It was a dull, airless evening.  Eastward, was the gray majesty of the sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle water.  Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass, closed the view darkly on all that lay beyond.  Westward, a lurid streak of sunset glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened the fringing trees on the far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little gleaming water-pools to pools of blood.  Nearer to the eye, the sullen flow of the tidal river Alde ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks; and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the bleak water-side, lay the lost little port of Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered coasting-vessels deserted on the oozy river-shore.  No fall of waves was heard on the beach, no trickling of waters bubbled audibly from the idle stream.  Now and then the cry of a sea-bird rose from the region of the marsh; and at intervals, from farmhouses far in the inland waste, the faint winding of horns to call the cattle home traveled mournfully through the evening calm.

Magdalen drew her hand from the captain’s arm, and led the way to the mound of the martello tower.  “I am weary of walking,” she said.  “Let us stop and rest here.”

She seated herself on the slope, and resting on her elbow, mechanically pulled up and scattered from her into the air the tufts of grass growing under her hand.  After silently occupying herself in this way for some minutes, she turned suddenly on Captain Wragge.  “Do I surprise you?” she asked, with a startling abruptness.  “Do you find me changed?”

The captain’s ready tact warned him that the time had come to be plain with her, and to reserve his flowers of speech for a more appropriate occasion.

“If you ask the question, I must answer it,” he replied.  “Yes, I do find you changed.”

She pulled up another tuft of grass.  “I suppose you can guess the reason?” she said.

The captain was wisely silent.  He only answered by a bow.

“I have lost all care for myself,” she went on, tearing faster and faster at the tufts of grass.  “Saying that is not saying much, perhaps, but it may help you to understand me.  There are things I would have died sooner than do at one time—­things it would have turned me cold to think of.  I don’t care now whether I do them or not.  I am nothing to myself; I am no more interested in myself than I am in these handfuls o f grass.  I suppose I have lost something.  What is it?  Heart?  Conscience?  I don’t know.  Do you?  W hat nonsense I am talking!  Who cares what I have lost?  It has gone; and there’s an end of it.  I suppose my outside is the best side of me—­and that’s left, at any rate.  I have not lost my good looks, have I?  There! there! never mind answering; don’t