The captain
might have resisted the money-offer which Magdalen had made to him--for
the profits of the Entertainment had filled his pockets with more than
three times two hundred pounds. But the prospect of dealing a blow in
the dark at the man who had estimated his information and himself at
the value of a five pound note proved too much for his caution and his
self-control. On the small neutral ground of self-importance, the best
men and the worst meet on the same terms. Captain Wragge's indignation,
when he saw the answer to his advertisement, stooped to no retrospective
estimate of his own conduct; he was as deeply offended, as sincerely
angry as if he had made a perfectly honorable proposal, and had been
rewarded for it by a personal insult. He had been too full of his own
grievance to keep it out of his first letter to Magdalen. He had more or
less forgotten himself on every subsequent occasion when Noel Vanstone's
name was mentioned. And in now finally deciding the course he should
take, it is not too much to say that the motive of money receded, for
the first time in his life, into the second place, and the motive of
malice carried the day.
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