“I accept the terms,” said Captain Wragge, getting briskly on his legs again.  “Subject, of course, to the conditions agreed on between us.  We part on the wedding-day.  I don’t ask where you go:  you don’t ask where I go.  From that time forth we are strangers to each other.”

Magdalen rose slowly from the mound.  A hopeless depression, a sullen despair, showed itself in her look and manner.  She refused the captain’s offered hand; and her tones, when she answered him, were so low that he could hardly hear her.

“We understand each other,” she said; “and we can now go back.  You may introduce me to Mrs. Lecount to-morrow.”

“I must ask a few questions first,” said the captain, gravely.  “There are more risks to be run in this matter, and more pitfalls in our way, than you seem to suppose.  I must know the whole history of your morning call on Mrs. Lecount before I put you and that woman on speaking terms with each other.”

“Wait till to-morrow,” she broke out impatiently.  “Don’t madden me by talking about it to-night.”

The captain said no more.  They turned their faces toward Aldborough, and walked slowly back.

By the time they reached the houses night had overtaken them.  Neither moon nor stars were visible.  A faint noiseless breeze blowing from the land had come with the darkness.  Magdalen paused on the lonely public walk to breathe the air more freely.  After a while she turned her face from the breeze and looked out toward the sea.  The immeasurable silence of the calm waters, lost in the black void of night, was awful.  She stood looking into the darkness, as if its mystery had no secrets for her—­she advanced toward it slowly, as if it drew her by some hidden attraction into itself.

“I am going down to the sea,” she said to her companion.  “Wait here, and I will come back.”

He lost sight of her in an instant; it was as if the night had swallowed her up.  He listened, and counted her footsteps by the crashing of them on the shingle in the deep stillness.  They retreated slowly, further and further away into the night.  Suddenly the sound of them ceased.  Had she paused on her course or had she reached one of the strips of sand left bare by the ebbing tide?

He waited, and listened anxiously.  The time passed, and no sound reached him.  He still listened, with a growing distrust of the darkness.  Another moment, and there came a sound from the invisible shore.  Far and faint from the beach below, a long cry moaned through the silence.  Then all was still once more.

In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and to call to her.  Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly advancing caught his ear.  He waited an instant, and the figure of a man passed quickly along the walk between him and the sea.  It was too dark to discern anything of the stranger’s face; it was only possible to see that he was a tall man—­as tall as that officer in the merchant-service whose name was Kirke.