--How did I come by it? Briefly thus." Here Captain Wragge
entered on his personal statement; taking his customary vocal exercise
through the longest words of the English language, with the highest
elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare occasion, nothing to gain by
concealment, he departed from his ordinary habits, and, with the utmost
amazement at the novelty of his own situation, permitted himself to tell
the unmitigated truth.
The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled Captain
Wragge's anticipations in relating it. She was not startled; she was not
irritated; she showed no disposition to cast herself on his mercy, and
to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the face; and all she
said, when he had neatly rounded his last sentence, was--"Go on."
"Go on?" repeated the captain. "Shocked to disappoint you, I am sure;
but the fact is, I have done."
"No, you have not," she rejoined; "you have left out the end of your
story. The end of it is, you came here to look for me; and you mean to
earn the fifty pounds reward."
Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge that for the
moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward truths of all sorts
far too often to be permanently disconcerted by them.
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