patient curiosity to read
more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a
blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at which
she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her attention
anew--they were the first words she had met with in the letter which
directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of that
discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she made
any second attempt to return to the lost place:

"If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions--that is to say,
if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he
fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry,
within six calendar months from that time--it is my desire that he shall
not receive--"

She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a
hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye, and
gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.

She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with
old Mazey.

The veteran's eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list slippers
were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and fro on
his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that night by
the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have inevitably
pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: "Drunk again, Mazey;
drunk again."

"You young Jezebel!" said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of his
face, and a frown on the other. "The next time you take to night-walking
in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp eyes of yours
first, and make sure there's nobody else night walking in the garden
outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!"

Keeping fast hold of Magdalen's arm with one hand, he took the letter
from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked
the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy
was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that
horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks,
had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled
as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.

Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a chair
in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without uttering a
word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied himself on both
elbo