“The deuce you have!” cried Captain Wragge, in great perplexity. “My dear girl, is my view of your present position leading me altogether astray? As I understand it, here is Mr. Noel Vanstone in possession of your fortune and your sister’s, as his father was, and determined to keep it, as his father was?”
“Yes.”
“And here are you—quite helpless to get it by persuasion—quite helpless to get it by law—just as resolute in his case as you were in his father’s, to take it by stratagem in spite of him?”
“Just as resolute. Not for the sake of the fortune—mind that! For the sake of the right.”
“Just so. And the means of coming at that right which were hard with the father—who was not a miser—are easy with the son, who is?”
“Perfectly easy.”
“Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life!” cried the captain, at the end of his patience. “Hang me if I know what you mean!”
She looked round at him for the first time—looked him straight and steadily in the face.
“I will tell you what I mean,” she said. “I mean to marry him.”
Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified by astonishment.