II.--Tricked into Marriage
By fair means or foul, Magdalen, who, with Norah, had now made her home with Miss Garth in London, had sworn to herself that she would win back the property of which she had been robbed by Michael Vanstone. Selling all her jewellery and dresses, she managed to secure two hundred pounds, and with this sum in her pocket she secretly left home. The theatrical manager, who had offered her an engagement should she ever require it, had moved to York, and it was to that city that Magdalen hastened.
Her absence was at once discovered, and Miss Garth resorted to every possible means of tracing her to her destination. A reward of fifty pounds was offered, and her mode of procedure being suspected, handbills setting forth her appearance were posted in York. It was one of these bills that attracted the attention of a certain Captain Wragge.
Captain Wragge was the stepson of Mrs. Vanstone's mother, and had persisted in regarding himself as a member of her family, and, having known of the real relationship that existed between his half-sister and Mr. Andrew Vanstone, had obtained from the latter a small annual subsidy as the price of his silence. A confessed rogue, the captain imagined he saw in this handbill an opportunity of re-stocking his exhausted exchequer.
As he wandered on the walls of York, pondering how he should act, he met Magdalen herself, and at once greeted her as a relative. The girl would have avoided him, but on his pointing out that unless she placed herself under his protection she was bound to be discovered and taken back to her friends, she consented to accompany him to his lodgings. There he introduced her to his wife, a tall, gaunt woman with a large, good-natured, vacant face, who lived in a state of bemused terror of her husband, who bullied and dragooned her according to his mood.
After listening to the frank exposition of his character and his method of living, Magdalen decided to accept Captain Wragge's assistance. On certain terms, Wragge agreed to train her for the stage and secure her engagements, taking a half share of any money she might earn. In return for these profits, he agreed to carry out certain inquiries whenever she might think it necessary. As to the nature of these inquiries, she, for the time being, preserved silence.
Magdalen's talent for acting proved highly successful, and under the direction of the captain she began rapidly to make a reputation for herself, and at the end of six months she had saved between six and seven hundred pounds. She now decided that it was time to put her plan of retribution into execution.
At her instructions, Captain Wragge had discovered that Michael Vanstone was dead and that his son, Noel Vanstone, had succeeded to the property, and was now living with his father's old housekeeper, a certain Swiss lady, the widow of a professor of science, by name Mrs. Lecount, in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. The remaining information that Wragge obtained regarding the Vanstones was to the effect that the deceased Michael had a great friend in Admiral Bartram, whose nephew George was the son of Mr. Andrew Vanstone's sister, and therefore the cousin of Noel Vanstone. Having this information, Magdalen calmly informed Wragge that their alliance, for the moment, was at an end, and taking Mrs. Wragge with her, journeyed to London. There she obtained rooms directly opposite the house occupied by Noel Vanstone. Disguising herself as Miss Garth and assuming her old governess's voice and manner, she boldly visited the house. She found Noel Vanstone a weak, avaricious coward, who was already terrified by the letters she had written him demanding the restitution of her fortune. He was completely at the mercy of Mrs. Lecount.
Something about the supposed Miss Garth excited the suspicion of Mrs. Lecount, and she deliberately set about to try and make her visitor betray what she was convinced she was concealing.
"I would suggest," said Mrs. Lecount, "that you give a hundred pounds to each of these unfortunate sisters."