“There it is!” said Mrs. Wragge.  “Omelette with herbs.  The landlady helped me.  And that’s what we’ve made of it.  Don’t you ask the captain for any when he comes in—­don’t, there’s a good soul.  It isn’t nice.  We had some accidents with it.  It’s been under the grate.  It’s been spilled on the stairs.  It’s scalded the landlady’s youngest boy—­he went and sat on it.  Bless you, it isn’t half as nice as it looks!  Don’t you ask for any.  Perhaps he won’t notice if you say nothing about it.  What do you think of my wrapper?  I should so like to have a white one.  Have you got a white one?  How is it trimmed?  Do tell me!”

The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on her lips.  Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious for the promised expression of Magdalen’s decision to pay his customary attention to questions of cookery.  When breakfast was over, he dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling her that she had his full permission to “give it to the dogs.”

“How does my little proposal look by daylight?” he asked, placing chairs for Magdalen and himself.  “Which is it to be:  ’Captain Wragge, take charge of me?’ or, ‘Captain Wragge, good-morning?’”

“You shall hear directly,” replied Magdalen.  “I have something to say first.  I told you, last night, that I had another object in view besides the object of earning my living on the stage—­”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Captain Wragge.  “Did you say, earning your living?”

“Certainly.  Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions to gain our daily bread.”

“What!!!” cried the captain, starting to his feet.  “The daughters of my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their own living?  Impossible—­wildly, extravagantly impossible!” He sat down again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury on him.

“You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,” she said, quietly.  “I will tell you what has happened before I go any further.”  She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find, and with as few details as possible.

Captain Wragge’s profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind.  The lawyer’s offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until that moment.

“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you are entirely deprived of present resources?”

“I have sold my jewelry and my dresses,” said Magdalen, impatient of his mean harping on the pecuniary string.  “If my want of experience keeps me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can afford to pay me.”

Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces, the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune, at—­say, a third of their real value.  In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation of this judicious man.