Captain Wragge expressed the profound astonishment, and asked the innocent questions appropriate to the mental condition of a person taken completely by surprise.
“Well,” he resumed, when Magdalen had briefly answered him, “and what is the result on your own mind? There must be a result, or we should not be here. You see your way? Of course, my dear girl, you see your way?”
“Yes,” she said, quickly. “I see my way.”
The captain drew a little nearer to her, with eager curiosity expressed in every line of his vagabond face.
“Go on,” he said, in an anxious whisper; “pray go on.”
She looked out thoughtfully into the gathering darkness, without answering, without appearing to have heard him. Her lips closed, and her clasped hands tightened mechanically round her knees.
“There is no disguising the fact,” said Captain Wragge, warily rousing her into speaking to him. “The son is harder to deal with than the father—”
“Not in my way,” she interposed, suddenly.
“Indeed!” said the captain. “Well! they say there is a short cut to everything, if we only look long enough to find it. You have looked long enough, I suppose, and the natural result has followed—you have found it.”
“I have not troubled myself to look; I have found it without looking.”