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.
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