"The girl will be my ruin, unless I shut the hatches on her. She has shown her hand to-day in three different attempts to make me betray myself. By Heaven, she will succeed if she tries that long; but I have made a counter plot which, clever as she is, she can't evade. I have been beforehand with her, and won the confidence of the executors. I have also announced my determination to propose to-morrow for her. If she refuses, that's a sign that I let the hatch drop; if she accepts, hold up the hatch a while, and give her another chance."
The result of his proposal showed how unlooked for her answer had been.
"She's a move in advance again—clever she devil; I am quite thrown out. Proposed according to plan; was put off for a month. I think her demand of a month's time to consider means a month's time to run me to the end of my chain. My chain would run out in a week with her at the right end of it; so I suppose it must be once, twice, thrice, and down goes the hatch!"
The next entry was written with the sneer of a triumphant demon:
"Thought you would trip me, did you? Silly fool, to tamper with your crazy hatch-door! Don't you know that when it drops you will suffocate? So you expected me to be caught by Lady Juliana Ducie, did you? No, no, my bride of death, I have pored over her picture too often. But for your fine intention you shall suffer, Margaret Walsingham!
"My lady is a mighty fine-feathered bird for me to have fluttering round me. I have a mind to marry the marquis' daughter when the watch-dog of the castle has died of her little sickness; wouldn't that be fair play all round?"
The succeeding notes described two visits to London, in which the daring wretch had penetrated into the Marquis of Ducie's residence, and had private interviews with my lady, who seemed to be straining every nerve to win him from Miss Walsingham; and it closed with the ominous sentence:
"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey, and drop that hatch!"
The diary in the note-book had come to an end. Mortlake's secrets were hers now. Mortlake's course of crime was run, if she could live to give them to the world.
Margaret once more trimmed her candles, replenished the drowsy fire, paced up and down her room, and then sat down and commenced to copy such parts of the entries as bore directly upon the conspiracy.