“Damn it!” he broke out; “I can’t let you say that.  You have reason to think ill of me.  I have cheated you.  You never got your fair share of profit from the Entertainment, from first to last.  There! now the murder’s out!”

Magdalen smiled, and signed to him to come back to his chair.

“I know you cheated me,” she said, quietly.  “You were in the exercise of your profession, Captain Wragge.  I expected it when I joined you.  I made no complaint at the time, and I make none now.  If the money you took is any recompense for all the trouble I have given you, you are heartily welcome to it.”

“Will you shake hands on that?” asked the captain, with an awkwardness and hesitation strongly at variance with his customary ease of manner.

Magdalen gave him her hand.  He wrung it hard.  “You are a strange girl,” he said, trying to speak lightly.  “You have laid a hold on me that I don’t quite understand.  I’m half uncomfortable at taking the money from you now; and yet you don’t want it, do you?” He hesitated.  “I almost wish,” he said, “I had never met you on the Walls of York.”

“It is too late to wish that, Captain Wragge.  Say no more.  You only distress me—­say no more.  We have other subjects to talk about.  What were those words of caution which you had for my private ear?”

The captain took another turn in the room, and struggled back again into his every-day character.  He produced from his pocketbook Mrs. Lecount’s letter to her master, and handed it to Magdalen.

“There is the letter that might have ruined us if it had ever reached its address,” he said.  “Read it carefully.  I have a question to ask you when you have done.”

Magdalen read the letter.  “What is this proof,” she inquired, “which Mrs. Lecount relies on so confidently!”

“The very question I was going to ask you,” said Captain Wragge.  “Consult your memory of what happened when you tried that experiment in Vauxhall Walk.  Did Mrs. Lecount get no other chance against you than the chances you have told me of already?”

“She discovered that my face was disguised, and she heard me speak in my own voice.”

“And nothing more?”

“Nothing more.”

“Very good.  Then my interpretation of the letter is clearly the right one.  The proof Mrs. Lecount relies on is my wife’s infernal ghost story—­which is, in plain English, the story of Miss Bygrave having been seen in Miss Vanstone’s disguise; the witness being the very person who is afterward presented at Aldborough in the character of Miss Bygrave’s aunt.  An excellent chance for Mrs. Lecount, if she can only lay her hand at the right time on Mrs. Wragge, and no chance at all, if she can’t.  Make your mind easy on that point.  Mrs. Lecount and my wife have seen the last of each other.  In the meantime, don’t neglect the warning I give you, in giving you this letter.  Tear it up, for fear of accidents, but don’t forget it.”