“You shall have no reserve to complain of now,” pursued Magdalen.  “I tell you plainly, if events had not happened as they did, you would have assisted me.  If Michael Vanstone had not died, I should have gone to Brighton, and have found my way safely to his acquaintance under an assumed name.  I had money enough with me to live on respectably for many months together.  I would have employed that time—­I would have waited a whole year, if necessary, to destroy Mrs. Lecount’s influence over him—­and I would have ended by getting that influence, on my own terms, into my own hands.  I had the advantage of years, the advantage of novelty, the advantage of downright desperation, all on my side, and I should have succeeded.  Before the year was out—­before half the year was out—­you should have seen Mrs. Lecount dismissed by her master, and you should have seen me taken into the house in her place, as Michael Vanstone’s adopted daughter—­as the faithful friend—­who had saved him from an adventuress in his old age.  Girls no older than I am have tried deceptions as hopeless in appearance as mine, and have carried them through to the end.  I had my story ready; I had my plans all considered; I had the weak point in that old man to attack in my way, which Mrs. Lecount had found out before me to attack in hers, and I tell you again I should have succeeded.”

“I think you would,” said the captain.  “And what next?”

“Mr. Michael Vanstone would have changed his man of business next.  You would have succeeded to the place; and those clever speculations on which he was so fond of venturing would have cost him the fortunes of which he had robbed my sister and myself.  To the last farthing, Captain Wragge, as certainly as you sit there, to the last farthing!  A bold conspiracy, a shocking deception—­wasn’t it?  I don’t care!  Any conspiracy, any deception, is justified to my conscience by the vile law which has left us helpless.  You talked of my reserve just now.  Have I dropped it at last?  Have I spoken out at the eleventh hour?”

The captain laid his hand solemnly on his heart, and launched himself once more on his broadest flow of language.

“You fill me with unavailing regret,” he said.  “If that old man had lived, what a crop I might have reaped from him!  What enormous transactions in moral agriculture it might have been my privilege to carry on! Ars longa,” said Captain Wragge, pathetically drifting into Latin—­“vita brevis! Let us drop a tear on the lost opportunities of the past, and try what the present can do to console us.  One conclusion is clear to my mind—­the experiment you proposed to try with Mr. Michael Vanstone is totally hopeless, my dear girl, in the case of his son.  His son is impervious to all common forms of pecuniary temptation.  You may trust my solemn assurance,” continued the captain, speaking with an indignant recollection of the answer to his advertisement in the Times, “when I inform you that Mr. Noel Vanstone is emphatically the meanest of mankind.”