The color that had risen on her cheeks faded from them once more. The
hard despair looked out again, cold and glittering, in her tearless
eyes. She folded the banknotes carefully, and put them back in her bag.
She pressed the copy of her father's letter to her lips, and returned
it to its place with the banknotes. When the bag was in her bosom
again, she waited a little, with her face hidden in her hands, then
deliberately tore up the lines addressed to Captain Wragge. Before the
ink was dry, the letter lay in fragments on the floor.
"No!" she said, as the last morsel of the torn paper dropped from her
hand. "On the way I go there is no turning back."
She rose composedly and left the room. While descending the stairs,
she met Mrs. Wragge coming up. "Going out again, my dear?" asked Mrs.
Wragge. "May I go with you?"
Magdalen's attention wandered. Instead of answering the question, she
absently answered her own thoughts.
"Thousands of women marry for money," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"
The helpless perplexity of Mrs. Wragge's face as she spoke those words
roused her to a sense of present things. "My poor dear!" she said; "I
puzzle you, don't I? Never mind what I say--all girls talk nonsense, and
I'm no better than the rest of them.
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