If he had been twenty years younger, those remedies might have failed him.  But where is the man to be found whose internal policy succumbs to revolution when that man is on the wrong side of fifty?  Exercise and change of place gave the captain back into the possession of himself.  He recovered the lost sense of the flavor of his cigar, and recalled his wandering attention to the question of his approaching absence from Aldborough.  A few minutes’ consideration satisfied his mind that Magdalen’s outbreak had forced him to take the course of all others which, on a fair review of existing emergencies, it was now most desirable to adopt.

Captain Wragge’s inquiries on the evening when he and Magdalen had drunk tea at Sea View had certainly informed him that the housekeeper’s brother possessed a modest competence; that his sister was his nearest living relative; and that there were some unscrupulous cousins on the spot who were anxious to usurp the place in his will which properly belonged to Mrs. Lecount.  Here were strong motives to take the housekeeper to Zurich when the false report of her brother’s relapse reached England.  But if any idea of Noel Vanstone’s true position dawned on her in the meantime, who could say whether she might not, at the eleventh hour, prefer asserting her large pecuniary interest in her master, to defending her small pecuniary interest at her brother’s bedside?  While that question remained undecided, the plain necessity of checking the growth of Noel Vanstone’s intimacy with the family at North Shingles did not admit of a doubt; and of all means of effecting that object, none could be less open to suspicion than the temporary removal of the household from their residence at Aldborough.  Thoroughly satisfied with the soundness of this conclusion, Captain Wragge made straight for Sea-view Cottage, to apologize and explain before the carriage came and the departure took place.

Noel Vanstone was easily accessible to visitors; he was walking in the garden before breakfast.  His disappointment and vexation were freely expressed when he heard the news which his friend had to communicate.  The captain’s fluent tongue, however, soon impressed on him the necessity of resignation to present circumstances.  The bare hint that the “pious fraud” might fail after all, if anything happened in the ten days’ interval to enlighten Mrs. Lecount, had an instant effect in making Noel Vanstone as patient and as submissive as could be wished.

“I won’t tell you where we are going, for two good reasons,” said Captain Wragge, when his preliminary explanations were completed.  “In the first place, I haven’t made up my mind yet; and, in the second place, if you don’t know where our destination is, Mrs. Lecount can’t worm it out of you.  I have not the least doubt she is watching us at this moment from behind her window-curtain.  When she asks what I wanted with you this morning, tell her I came to say good-by for