Thursday. From the inn he went to the church;
saw the clerk; and gave the necessary notice for
a marriage by license, on the following Monday.

Bold as he was, his nerves were a little shaken
by this last achievement; his hand trembled
as it lifted the latch of the garden gate. He
doctored his nerves with brandy-and-water, before
he sent for Magdalen to inform her of the
proceedings of the morning. Another outbreak
might reasonably be expected, when she heard
that the last irrevocable step had been taken, and
that notice had been given of the wedding-day.

The captain's watch warned him to lose no
time in emptying his glass. In a few minutes, he
sent the necessary message up stairs. While
waiting for Magdalen's appearance, he provided
himself with certain materials which
were now necessary to carry the conspiracy
to its crowning point. In the first place, he
wrote his assumed name (by no means in so fine
a hand as usual) on a blank visiting card; and
added, underneath, these words: "Not a moment
is to be lost. I am waiting for you at the
door—come down to me directly." His next
proceeding was to take some half-dozen envelopes
out of the case, and to direct them all alike to the
following address: "Thomas Bygrave, Esq., Mussared's
Hotel, Salisbury-street, Strand, London."
After carefully placing the envelopes and the
card in his breast-pocket, he shut up the desk.
As he rose from the writing-table, Magdalen
came into the room.

The captain took a moment to decide on the
best method of opening the interview; and
determined, in his own phrase, to dash at it. In
two words, he told Magdalen what had happened;
and informed her that Monday was to be her
wedding-day.

He was prepared to quiet her if she burst into
a frenzy of passion; to reason with her, if she
begged for time; to sympathise with her if she
melted into tears. To his inexpressible surprise,
results falsified all his calculations. She heard
him without uttering a word, without shedding a
tear. When he had done, she dropped into a
chair. Her large grey eyes stared at him vacantly.
In one mysterious instant, all her beauty left
her; her face stiffened awfully, like the face of a
corpse. For the first time in the captain's experience
of her, fear—all-mastering fear—had
taken possession of her, body and soul.

"You are not flinching?" he said, trying to
rouse her. "Surely you are not flinching at the
last moment?"

No light of intelligence came into her eyes;
no change passed over her face. But she heard
him—for she moved a little in the chair, and
slowly shook her head.

"You planned this marriage of your own free
will," pursued the captain, with the furtive look
and the faltering voice of a man ill at ease. "It
was your own idea— not mine. I won't have the
responsibility laid on my shoulders—no! not for
twice two hundred pounds. If your resolution
fails you; if you think better of it—?"

He stopped. Her face was changing; her lips
were moving at last. She slowly raised her left
hand, with the fingers outspread—she looked at
it, as if it was a hand that was strange to her—
she counted the days on it, the days before the
marriage.

"Friday, one," she whispered to herself;
"Saturday, two; Sunday, three; Monday—"
Her hands dropped into her lap; her face stiffened
again. The deadly fear fastened its paralysing
hold on her once more; and the next words died
away on her lips.

Captain Wragge took out his handkerchief,
and wiped his forehead.

"Damn the two hundred pounds!" he said.
"Two thousand wouldn't pay me for this!"

He went back to the writing-table, took the
envelopes which he had addressed to himself
out of his pocket, and returned to the chair in
which she was sitting, with the envelopes in his
hand.

"Rouse yourself," he said; "I have a last
word to say to you. Can you listen?"

She struggled, and roused herself—a faint
tinge of colour stole over her white cheeks—she
bowed her head.

"Look at these," pursued Captain Wragge,
holding up the envelopes. "If I turn these to
the use for which they have been written, Mrs.
Lecount's master will never receive Mrs. Lecount's
letter. If I tear them up, he will know
by to-morrow's post that you are the woman who
visited him in Vauxhall Walk. Say the word!
Shall I tear the envelopes up, or shall I put them
back in my pocket?"

There was a pause of dead silence. The murmur
of the summer waves on the shingle of the
beach, and the voices of the summer idlers on the
parade, floated through the open window, and
filled the empty stillness of the room.

She raised her head; she lifted her hand and
pointed steadily to the envelopes.

"Put them back," she said.

"Do you mean it?" he asked.

"I mean it."

As she gave that answer, there was a sound of
wheels on the road outside.

"You hear those wheels?" said Captain
Wragge.

"I hear them."

"You see the chaise?" said the captain, pointing
through the window, as the chaise which had been
ordered from the inn made its appearance at the
garden gate.

"I see it."

"And, of your own free will, you tell me to
go?"

"Yes. Go!"

Without another word, he left her. The
servant was waiting at the door with his travelling-bag.
"Miss Bygrave is not well," he said.
"Tell your mistress to go to her in the parlour."

He stepped into the gig, and started on the
first stage of the journey to St. Crux.