"Did you say, earning
your living?"
"Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions
to gain our daily bread."
"What!!!" cried the captain, starting to his feet. "The daughters of
my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their
own living? Impossible--wildly, extravagantly impossible!" He sat down
again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury
on him.
"You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune," she
said, quietly. "I will tell you what has happened before I go any
further." She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find,
and with as few details as possible.
Captain Wragge's profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one
distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer's
offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended
instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until
that moment.
"Do I understand," he inquired, "that you are entirely deprived of
present resources?"
"I have sold my jewelry and my dresses," said Magdalen, impatient of his
mean harping on the pecuniary string.
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