trouble yourself to pay me compliments.  I have been admired enough to-day.  First the sailor, and then Mr. Noel Vanstone—­enough for any woman’s vanity, surely!  Have I any right to call myself a woman?  Perhaps not:  I am only a girl in my teens.  Oh, me, I feel as if I was forty!” She scattered the last fragments of grass to the winds; and turning her back on the captain, let her head droop till her cheek touched the turf bank.  “It feels soft and friendly,” she said, nestling to it with a hopeless tenderness horrible to see.  “It doesn’t cast me off.  Mother Earth!  The only mother I have left!”

Captain Wragge looked at her in silent surprise.  Such experience of humanity as he possessed was powerless to sound to its depths the terrible self-abandonment which had burst its way to the surface in her reckless words—­which was now fast hurrying her to actions more reckless still.  “Devilish odd!” he thought to himself, uneasily.  “Has the loss of her lover turned her brain?” He considered for a minute longer and then spoke to her.  “Leave it till to-morrow,” suggested the captain confidentially.  “You are a little tired to-night.  No hurry, my dear girl—­no hurry.”

She raised her head instantly, and looked round at him with the same angry resolution, with the same desperate defiance of herself, which he had seen in her face on the memorable day at York when she had acted before him for the first time.  “I came here to tell you what is in my mind,” she said; “and I will tell it!” She seated herself upright on the slope; and clasping her hands round her knees, looked out steadily, straight before her, at the slowly darkening view.  In that strange position, she waited until she had composed herself, and then addressed the captain, without turning her head to look round at him, in these words: 

“When you and I first met,” she began, abruptly, “I tried hard to keep my thoughts to myself.  I know enough by this time to know that I failed.  When I first told you at York that Michael Vanstone had ruined us, I believe you guessed for yourself that I, for one, was determined not to submit to it.  Whether you guessed or not, it is so.  I left my friends with that determination in my mind; and I feel it in me now stronger, ten times stronger, than ever.”

“Ten times stronger than ever,” echoed the captain.  “Exactly so—­the natural result of firmness of character.”

“No—­the natural result of having nothing else to think of.  I had something else to think of before you found me ill in Vauxhall Walk.  I have nothing else to think of now.  Remember that, if you find me for the future always harping on the same string.  One question first.  Did you guess what I meant to do on that morning when you showed me the newspaper, and when I read the account of Michael Vanstone’s death?”

“Generally,” replied Captain Wragge—­“I guessed, generally, that you proposed dipping your hand into his purse and taking from it (most properly) what was your own.  I felt deeply hurt at the time by your not permitting me to assist you.  Why is she so reserved with me? (I remarked to myself)—­why is she so unreasonably reserved?”