an's heart, trust me to hit him on it!
You are now in full possession of my views. Take your time to consider,
and give me your answer--Yes or no."

"Any change is for the better," said Magdalen "which keeps me out of the
company of Mrs. Lecount and her master! Let it be as you wish."

She had hitherto answered faintly and wearily; but she spoke those last
words with a heightened tone and a rising color--signs which warned
Captain Wragge not to press her further.

"Very good," said the captain. "As usual, we understand each other. I
see you are tired; and I won't detain you any longer."

He rose to open the door, stopped half-way to it, and came back again.
"Leave me to arrange matters with the servant downstairs," he continued.
"You can't absolutely keep your bed, and we must purchase the girl's
discretion when she answers the door, without taking her into our
confidence, of course. I will make her understand that she is to say you
are ill, just as she might say you are not at home, as a way of keeping
unwelcome acquaintances out of the house. Allow me to open the door
for you--I beg your pardon, you are going into Mrs. Wragge's work-room
instead of going to your own."

"I know I am," said Magdalen. "I wish to remove Mrs. Wragge from the
miserable room she is in now, and to take her upstairs with me."

"For the evening?"

"For the whole fortnight."

Captain Wragge followed her into the dining-room, and wisely closed the
door before he spoke again.

"Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife's society on yourself for a
fortnight?" he asked, in great surprise.

"Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house," she
burst out vehemently. "I must and will have her with me!"

"Pray don't agitate yourself," said the captain. "Take Mrs. Wragge,
by all means. I don't want her." Having resigned the partner of his
existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the parlor. "The
weakness of the sex!" thought the captain, tapping his sagacious head.
"Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the female temper gives way
directly."

The strain to which the captain alluded was not confined that evening
to the female intellect at North Shingles: it extended to the female
intellect at Sea View. For nearly two hours Mrs. Lecount sat at her
desk writing, correcting, and writing again, before she could produce
a letter to Miss Vanstone, the elder, which exactly accomplished the
object she wanted to attain. A