“Quite possible,” said Magdalen, without a moment’s flinching from the answer.

“May I inquire the particulars?” asked the captain, with the politest composure.  “Don’t spare my feelings; oblige me by speaking out.  In the plainest terms, now, what have you heard?”

She answered him with a woman’s desperate disregard of consequences when she is driven to bay—­she answered him instantly,

“I have heard you are a Rogue.”

“Have you, indeed?” said the impenetrable Wragge.  “A Rogue?  Well, I waive my privilege of setting you right on that point for a fitter time.  For the sake of argument, let us say I am a Rogue.  What is Mr. Huxtable?”

“A respectable man, or I should not have seen him in the house where we first met.”

“Very good.  Now observe!  You talked of writing to Mr. Huxtable a minute ago.  What do you think a respectable man is likely to do with a young lady who openly acknowledges that she has run away from her home and her friends to go on the stage?  My dear girl, on your own showing, it’s not a respectable man you want in your present predicament.  It’s a Rogue—­like me.”

Magdalen laughed, bitterly.

“There is some truth in that,” she said.  “Thank you for recalling me to myself and my circumstances.  I have my end to gain—­and who am I, to pick and choose the way of getting to it?  It is my turn to beg pardon now.  I have been talking as if I was a young lady of family and position.  Absurd!  We know better than that, don’t we, Captain Wragge?  You are quite right.  Nobody’s child must sleep under Somebody’s roof—­and why not yours?”

“This way,” said the captain, dexterously profiting by the sudden change in her humor, and cunningly refraining from exasperating it by saying more himself.  “This way.”

She followed him a few steps, and suddenly stopped.

“Suppose I am discovered?” she broke out, abruptly.  “Who has any authority over me?  Who can take me back, if I don’t choose to go?  If they all find me to-morrow, what then?  Can’t I say No to Mr. Pendril?  Can’t I trust my own courage with Miss Garth?”

“Can you trust your courage with your sister?” whispered the captain, who had not forgotten the references to Norah which had twice escaped her already.

Her head drooped.  She shivered as if the cold night air had struck her, and leaned back wearily against the parapet of the wall.

“Not with Norah,” she said, sadly.  “I could trust myself with the others.  Not with Norah.”

“This way,” repeated Captain Wragge.  She roused herself; looked up at the darkening heaven, looked round at the darkening view.  “What must be, must,” she said, and followed him.

The Minster clock struck the quarter to eight as they left the Walk on the Wall and descended the steps into Rosemary Lane.  Almost at the same moment the lawyer’s clerk from London gave the last instructions to his subordinates, and took up his own position, on the opposite side of the river, within easy view of Mr. Huxtable’s door.