empty pockets, and prophetically tested their
capacity as receptacles for gold and silver. The
brightness of the precious metals was in his face,
the smoothness of the precious metals was in his
voice, as he provided himself with a new supply
of words, and resumed the conversation.

"The next question," he said, "is the question
of time. Do these confidential investigations of
ours require immediate attention—or can they
wait?"

"For the present they can wait," replied
Magdalen. "I wish to secure my freedom from
all interference on the part of my friends, before
the inquiries are made."

"Very good. The first step towards
accomplishing that object is to beat our retreat—excuse
a professional metaphor from a military man—to
beat our retreat from York to-morrow. I see my
way plainly so far; but I am all abroad, as we
used to say in the militia, about my marching
orders afterwards. The next direction we take,
ought to be chosen with an eye to advancing
your dramatic views. I am all ready, when I
know what your views are. How came you to
think of the theatre at all? I see the sacred fire
burning in you; tell me, who lit it?"

Magdalen could only answer him in one way.
She could only look back at the days that were
gone for ever; and tell him the story of her first
step towards the stage, at Evergreen Lodge.
Captain Wragge listened with his usual politeness;
but he evidently derived no satisfactory impression
from what he heard. Audiences of friends,
were audiences whom he privately declined to
trust; and the opinion of the stage-manager, was
the opinion of a man who spoke with his fee in
his pocket, and his eye on a future engagement.

"Interesting, deeply interesting," he said,
when Magdalen had done. "But not conclusive
to a practical man. A specimen of your abilities
is necessary to enlighten me. I have been on
the stage myself; the comedy of The Rivals is
familiar to me from beginning to end. A sample
is all I want, if you have not forgotten the
words—a sample of 'Lucy,' and a sample of
'Julia.'"

"I have not forgotten the words," said
Magdalen, sorrowfully; "and I have the little books
with me, in which my dialogue was written out.
I have never parted with them: they remind me
of a time—" Her lip trembled; and a pang
of the heartache silenced her.

"Nervous," remarked the captain,
indulgently. "Not at all a bad sign. The greatest
actresses on the stage are nervous. Follow their
example, and get over it. Where are the parts?
Oh, here they are! Very nicely written, and
remarkably clean. I'll give you the cues—it will
all be over (as the dentists say) in no time.
Take the back drawing-room for the stage, and
take me for the audience. Tingle goes the bell;
up runs the curtain; order in the gallery, silence
in the pit—enter Lucy!"

She tried hard to control herself; she forced
back the sorrow—the innocent, natural, human
sorrow for the absent and the dead—pleading
hard with her for the tears that she refused.
Resolutely, with cold clenched hands, she tried
to begin. As the first familiar words passed her
lips, Frank came back to her from the sea; and
the face of her dead father looked at her with
the smile of happy old times. The voices of her
mother and her sister talked gently in the
fragrant country stillness; and the garden-walks at
Combe-Raven opened once more on her view.
With a faint wailing cry, she dropped into a
chair: her head fell forward on the table, and she
burst passionately into tears.

Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment.
She shuddered as he came near her; and waved
him back vehemently with her hand. "Leave
me!" she said; "leave me a minute by myself!"
The compliant Wragge retired to the front
room; looked out of window; and whistled
under his breath. "The family spirit again!" he
said. "Complicated by hysterics."

After waiting a minute or two, he returned to
make inquiries.

"Is there anything I can offer you?" he asked,
"Cold water? burnt feathers? smelling salts?
medical assistance? Shall I summon Mrs.
Wragge? Shall we put it off till to-morrow?"

She started up, wild and flushed, with a desperate
self-command in her face, with an angry
resolution in her manner.

"No!" she said. "I must harden myself—
and I will! Sit down again, and see me act."

"Bravo!" cried the captain. "Dash at it,
my beauty—and it's done!"

She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herself—
with a raised voice, and a glow like fever in
her cheeks. All the artless, girlish charm of the
performance in happier and better days, was
gone. The native dramatic capacity that was in
her, came, hard and bold, to the surface, stripped
of every softening allurement which had once
adorned it. She would have saddened and
disappointed a man with any delicacy of feeling.
She absolutely electrified Captain Wragge. He
forgot his politeness; he forgot his long words.
The essential spirit of the man's whole vagabond
life, burst out of him irresistibly in his first
exclamation. "Who the devil would have thought it?
She can act, after all!" The instant the words
escaped his lips, he recovered himself, and glided
off into his ordinary colloquial channels.
Magdalen stopped him in the middle of his first
compliment. "No," she said; "I have forced the
truth out of you, for once. I want no more."

"Pardon me," replied the incorrigible Wragge.
"You want a little instruction; and I am the
man to give it you."

With that answer, he placed a chair for her,
and proceeded to explain himself.

She sat down in silence. A sullen indifference
began to show itself in her manner; her cheeks
turned pale again; and her eyes looked wearily
vacant at the wall before her. Captain Wragge
noted these signs of heart-sickness and discontent
with herself, after the effort she had made,
and saw the importance of rousing her by speaking,