of the neighborhood.  We have a picnic hamper with us, which marks our purpose in the public eye.  You disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet, and veil of Mrs. Wragge’s; we turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip for the day—­you and I on the front seat, Mrs. Wragge and the hamper behind.  Good again.  Once on the highroad, what do we do?  Drive to the first station beyond York, northward, southward, or eastward, as may be hereafter determined.  No lawyer’s clerk is waiting for you there.  You and Mrs. Wragge get out—­first opening the hamper at a convenient opportunity.  Instead of containing chickens and Champagne, it contains a carpet-bag, with the things you want for the night.  You take your tickets for a place previously determined on, and I take the chaise back to York.  Arrived once more in this house, I collect the luggage left behind, and send for the woman downstairs.  ’Ladies so charmed with such and such a place (wrong place of course), that they have determined to stop there.  Pray accept the customary week’s rent, in place of a week’s warning.  Good day.’  Is the clerk looking for me at the York terminus?  Not he.  I take my ticket under his very nose; I follow you with the luggage along your line of railway—­and where is the trace left of your departure?  Nowhere.  The fairy has vanished; and the legal authorities are left in the lurch.”

“Why do you talk of difficulties?” asked Magdalen.  “The difficulties seem to be provided for.”

“All but ONE,” said Captain Wragge, with an ominous emphasis on the last word.  “The Grand Difficulty of humanity from the cradle to the grave—­Money.”  He slowly winked his green eye; sighed with deep feeling; and buried his insolvent hands in his unproductive pockets.

“What is the money wanted for?” inquired Magdalen.

“To pay my bills,” replied the captain, with a touching simplicity.  “Pray understand!  I never was—­and never shall be—­personally desirous of paying a single farthing to any human creature on the habitable globe.  I am speaking in your interest, not in mine.”

“My interest?”

“Certainly.  You can’t get safely away from York to-morrow without the chaise.  And I can’t get the chaise without money.  The landlady’s brother will lend it if he sees his sister’s bill receipted, and if he gets his day’s hire beforehand—­not otherwise.  Allow me to put the transaction in a business light.  We have agreed that I am to be remunerated for my course of dramatic instruction out of your future earnings on the stage.  Very good.  I merely draw on my future prospects; and you, on whom those prospects depend, are naturally my banker.  For mere argument’s sake, estimate my share in your first year’s salary at the totally inadequate value of a hundred pounds.  Halve that sum; quarter that sum—­”

“How much do you want?” said Magdalen, impatiently.

Captain Wragge was sorely tempted to take the Reward at the top of the handbills as his basis of calculation.  But he felt the vast future importance of present moderation; and actually wanting some twelve or thirteen pounds, he merely doubled the amount, and said, “Five-and-twenty.”