erally, but not always, in one of
the drawers of the library table. Sometimes he left them secured in this
way at night; sometimes he took them up to the bedroom with him in a
little basket. He had no regular times for leaving them or for taking
them away with him; he had no discoverable reason for now securing them
in the library-table drawer, and now again locking them up in some other
place. The inveterate willfulness and caprice of his proceedings in
these particulars defied every effort to reduce them to a system, and
baffled all attempts at calculating on them beforehand.

The hope of gaining positive information to act on, by laying artful
snares for him which he might fall into in his talk, proved, from the
outset, to be utterly futile.

In Magdalen's situation all experiments of this sort would have been in
the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With the admiral
they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer about from one subject
to another; his habit of keeping his tongue perpetually going, so long
as there was anybody, no matter whom, within reach of the sound of his
voice; his comical want of all dignity and reserve with his servants,
promised, in appearance, much, and performed in reality nothing. No
matter how diffidently or how respectfully Magdalen might presume on her
master's example, and on her master's evident liking for her, the old
man instantly discovered the advance she was making from her proper
position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a quaint good
humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt straightforwardness
of purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory as it may sound,
Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached; he kept the distance
between himself and his servant more effectually than if he had been the
proudest man in England. The systematic reserve of a superior toward an
inferior may be occasionally overcome--the systematic familiarity never.

Slowly the time dragged on. The fourth week came; and Magdalen had made
no new discoveries. The prospect was depressing in the last degree. Even
in the apparently hopeless event of her devising a means of getting at
the admiral's keys, she could not count on retaining possession of them
unsuspected more than a few hours--hours which might be utterly wasted
through her not knowing in what direction to begin the search. The Trust
might be locked up in any one of some twenty receptacles for papers,