Not a word of comment on the disaster of the morning escaped him when Magdalen returned and found him at his post.  His flow of language seemed at last to have run dry.  “I told you what Mrs. Wragge would do,” he said, “and Mrs. Wragge has done it.”  He sat unflinchingly at the window with a patience which Mrs. Lecount herself could not have surpassed.  The one active proceeding in which he seemed to think it necessary to engage was performed by deputy.  He sent the servant to the inn to hire a chaise and a fast horse, and to say that he would call himself before noon that day and tell the hostler when the vehicle would be wanted.  Not a sign of impatience escaped him until the time drew near for the departure of the early coach.  Then the captain’s curly lips began to twitch with anxiety, and the captain’s restless fingers beat the devil’s tattoo unremittingly on the window-pane.

The coach appeared at last, and drew up at Sea View.  In a minute more, Captain Wragge’s own observation informed him that one among the passengers who left Aldborough that morning was—­Mrs. Lecount.

The main uncertainty disposed of, a serious question—­suggested by the events of the morning—­still remained to be solved.  Which was the destined end of Mrs. Lecount’s journey—­Zurich or St. Crux?  That she would certainly inform her master of Mrs. Wragge’s ghost story, and of every other disclosure in relation to names and places which might have escaped Mrs. Wragge’s lips, was beyond all doubt.  But of the two ways at her disposal of doing the mischief—­either personally or by letter—­it was vitally important to the captain to know which she had chosen.  If she had gone to the admiral’s, no choice would be left him but to follow the coach, to catch the train by which she traveled, and to outstrip her afterward on the drive from the station in Essex to St. Crux.  If, on the contrary, she had been contented with writing to her master, it would only be necessary to devise measures for intercepting the letter.  The captain decided on going to the post-office, in the first place.  Assuming that the housekeeper had written, she would not have left the letter at the mercy of the servant—­she would have seen it safely in the letter-box before leaving Aldborough.

“Good-morning,” said the captain, cheerfully addressing the postmaster.  “I am Mr. Bygrave of North Shingles.  I think you have a letter in the box, addressed to Mr.—?”

The postmaster was a short man, and consequently a man with a proper idea of his own importance.  He solemnly checked Captain Wragge in full career.

“When a letter is once posted, sir,” he said, “nobody out of the office has any business with it until it reaches its address.”

The captain was not a man to be daunted, even by a postmaster.  A bright idea struck him.  He took out his pocketbook, in which Admiral Bartram’s address was written, and returned to the charge.

“Suppose a letter has been wrongly directed by mistake?” he began.  “And suppose the writer wants to correct the error after the letter is put into the box?”