poke before?"

"Because it is necessary for both our sakes. I will tell you plainly
just what I have heard: your servant Souchey has been with me, and he
says that you have it."

"Souchey!"

"Yes; Souchey. It seemed strange enough to me, for I had always thought
him to be your friend."

"Souchey has told you that I have got it?"

"He says that it is in that desk," and the Jew pointed to the old
depository of all the treasures which Nina possessed.

"He is a liar."

"I think he is so, though I cannot tell why he should have so lied; but
I think he is a liar; I do not believe that it is there; but in such a
matter it is well that the fact should be put beyond all dispute. You
will not object to my looking into the desk?" He had come there with a
fixed resolve that he would demand to search among her papers. It was
very unpleasant to him, and he knew that his doing so would be painful
to her; but he told himself that it would be best for them both that he
should persevere.

"Will you open it, or shall I?" he said; and as he spoke, she looked
into his face, and saw that all tenderness and love were banished from
it, and that the hard suspicious greed of the Jew was there instead.

"I will not unlock it," she said; "there is the key, and you can do as
you please." Then she flung the key upon the table, and stood with her
back up against the wall, at some ten paces distant from the spot where
the desk stood. He took up the key, and placed it remorselessly in the
lock, and opened the desk, and brought all the papers forth on to the
table which stood in the middle of the room.

"Are all my letters to be read?" she asked.

"Nothing is to be read," he said.

"Not that I should mind it; or at least I should have cared but little
ten minutes since. There are words there may make you think I have been
a fool, but a fool only too faithful to you."

He made no answer to this, but moved the papers one by one carefully
till he came to a folded document larger than the others. Why dwell
upon it? Of course it was the deed for which he was searching. Nina,
when from her station by the wall she saw that there was something in
her lover's hands of which she had no knowledge--something which had
been in her own desk without her privity--came forward a step or two,
looking with all her eyes. But she did not speak till he had spoken;
nor did he speak at once. He slowly unfolded the document, and perused
the heading of it; then