The captain’s reception of his wife was not characterized by an instant’s unnecessary waste of time.  He looked distrustfully at her shoes—­raised himself on tiptoe—­set her bonnet straight for her with a sharp tug—–­said, in a loud whisper, “hold your tongue”—­and left her, for the time being, without further notice.  His welcome to Magdalen, beginning with the usual flow of words, stopped suddenly in the middle of the first sentence.  Captain Wragge’s eye was a sharp one, and it instantly showed him something in the look and manner of his old pupil which denoted a serious change.

There was a settled composure on her face which, except when she spoke, made it look as still and cold as marble.  Her voice was softer and more equable, her eyes were steadier, her step was slower than of old.  When she smiled, the smile came and went suddenly, and showed a little nervous contraction on one side of her mouth never visible there before.  She was perfectly patient with Mrs. Wragge; she treated the captain with a courtesy and consideration entirely new in his experience of her—­but she was interested in nothing.  The curious little shops in the back street; the high impending sea; the old town-hall on the beach; the pilots, the fishermen, the passing ships—­she noticed all these objects as indifferently as if Aldborough had been familiar to her from her infancy.  Even when the captain drew up at the garden-gate of North Shingles, and introduced her triumphantly to the new house, she hardly looked at it.  The first question she asked related not to her own residence, but to Noel Vanstone’s.

“How near to us does he live?” she inquired, with the only betrayal of emotion which had escaped her yet.

Captain Wragge answered by pointing to the fifth villa from North Shingles, on the Slaughden side of Aldborough.  Magdalen suddenly drew back from the garden-gate as he indicated the situation, and walked away by herself to obtain a nearer view of the house.  Captain Wragge looked after her, and shook his head, discontentedly.

“May I speak now?” inquired a meek voice behind him, articulating respectfully ten inches above the top of his straw hat.

The captain turned round, and confronted his wife.  The more than ordinary bewilderment visible in her face at once suggested to him that Magdalen had failed to carry out the directions in his letter; and that Mrs. Wragge had arrived at Aldborough without being properly aware of the total transformation to be accomplished in her identity and her name.  The necessity of setting this doubt at rest was too serious to be trifled with; and Captain Wragge instituted the necessary inquiries without a moment’s delay.

“Stand straight, and listen to me,” he began.  “I have a question to ask you.  Do you know whose Skin you are in at this moment?  Do you know that you are dead and buried in London; and that you have risen like a phoenix from the ashes of Mrs. Wragge?  No! you evidently don’t know it.  This is perfectly disgraceful.  What is your name?”