“Good!” cried the captain, closing his pocketbook again.  “The only difficulty that stood in our way is now cleared out of it.  Patience, Mr. Vanstone—­patience!  Let us take up my instructions again at the point where we dropped them.  Give me five minutes’ more attention, and you will see your way to your marriage as plainly as I see it.  On the day after to-morrow you declare you are tired of Aldborough, and Mrs. Lecount suggests St. Crux.  You don’t say yes or no on the spot; you take the next day to consider it, and you make up your mind the last thing at night to go to St. Crux the first thing in the morning.  Are you in the habit of superintending your own packing up, or do you usually shift all the trouble of it on Mrs. Lecount’s shoulders?”

“Lecount has all the trouble, of course; Lecount is paid for it!  But I don’t really go, do I?”

“You go as fast as horses can take you to the railway without having held any previous communication with this house, either personally or by letter.  You leave Mrs. Lecount behind to pack up your curiosities, to settle with the tradespeople, and to follow you to St. Crux the next morning.  The next morning is the tenth morning.  On the tenth morning she receives the letter from Zurich; and if you only carry out my instructions, Mr. Vanstone, as sure as you sit there, to Zurich she goes.”

Noel Vanstone’s color began to rise again, as the captain’s stratagem dawned on him at last in its true light.

“And what am I to do at St. Crux?” he inquired.

“Wait there till I call for you,” replied the captain.  “As soon as Mrs. Lecount’s back is turned, I will go to the church here and give the necessary notice of the marriage.  The same day or the next, I will travel to the address written down in my pocketbook, pick you up at the admiral’s, and take you on to London with me to get the license.  With that document in our possession, we shall be on our way back to Aldborough while Mrs. Lecount is on her way out to Zurich; and before she starts on her return journey, you and my niece will be man and wife!  There are your future prospects for you.  What do you think of them?”

“What a head you have got!” cried Noel Vanstone, in a sudden outburst of enthusiasm.  “You’re the most extraordinary man I ever met with.  One would think you had done nothing all your life but take people in.”

Captain Wragge received that unconscious tribute to his native genius with the complacency of a man who felt that he thoroughly deserved it.

“I have told you already, my dear sir,” he said, modestly, “that I never do things by halves.  Pardon me for reminding you that we have no time for exchanging mutual civilities.  Are you quite sure about your instructions?  I dare not write them down for fear of accidents.  Try the system of artificial memory; count your instructions off after me, on your thumb and your four fingers.  To-day you tell Mrs. Lecount I have tried to take