“Norah!” she said to herself, tenderly; “I wonder if Norah is thinking of me?  Oh, if I could be as patient as she is!  If I could only forget the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!”

Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the little cage of a room backward and forward, softly.  “No:  never till the debt is paid!” Her thoughts veered back again to Frank.  “Still at sea, poor fellow; further and further away from me; sailing through the day, sailing through the night.  Oh, Frank, love me!”

Her eyes filled with tears.  She dashed them away, made for the door, and laughed with a desperate levity, as she unlocked it again.

“Any company is better than my own thoughts,” she burst out, recklessly, as she left the room.  “I’m forgetting my ready-made relations—­my half-witted aunt, and my uncle the rogue.”  She descended the stairs to the landing on the first floor, and paused there in momentary hesitation.  “How will it end?” she asked herself.  “Where is my blindfolded journey taking me to now?  Who knows, and who cares?”

She entered the room.

Captain Wragge was presiding at the tea-tray with the air of a prince in his own banqueting-hall.  At one side of the table sat Mrs. Wragge, watching her husband’s eye like an animal waiting to be fed.  At the other side was an empty chair, toward which the captain waved his persuasive hand when Magdalen came in.  “How do you like your room?” he inquired; “I trust Mrs. Wragge has made herself useful?  You take milk and sugar?  Try the local bread, honor the York butter, test the freshness of a new and neighboring egg.  I offer my little all.  A pauper’s meal, my dear girl—­seasoned with a gentleman’s welcome.”

“Seasoned with salt, pepper, chives and parsley,” murmured Mrs. Wragge, catching instantly at a word in connection with cookery, and harnessing her head to the omelette for the rest of the evening.

“Sit straight at the table!” shouted the captain.  “More to the left, more still—­that will do.  During your absence upstairs,” he continued, addressing himself to Magdalen, “my mind has not been unemployed.  I have been considering your position with a view exclusively to your own benefit.  If you decide on being guided to-morrow by the light of my experience, that light is unreservedly at your service.  You may naturally say:  ’I know but little of you, captain, and that little is unfavorable.’  Granted, on one condition—­that you permit me to make myself and my character quite familiar to you when tea is over.  False shame is foreign to my nature.  You see my wife, my house, my bread, my butter, and my eggs, all exactly as they are.  See me, too, my dear girl, while you are about it.”

When tea was over, Mrs. Wragge, at a signal from her husband, retired to a corner of the room, with the eternal cookery-book still in her hand.  “Mince small,” she whispered, confidentially, as she passed Magdalen.  “That’s a teaser, isn’t it?”