the wasted tenderness of her heart, poured from
her in those words.

"Would you love me?" she repeated, hiding
her face on the bosom of the child's frock.

"Yes," said the boy. "Look at my ship."

She looked at the ship through her gathering
tears.

"What do you call it?" she asked, trying hard
to find her way even to the interest of a child.

"I call it Uncle Kirke's ship," said the boy.
"Uncle Kirke has gone away."

The name recalled nothing to her memory. No
remembrances but old remembrances lived in her
now. "Gone?" she repeated absently, thinking
what she should say to her little friend next.

"Yes," said the boy. "Gone to China."

Even from the lips of a child, that word struck
her to the heart. She put Kirke's little nephew
off her lap, and instantly left the beach.

As she turned back to the house, the struggle
of the past night renewed itself in her mind.
But the sense of relief which the child had brought
to her, the reviving tenderness which she had
felt while he sat on her knee, influenced her still.
She was conscious of a dawning hope, opening
freshly on her thoughts, as the boy's innocent
eyes had opened on her face when he came to her
on the beach. Was it too late to turn back?
Once more, she asked herself that question—and
now, for the first time, she asked it in doubt.

She ran up to her own room with a lurking
distrust in her changed self, which warned her to
act, and not to think. Without waiting to remove
her shawl or to take off her hat, she opened
her writing-case, and addressed these lines to
Captain Wragge, as fast as her pen could trace them.

"You will find the money I promised you
enclosed in this. My resolution has failed me. The
horror of marrying him is more than I can face.
I have left Aldborough. Pity my weakness, and
forget me. Let us never meet again."

With throbbing heart, with eager, trembling
fingers, she drew her little white silk bag from
her bosom, and took out the bank-notes to enclose
them in the letter. Her hand searched impetuously;
her hand had lost its discrimination of
touch. She grasped the whole contents of the
bag in one handful of papers; and drew them
out violently, tearing some and disarranging the
folds of others. As she threw them down before
her on the table, the first object that met her
eye was her own handwriting, faded already with
time. She looked closer, and saw the words she
had copied from her dead father's letter—saw the
lawyer's brief and terrible commentary on them,
confronting her at the bottom of the page:

Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children,
and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle's
mercy.

Her throbbing heart stopped; her trembling
hands grew icily quiet. All the Past rose before
her in mute overwhelming reproach. She took
up the lines which her own hand had written
hardly a minute since, and looked at the ink still
wet on the letters, with a vacant incredulity.

The colour 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 bank-notes 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 bank-notes. 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. Come! I'll give you a treat. You shall
enjoy yourself while the captain's away. We
will have a long drive by ourselves. Put on your
smart bonnet, and come with me to the hotel.
I'll tell the landlady to put a nice cold dinner into
a basket. You shall have all the things you like
—and I'll wait on you. When you are an old,
old woman, you will remember me kindly, won't
you? You will say, ' She wasn't a bad girl;
hundreds worse than she was live and prosper, and
nobody blames them.' There! there! go and
put your bonnet on. Oh, my God, what is my
heart made of! How it lives and lives, when
other girls' hearts would have died in them long
ago!"

In half an hour more, she and Mrs. Wragge
were seated together in the carriage. One of
the horses was restive at starting. " Flog him!"
she cried angrily to the driver. " What are you
frightened about? Flog him! Suppose the
carriage was upset," she said, turning suddenly
to her companion; " and suppose I was thrown
out, and killed on the spot? Nonsense! don't
look at me in that way. I'm like your husband;
I have a dash of humour, and I'm only joking."

They were out the whole day. When they
reached home again, it was after dark. The long
succession of hours passed in the fresh air, left
them both with the same sense of fatigue.
Again that night, Magdalen slept the deep dreamless
sleep of the night before. And so the Friday
closed.

Her last thought at night, had been the thought
which had sustained her throughout the day.