No one else was at hand, and the emergency was a serious one.  Strangers undertaking the responsibility might ignorantly jar on past recollections, which it would, perhaps, be the death of her to revive too soon.  Near relatives might, by their premature appearance at the bedside, produce the same deplorable result.  The alternative lay between irritating and alarming her by leaving her inquiries unanswered, or trusting Captain Wragge.  In the doctor’s opinion, the second risk was the least serious risk of the two—­and the captain was now seated at Magdalen’s bedside in discharge of the trust confided to him.

Would she ask the question which it had been the private object of all Captain Wragge’s preliminary talk lightly and pleasantly to provoke?  Yes; as soon as his silence gave her the opportunity, she asked it:  “Who was that friend of his living in the house?”

“You ought by rights to know him as well as I do,” said the captain.  “He is the son of one of your father’s old military friends, when your father was quartered with his regiment in Canada.  Your cheeks mustn’t flush up!  If they do, I shall go away.”

She was astonished, but not agitated.  Captain Wragge had begun by interesting her in the remote past, which she only knew by hearsay, before he ventured on the delicate ground of her own experience.

In a moment more she advanced to her next question:  “What was his name?”

“Kirke,” proceeded the captain.  “Did you never hear of his father, Major Kirke, commanding officer of the regiment in Canada?  Did you never hear that the major helped your father through a great difficulty, like the best of good fellows and good friends?”

Yes; she faintly fancied she had heard something about her father and an officer who had once been very good to him when he was a young man.  But she could not look back so long.  “Was Mr. Kirke poor?” Even Captain Wragge’s penetration was puzzled by that question.  He gave the true answer at hazard.  “No,” he said, “not poor.”

Her next inquiry showed what she had been thinking of.  “If Mr. Kirke was not poor, why did he come to live in that house?”

“She has caught me!” thought the captain.  “There is only one way out of it—­I must administer another dose of truth.  Mr. Kirke discovered you here by chance,” he proceeded, aloud, “very ill, and not nicely attended to.  Somebody was wanted to take care of you while you were not able to take care of yourself.  Why not Mr. Kirke?  He was the son of your father’s old friend—­which is the next thing to being your old friend.  Who had a better claim to send for the right doctor, and get the right nurse, when I was not here to cure you with my wonderful Pill?  Gently! gently! you mustn’t take hold of my superfine black coat-sleeve in that unceremonious manner.”

He put her hand back on the bed, but she was not to be checked in that way.  She persisted in asking another question.—­How came Mr. Kirke to know her?  She had never seen him; she had never heard of him in her life.