She waited near the door, doubtful what to do next; it was certainly the drawing-room bell that had rung, and no other.  She waited, looking through the open doorway opposite, down the wilderness of the dismantled Hall.

A little consideration satisfied her that it would be best to go downstairs again, and wait there for a second summons fro m the bell.  On turning to leave the room, she happened to look back once more, and exactly at that moment she saw the door open at the opposite extremity of the Banqueting-Hall—­the door leading into the first of the apartments in the east wing.  A tall man came out, wearing his great coat and his hat, and rapidly approached the drawing-room.  His gait betrayed him, while he was still too far off for his features to be seen.  Before he was quite half-way across the Hall, Magdalen had recognized—­the admiral.

He looked, not irritated only, but surprised as well, at finding his parlor-maid waiting for him in the drawing-room, and inquired, sharply and suspiciously, what she wanted there?  Magdalen replied that she had come there to answer the bell.  His face cleared a little when he heard the explanation.  “Yes, yes; to be sure,” he said.  “I did ring, and then I forgot it.”  He pulled the sliding door back into its place as he spoke.  “Coals,” he resumed, impatiently, pointing to the empty scuttle.  “I rang for coals.”

Magdalen went back to the kitchen regions.  After communicating the admiral’s order to the servant whose special duty it was to attend to the fires, she returned to the pantry, and, gently closing the door, sat down alone to think.

It had been her impression in the drawing-room—­and it was her impression still—­that she had accidentally surprised Admiral Bartram on a visit to the east rooms, which, for some urgent reason of his own, he wished to keep a secret.  Haunted day and night by the one dominant idea that now possessed her, she leaped all logical difficulties at a bound, and at once associated the suspicion of a secret proceeding on the admiral’s part with the kindred suspicion which pointed to him as the depositary of the Secret Trust.  Up to this time it had been her settled belief that he kept all his important documents in one or other of the suite of rooms which he happened to be occupying for the time being.  Why—­she now asked herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion which had hitherto satisfied her mind—­why might he not lock some of them up in the other rooms as well?  The remembrance of the keys still concealed in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the reasonableness of this new view.  With one unimportant exception, those keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the north side of the house.  Might they not succeed with the cabinets and cupboards in the east rooms, on which she had never tried them, or thought of trying them, yet?  If there was a chance, however small, of turning them to better account than she had turned them thus far, it was a chance to be tried.  If there was a possibility, however remote, that the Trust might be hidden in any one of the locked repositories in the east wing, it was a possibility to be put to the test.  When?  Her own experience answered the question.  At the time when no prying eyes were open, and no accidents were to be feared—­when the house was quiet—­in the dead of night.