She had hitherto answered faintly and wearily; but she spoke those last words with a heightened tone and a rising color—signs which warned Captain Wragge not to press her further.
“Very good,” said the captain. “As usual, we understand each other. I see you are tired; and I won’t detain you any longer.”
He rose to open the door, stopped half-way to it, and came back again. “Leave me to arrange matters with the servant downstairs,” he continued. “You can’t absolutely keep your bed, and we must purchase the girl’s discretion when she answers the door, without taking her into our confidence, of course. I will make her understand that she is to say you are ill, just as she might say you are not at home, as a way of keeping unwelcome acquaintances out of the house. Allow me to open the door for you—I beg your pardon, you are going into Mrs. Wragge’s work-room instead of going to your own.”
“I know I am,” said Magdalen. “I wish to remove Mrs. Wragge from the miserable room she is in now, and to take her upstairs with me.”
“For the evening?”
“For the whole fortnight.”
Captain Wragge followed her into the dining-room, and wisely closed the door before he spoke again.
“Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife’s society on yourself for a fortnight?” he asked, in great surprise.
“Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house,” she burst out vehemently. “I must and will have her with me!”
“Pray don’t agitate yourself,” said the captain. “Take Mrs. Wragge, by all means. I don’t want her.” Having resigned the partner of his existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the parlor. “The weakness of the sex!” thought the captain, tapping his sagacious head. “Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the female temper gives way directly.”