Before he comes, I have a last word or two of caution for your private
ear. By this time to-morrow we shall have parted--without any certain
knowledge, on either side, of our ever meeting again. I am anxious to
serve your interests faithfully to the last; I am anxious you should
feel that I have done all I could for your future security when we say
good-by."
Magdalen looked at him in surprise. He spoke in altered tones. He was
agitated; he was strangely in earnest. Something in his look and manner
took her memory back to the first night at Aldborough, when she had
opened her mind to him in the darkening solitude--when they two had sat
together alone on the slope of the martello tower. "I have no reason to
think otherwise than kindly of you," she said.
Captain Wragge suddenly left his chair, and took a turn backward and
forward in the room. Magdalen's last words seemed to have produced some
extraordinary disturbance in him.
"Damn it!" he broke out; "I can't let you say that. You have reason to
think ill of me. I have cheated you. You never got your fair share
of profit from the Entertainment, from first to last. There! now the
murder's out!"
Magdalen smiled, and signed to him to come back to his chair.
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