Helpless when those words were spoken—­helpless still, after all that she had resolved, after all that she had sacrificed.  The assertion of her natural rights and her sister’s, sanctioned by the direct expression of her father’s last wishes; the recall of Frank from China; the justification of her desertion of Norah—­all hung on her desperate purpose of recovering the lost inheritance, at any risk, from the man who had beggared and insulted his brother’s children.  And that man was still a shadow to her!  So little did she know of him that she was even ignorant at that moment of his place of abode.

She rose and paced the room with the noiseless, negligent grace of a wild creature of the forest in its cage.  “How can I reach him in the dark?” she said to herself.  “How can I find out—?” She stopped suddenly.  Before the question had shaped itself to an end in her thoughts, Captain Wragge was back in her mind again.

A man well used to working in the dark; a man with endless resources of audacity and cunning; a man who would hesitate at no mean employment that could be offered to him, if it was employment that filled his pockets—­was this the instrument for which, in its present need, her hand was waiting?  Two of the necessities to be met, before she could take a single step in advance, were plainly present to her—­the necessity of knowing more of her father’s brother than she knew now; and the necessity of throwing him off his guard by concealing herself personally during the process of inquiry.  Resolutely self-dependent as she was, the inevitable spy’s work at the outset must be work delegated to another.  In her position, was there any ready human creature within reach but the vagabond downstairs?  Not one.  She thought of it anxiously, she thought of it long.  Not one!  There the choice was, steadily confronting her:  the choice of taking the Rogue, or of turning her back on the Purpose.

She paused in the middle of the room.  “What can he do at his worst?” she said to herself.  “Cheat me.  Well! if my money governs him for me, what then?  Let him have my money!” She returned mechanically to her place by the window.  A moment more decided her.  A moment more, and she took the first fatal step downward-she determined to face the risk, and try Captain Wragge.

At nine o’clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen’s door, and informed her (with the captain’s kind compliments) that breakfast was ready.

She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon.  The ex-waitress at Darch’s Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little black spots.