“You had a disturbed night, I am afraid?” said the captain, politely opening the door for her.

“I fell asleep once or twice,” she answered, carelessly.  “I suppose my nerves are a little shaken.  The bold black eyes of that man who stared so rudely at me yesterday evening seemed to be looking at me again in my dreams.  If we see him to-day, and if he annoys me any more, I must trouble you to speak to him.  We will meet here again at two o’clock.  Don’t be hard with Mrs. Wragge; teach her what she must learn as tenderly as you can.”

With those words she left him, and went upstairs.

She lay down on her bed with a heavy sigh, and tried to sleep.  It was useless.  The dull weariness of herself which now possessed her was not the weariness which finds its remedy in repose.  She rose again and sat by the window, looking out listlessly over the sea.

A weaker nature than hers would not have felt the shock of Frank’s desertion as she had felt it—­as she was feeling it still.  A weaker nature would have found refuge in indignation and comfort in tears.  The passionate strength of Magdalen’s love clung desperately to the sinking wreck of its own delusion-clung, until she tore herself from it, by plain force of will.  All that her native pride, her keen sense of wrong could do, was to shame her from dwelling on the thoughts which still caught their breath of life from the undying devotion of the past; which still perversely ascribed Frank’s heartless farewell to any cause but the inborn baseness of the man who had written it.  The woman never lived yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the object of that love was unworthy of her.  All she can do is to struggle against it in secret—­to sink in the contest if she is weak; to win her way through it if she is strong, by a process of self-laceration which is, of all moral remedies applied to a woman’s nature, the most dangerous and the most desperate; of all moral changes, the change that is surest to mark her for life.  Magdalen’s strong nature had sustained her through the struggle; and the issue of it had left her what she now was.

After sitting by the window for nearly an hour, her eyes looking mechanically at the view, her mind empty of all impressions, and conscious of no thoughts, she shook off the strange waking stupor that possessed her, and rose to prepare herself for the serious business of the day.

She went to the wardrobe and took down from the pegs two bright, delicate muslin dresses, which had been made for summer wear at Combe-Raven a year since, and which had been of too little value to be worth selling when she parted with her other possessions.  After placing these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe once more.  It only contained one other summer dress—­the plain alpaca gown which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.  This she left in its place, resolving not to wear it—­less from any dread that the housekeeper might recognize a pattern too quiet to be noticed, and too common to be remembered, than from the conviction that it was neither gay enough nor becoming enough for her purpose.  After taking a plain white muslin scarf, a pair of light gray kid gloves, and a garden-hat of Tuscan straw, from the drawers of the wardrobe, she locked it, and put the key carefully in her pocket.