Captain Wragge closed the house door on the idlers who were looking in from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room, and spoke to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him.
“She has gone her way,” he said, “and in another hour we shall have gone ours. Cry your cry out—I don’t deny she’s worth crying for.”
Even then—even when the dread of Magdalen’s future was at its darkest in his mind—the ruling habit of the man’s life clung to him. Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch-box. Mechanically he opened his Book of Accounts, and made the closing entry—the entry of his last transaction with Magdalen—in black and white. “By Rec’d from Miss Vanstone,” wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, “Two hundred pounds.”
“You won’t be angry with me?” said Mrs. Wragge, looking timidly at her husband through her tears. “I want a word of comfort, captain. Oh, do tell me, when shall I see her again?”
The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable word: “Never!”
Between eleven and twelve o’clock that night Mrs. Lecount drove into Zurich.
Her brother’s house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in speechless amazement when she opened the door and saw who the visitor was.
“Is my brother alive?” asked Mrs. Lecount, entering the house.
“Alive!” echoed the servant. “He has gone holiday-making into the country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air.”
The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid, and her teeth chattered in her head.