Excerpt from The Bolted Door He had always announced his most impossible projects with a serious mien, and Natalie had never known whether to be amused or alarmed. He had cared for her in his curious way, and she had felt that, whatever happened, her future, at least, was to be secure. But this! The tardy gratitude for his years of care and attention, the belated affection that had flowed forth in tears at his death were hers no more, and the springs of her charity were dried at their source. To have planned such a fate as that to which he had assigned her showed a refinement of cruelty of which she had not believed him capable. Miss Judson pushed her chair back from the break fast tray, her coffee and eggs untasted, and rang a bell. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.