“I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow,” she said. “My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you will not object to dispense with the candles for a few minutes.”
She spoke in low, stifled tones, and felt her way noiselessly to a chair far removed from the captain in the darkest part of the room. Sitting near the window, he could just discern the dim outline of her dress, he could just hear the faint accents of her voice. For the last two days he had seen nothing of her except during their morning walk. On that afternoon he had found his wife crying in the little backroom down-stairs. She could only tell him that Magdalen had frightened her—that Magdalen was going the way again which she had gone when the letter came from China in the terrible past time at Vauxhall Walk.
“I was sorry to hear that you were ill to-day, from Mrs. Wragge,” said the captain, unconsciously dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he spoke.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered quietly, out of the darkness. “I am strong enough to suffer, and live. Other girls in my place would have been happier—they would have suffered, and died. It doesn’t matter; it will be all the same a hundred years hence. Is he coming again tomorrow morning at seven o’clock?”
“He is coming, if you feel no objection to it.”
“I have no objection to make; I have done with objecting. But I should like to have the time altered. I don’t look my best in the early morning—-I have bad nights, and I rise haggard and worn. Write him a note this evening, and tell him to come at twelve o’clock.”
“Twelve is rather late, under the circumstances, for you to be seen out walking.”
“I have no intention of walking. Let him be shown into the parlor—”
Her voice died away in silence before she ended the sentence.
“Yes?” said Captain Wragge.