“You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,” she said, quietly. “I will tell you what has happened before I go any further.” She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find, and with as few details as possible.
Captain Wragge’s profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer’s offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until that moment.
“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you are entirely deprived of present resources?”
“I have sold my jewelry and my dresses,” said Magdalen, impatient of his mean harping on the pecuniary string. “If my want of experience keeps me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can afford to pay me.”
Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces, the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune, at—say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation of this judicious man.
“Just so,” he said, in his most business-like manner. “There is not the least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theater, if you possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance.”
“I must accept more assistance than you have already offered—or none,” said Magdalen. “I have more serious difficulties before me than the difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the stage.”
“You don’t say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!”
She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.
“There are certain inquiries,” she said, “which I am interested in making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of the person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my being seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much greater importance than the service you offered last night.”