“You complained of fatigue, sir, a few minutes since,” she said, dropping all further conversation with Magdalen and addressing her master.  “Will you go indoors and rest?”

The proprietor of Sea-view Cottage had hitherto confined himself to bowing, simpering and admiring Magdalen through his half-closed eyelids.  There was no mistaking the sudden flutter and agitation in his manner, and the heightened color in his wizen little face.  Even the reptile temperament of Noel Vanstone warmed under the influence of the sex:  he had an undeniably appreciative eye for a handsome woman, and Magdalen’s grace and beauty were not thrown away on him.

“Will you go indoors, sir, and rest?” asked the housekeeper, repeating her quest ion.

“Not yet, Lecount,” said her master.  “I fancy I feel stronger; I fancy I can go on a little.”  He turned simpering to Magdalen, and added, in a lower tone:  “I have found a new interest in my walk, Miss Bygrave.  Don’t desert us, or you will take the interest away with you.”

He smiled and smirked in the highest approval of the ingenuity of his own compliment—­from which Captain Wragge dexterously diverted the housekeeper’s attention by ranging himself on her side of the path and speaking to her at the same moment.  They all four walked on slowly.  Mrs. Lecount said nothing more.  She kept fast hold of her master’s arm, and looked across him at Magdalen with the dangerous expression of inquiry more marked than ever in her handsome black eyes.  That look was not lost on the wary Wragge.  He shifted his indicative camp-stool from the left hand to the right, and opened his scientific batteries on the spot.

“A busy scene, Mrs. Lecount,” said the captain, politely waving his camp-stool over the sea and the passing ships.  “The greatness of England, ma’am—­the true greatness of England.  Pray observe how heavily some of those vessels are laden!  I am often inclined to wonder whether the British sailor is at all aware, when he has got his cargo on board, of the Hydrostatic importance of the operation that he has performed.  If I were suddenly transported to the deck of one of those ships (which Heaven forbid, for I suffer at sea); and if I said to a member of the crew:  ’Jack! you have done wonders; you have grasped the Theory of Floating Vessels’—­how the gallant fellow would stare!  And yet on that theory Jack’s life depends.  If he loads his vessel one-thirtieth part more than he ought, what happens?  He sails past Aldborough, I grant you, in safety.  He enters the Thames, I grant you again, in safety.  He gets on into the fresh water as far, let us say, as Greenwich; and—­down he goes!  Down, ma’am, to the bottom of the river, as a matter of scientific certainty!”

Here he paused, and left Mrs. Lecount no polite alternative but to request an explanation.