When she had done,
he plainly told her that her unlucky meeting on the stairs of the
lodging-house with Mrs. Wragge was, in his opinion, the most serious of
all the accidents that had happened in Vauxhall Walk.
"I can deal with the difficulty of my wife's stupidity," he said, "as
I have often dealt with it before. I can hammer her new identity _into_
her head, but I can't hammer the ghost _out_ of it. We have no security
that the woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet may not come back to
her recollection at the most critical time, and under the most awkward
circumstances. In plain English, my dear girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall
under our feet at every step we take."
"If we are aware of the pitfall," said Magdalen, "we can take our
measures for avoiding it. What do you propose?"
"I propose," replied the captain, "the temporary removal of Mrs. Wragge.
Speaking purely in a pecuniary point of view, I can't afford a total
separation from her. You have often read of very poor people being
suddenly enriched by legacies reaching them from remote and unexpected
quarters? Mrs. Wragge's case, when I married her, was one of these. An
elderly female relative shared the favors of fortune on that occasion
with my wife; and if I only keep up domestic appearances, I happen to
know that Mrs.
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