“Pardon me,” said the captain, gravely, “this requires consideration. Let me have a minute or two to think.”
He took a few turns up and down the room, then suddenly stepped aside to a table in a corner on which his writing materials were placed. “I was not born yesterday, ma’am!” said the captain, speaking jocosely to himself. He winked his brown eye, took up his pen, and wrote the answer.
“Can you speak now?” inquired Magdalen, when the servant had left the room. “What does that letter say, and how have you answered it?”
The captain placed the letter in her hand. “I have accepted the invitation,” he replied, quietly.
Magdalen read the letter. “Hidden enmity yesterday,” she said, “and open friendship to-day. What does it mean?”
“It means,” said Captain Wragge, “that Mrs. Lecount is even sharper than I thought her. She has found you out.”
“Impossible,” cried Magdalen. “Quite impossible in the time.”
“I can’t say how she has found you out,” proceeded the captain, with perfect composure. “She may know more of your voice than we supposed she knew. Or she may have thought us, on reflection, rather a suspicious family; and anything suspicious in which a woman was concerned may have taken her mind back to that morning call of yours in Vauxhall Walk. Whichever way it may be, the meaning of this sudden change is clear enough. She has found you out; and she wants to put her discovery to the proof by slipping in an awkward question or two, under cover of a little friendly talk. My experience of humanity has been a varied one, and Mrs. Lecount is not the first sharp practitioner in petticoats whom I have had to deal with. All the world’s a stage, my dear girl, and one of the scenes on our little stage is shut in from this moment.”
With those words he took his copy of Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues out of his pocket. “You’re done with already, my friend!” said the captain, giving his useful information a farewell smack with his hand, and locking it up in the cupboard. “Such is human popularity!” continued the indomitable vagabond, putting the key cheerfully in his pocket. “Yesterday Joyce was my all-in-all. To-day I don’t care that for him!” He snapped his fingers and sat down to breakfast.
“I don’t understand you,” said Magdalen, looking at him angrily. “Are you leaving me to my own resources for the future?”