To-day is the tenth of December.

There are just three weeks.

By the bye, Matilde, I hope you have put the will in a safe place.

Where is it ?" Matilde paused two seconds before she answered.

Though she could not imagine in what way Gregorio could improve his desperate position by getting the will out of her hands, nor by tampering with it, of which she knew him to be quite capable, yet, on general principles, she distrusted him so wholly and profoundly that she determined to deceive him as to the place in which she kept it.