She paused in the middle of the room. “What can he do at his worst?” she said to herself. “Cheat me. Well! if my money governs him for me, what then? Let him have my money!” She returned mechanically to her place by the window. A moment more decided her. A moment more, and she took the first fatal step downward-she determined to face the risk, and try Captain Wragge.
At nine o’clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen’s door, and informed her (with the captain’s kind compliments) that breakfast was ready.
She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The ex-waitress at Darch’s Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little black spots.
“There it is!” said Mrs. Wragge. “Omelette with herbs. The landlady helped me. And that’s what we’ve made of it. Don’t you ask the captain for any when he comes in—don’t, there’s a good soul. It isn’t nice. We had some accidents with it. It’s been under the grate. It’s been spilled on the stairs. It’s scalded the landlady’s youngest boy—he went and sat on it. Bless you, it isn’t half as nice as it looks! Don’t you ask for any. Perhaps he won’t notice if you say nothing about it. What do you think of my wrapper? I should so like to have a white one. Have you got a white one? How is it trimmed? Do tell me!”
The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious for the promised expression of Magdalen’s decision to pay his customary attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling her that she had his full permission to “give it to the dogs.”
“How does my little proposal look by daylight?” he asked, placing chairs for Magdalen and himself. “Which is it to be: ‘Captain Wragge, take charge of me?’ or, ‘Captain Wragge, good-morning?’”
“You shall hear directly,” replied Magdalen. “I have something to say first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view besides the object of earning my living on the stage—”
“I beg your pardon,” interposed Captain Wragge. “Did you say, earning your living?”
“Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions to gain our daily bread.”
“What!!!” cried the captain, starting to his feet. “The daughters of my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their own living? Impossible—wildly, extravagantly impossible!” He sat down again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury on him.