My
dear girl, is my view of your present position leading me altogether
astray? As I understand it, here is Mr. Noel Vanstone in possession of
your fortune and your sister's, as his father was, and determined to
keep it, as his father was?"

"Yes."

"And here are you--quite helpless to get it by persuasion--quite
helpless to get it by law--just as resolute in his ease as you were in
his father's, to take it by stratagem in spite of him?"

"Just as resolute. Not for the sake of the fortune--mind that! For the
sake of the right."

"Just so. And the means of coming at that right which were hard with the
father--who was not a miser--are easy with the son, who is?"

"Perfectly easy."

"Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life!" cried the captain,
at the end of his patience. "Hang me if I know what you mean!"

She looked round at him for the first time--looked him straight and
steadily in the face.

"I will tell you what I mean," she said. "I mean to marry him."

Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified
by astonishment.

"Remember what I told you," said Magdalen, looking away from him again.
"I have lost all care for myself. I have only one end in life now, and
the sooner I reach it--and die--the better. If--" She stopped, altered
her position a little, and pointed with one hand to the fast-ebbing
stream beneath her, gleaming dim in the darkening twilight--"if I had
been what I once was, I would have thrown myself into that river sooner
than do what I am going to do now. As it is, I trouble myself no longer;
I weary my mind with no more schemes. The short way and the vile way
l