sion.

Later in the day the fourth candidate appeared for the maid's
situation--a young woman of small expectations and subdued manners, who
looked (as the landlady remarked) like a person overtaken by misfortune.
She passed the ordeal of examination successfully, and accepted the
wages offered with out a murmur. The engagement having been ratified on
both sides, fresh delays ensued, of which Noel Vanstone was once more
the cause. He had not yet made up his mind whether he would, or would
not, give more than a guinea for the wedding-ring; and he wasted the
rest of the day to such disastrous purpose in one jeweler's shop after
another, that he and the captain, and the new lady's maid (who traveled
with them), were barely in time to catch the last train from London that
evening. It was late at night when they left the railway at the nearest
station to Aldborough. Captain Wragge had been strangely silent all
through the journey. His mind was ill at ease. He had left Magdalen,
under very critical circumstances, with no fit person to control her,
and he was wholly ignorant of the progress of events in his absence at
North Shingles.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT had happened at Aldborough in Captain Wragge's absence? Events had
occurred which the captain's utmost dexterity might have found it hard
to remedy.

As soon as the chaise had left North Shingles, Mrs. Wragge received
the message which her husband had charged the servant to deliver. She
hastened into the parlor, bewildered by her stormy interview with the
captain, and penitently conscious that she had done wrong, without
knowing what the wrong was. If Magdalen's mind had been unoccupied by
the one idea of the marriage which now filled it--if she had possessed
composure enough to listen to Mrs. Wragge's rambling narrative of what
had happened during her interview with the housekeeper--Mrs. Lecount's
visit to the wardrobe must, sooner or later, have formed part of the
disclosure; and Magdalen, although she might never have guessed the
truth, must at least have been warned that there was some element of
danger lurking treacherously in the Alpaca dress. As it was, no such
consequence as this followed Mrs. Wragge's appearance in the parlor; for
no such consequence was now possible.

Events which had happened earlier in the morning, events which had
happened for days and weeks past, had vanished as completely from
Magdalen's mind as if they had never taken place. The horro