I am equally desirous—­for Mrs. Girdlestone’s sake, in the second place—­that this same person should be entirely ignorant that the legacy will pass into Mrs. Girdlestone’s possession, if your nephew is not married in the given time.  I know George’s easy, pliable disposition; I dread the attempts that will be made to practice on it; and I feel sure that the prudent course will be, to abstain from trusting him with secrets, the rash revelation of which might be followed by serious, and even dangerous results.

“State the conditions, therefore, to your nephew, as if they were your own.  Let him think they have been suggested to your mind by the new responsibilities imposed on you as a man of property, by your position in my will, and by your consequent anxiety to provide for the perpetuation of the family name.  If these reasons are not sufficient to satisfy him, there can be no objection to your referring him, for any further explanations which he may desire, to his wedding-day.

“I have done.  My last wishes are now confided to you, in implicit reliance on your honor, and on your tender regard for the memory of your friend.  Of the miserable circumstances which compel me to write as I have written here, I say nothing.  You will hear of them, if my life is spared, from my own lips—­for you will be the first friend whom I shall consult in my difficulty and distress.  Keep this letter strictly secret, and strictly in your own possession, until my requests are complied with.  Let no human being but yourself know where it is, on any pretense whatever.

“Believe me, dear Admiral Bartram, affectionately yours,

“NOEL VANSTONE.”

“Have you signed, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount.  “Let me look the letter over, if you please, before we seal it up.”

She read the letter carefully.  In Noel Vanstone’s close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page.  Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way.  She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter to the writer.

“Seal it, Mr. Noel,” she said, “with your own hand, and your own seal.”  She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again.  “Address the letter, sir,” she proceeded, “to Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex. Now, add these words, and sign them, above the address:  To be kept in your own possession, and to be opened by yourself only, on the day of my death—­or ‘Decease,’ if you prefer it—­Noel Vanstone. Have you done?  Let me look at it again.  Quite right in every particular.  Accept my congratulations, sir.  If your wife has not plotted her last plot for the Combe-Raven money, it is not your fault, Mr. Noel—­and not mine!”

Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, Noel Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations.  “There is my packing-up to be thought of now,” he said.  “I can’t go away without my warm things.”