again immediately.

"An excellent morning's work!" said Captain Wragge, as he and Magdalen
walked on together to North Shingles. "You and I and Joyce have all
three done wonders. We have secured a friendly invitation at the first
day's fishing for it."

He paused for an answer; and, receiving none, observed Magdalen more
attentively than he had observed her yet. Her face had turned deadly
pale again; her eyes looked out mechanically straight before her in
heedless, reckless despair.

"What is the matter?" he asked, with the greatest surprise. "Are you
ill?"

She made no reply; she hardly seemed to hear him.

"Are you getting alarmed about Mrs. Lecount?" he inquired next. "There
is not the least reason for alarm. She may fancy she has heard something
like your voice before, but your face evidently bewilders her. Keep your
temper, and you keep her in the dark. Keep her in the dark, and you will
put that two hundred pounds into my hands before the autumn is over."

He waited again for an answer, and again she remained silent. The
captain tried for the third time in another direction.

"Did you get any letters this morning?" he went on. "Is there bad news
again from home? Any fresh difficulties with your sister?"

"Say nothing about my sister!" she broke out passionately. "Neither you
nor I are fit to speak of her."

She said those words at the garden-gate, and hurried into the house by
herself. He followed her, and heard the door of her own room violently
shut to, violently locked and double-locked. Solacing his indignation
by an oath, Captain Wragge sullenly went into one of the parlors on
the ground-floor to look after his wife. The room communicated with a
smaller and darker room at the back of the house by means of a quaint
little door with a window in the upper half of it. Softly approaching
this door, the captain lifted the white muslin curtain which hung over
the window, and looked into the inner room.

There was Mrs. Wragge, with her cap on one side, and her shoes down at
heel; with a row of pins between her teeth; with the Oriental Cashmere
Robe slowly slipping off the table; with her scissors suspended
uncertain in one hand, and her written directions for dressmaking held
doubtfully in the other--so absorbed over the invincible difficulties
of her employment as to be perfectly unconscious that she was at that
moment the object of her husband's superintending eye. Under other
circumstances she would h