She looked up in Carmina's face.

A ghastly stare, through half-closed eyes, showed death in life, blankly returning her look. The shock had struck Carmina with a stony calm. She had not started, she had not swooned. Rigid, immovable, there she sat; voiceless and tearless; insensible even to touch; her arms hanging down; her clenched hands resting on either side of her.

Teresa grovelled and groaned at her feet. Those ferocious hands that had laid the slanderer prostrate on the floor, feebly beat her bosom and her gray head. "Oh, Saints beloved of God! Oh, blessed Virgin, mother of Christ, spare my child, my sweet child!" She rose in wild despair—she seized Benjulia, and madly shook him. "Who are you? How dare you touch her? Give her to me, or I'll be the death of you. Oh, my Carmina, is it sleep that holds you? Wake! wake! wake!"

"Listen to me," said Benjulia, sternly.

She dropped on the sofa by Carmina's side, and lifted one of the cold clenched hands to her lips. The tears fell slowly over her haggard face. "I am very fond of her, sir," she said humbly. "I'm only an old woman. See what a dreadful welcome my child gives to me. It's hard on an old woman—hard on an old woman!"

His self-possession was not disturbed—even by this.

"Do you know what I am?" he asked. "I am a doctor. Leave her to me."

"He's a doctor. That's good. A doctor's good. Yes, yes. Does the old man know this doctor—the kind old man?" She looked vacantly for Mr. Gallilee. He was bending over his wife, sprinkling water on her deathly face.

Teresa got on her feet, and pointed to Mrs. Gallilee. "The breath of that She-Devil poisons the air," she said. "I must take my child out of it. To my place, sir, if you please. Only to my place."

She attempted to lift Carmina from the sofa—and drew back, breathlessly watching her. Her rigid face faintly relaxed; her eyelids closed, and quivered.

Mr. Gallilee looked up from his wife. "Will one of you help me?" he asked. His tone struck Benjulia. It was the hushed tone of sorrow—no more.

"I'll see to it directly." With that reply, Benjulia turned to Teresa. "Where is your place?" he said. "Far or near?"

"The message," she answered confusedly. "The message says." She signed to him to look in her hand-bag—dropped on the floor.

He found Carmina's telegram, containing the address of the lodgings. The house was close by. After some consideration, he sent the nurse into the bedroom, with instructions to bring him the blankets off the bed. In the minute that followed, he examined Mrs. Gallilee. "There's nothing to be frightened about. Let her maid attend to her."

Mr. Gallilee again surprised Benjulia. He turned from his wife, and looked at Carmina. "For God's sake, don't leave her here!" he broke out. "After what she has heard, this house is no place for her. Give her to the old nurse!"

Benjulia only answered, as he had answered already—"I'll see to it." Mr. Gallilee persisted. "Is there any risk in moving her?" he asked.

"It's the least of two risks. No more questions! Look to your wife."

Mr. Gallilee obeyed in silence.

When he lifted his head again, and rose to ring the bell for the maid, the room was silent and lonely. A little pale frightened face peeped out through the bedroom door. Zo ventured in. Her father caught her in his arms, and kissed her as he had never kissed her yet. His eyes were wet with tears. Zo noticed that he never said a word about mamma. The child saw the change in her father, as Benjulia had seen it. She shared one human feeling with her big friend—she, too, was surprised.



CHAPTER XLVI.

THE first signs of reviving life had begun to appear, when Marceline answered the bell. In a few minutes more, it was possible to raise Mrs. Gallilee and to place her on the sofa. Having so far assisted the servant, Mr. Gallilee took Zo by the hand, and drew back. Daunted by the terrible scene which she had witnessed from her hiding-place, the child stood by her father's side in silence. The two waited together, watching Mrs. Gallilee.

She looked wildly round the room. Discovering that she was alone with the members of her family, she became composed: her mind slowly recovered its balance. Her first thought was for herself.

"Has that woman disfigured me?" she said to the maid.

Knowing nothing of what had happened, Marceline was at a loss to understand her. "Bring me a glass," she said. The maid found a hand-glass in the bedroom, and presented it to her. She looked at herself—and drew a long breath of relief. That first anxiety at an end, she spoke to her husband.

"Where is Carmina?"

"Out of the house—thank God!"

The answer seemed to bewilder her: she appealed to Marceline.

"Did he say, thank God?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Can you tell me nothing? Who knows where Carmina has gone?"

"Joseph knows, ma'am. He heard Dr. Benjulia give the address to the cabman." With that answer, she turned anxiously to her master. "Is Miss Carmina seriously ill, sir?"

Her mistress spoke again, before Mr. Gallilee could reply. "Marceline! send Joseph up here."

"No," said Mr. Gallilee.

His wife eyed him with astonishment. "Why not?" she asked.

He said quietly, "I forbid it."

Mrs. Gallilee addressed herself to the maid. "Go to my room, and bring me another bonnet and a veil. Stop!" She tried to rise, and sank back. "I must have something to strengthen me. Get the sal volatile."

Marceline left the room. Mr. Gallilee followed her as far as the door—still leading his little daughter.

"Go back, my dear, to your sister in the schoolroom," he said. "I am distressed, Zo; be a good girl, and you will console me. Say the same to Maria. It will be dull for you, I am afraid. Be patient, my child, and try to bear it for a while."

"May I whisper something?" said Zo. "Will Carmina die?"

"God forbid!"

"Will they bring her back here?"

In her eagerness, the child spoke above a whisper. Mrs. Gallilee heard the question, and answered it.

"They will bring Carmina back," she said, "the moment I can get out."

Zo looked at her father. "Do you say that?" she asked.

He shook his head gravely, and told her again to go to the schoolroom. On the first landing she stopped, and looked back. "I'll be good, papa," she said—and went on up the stairs.

Having reached the schoolroom, she became the object of many questions—not one of which she answered. Followed by the dog, she sat down in a corner. "What are you thinking about?" her sister inquired. This time she was willing to reply. "I'm thinking about Carmina."

Mr. Gallilee closed the door when Zo left him. He took a chair, without speaking to his wife or looking at her.

"What are you here for?" she asked.

"I must wait," he said.

"What for?"

"To see what you do."

Marceline returned, and administered a dose of sal volatile. Strengthened by the stimulant, Mrs. Gallilee was able to rise. "My head is giddy," she said, as she took the maid's arm; "but I think I can get downstairs with your help."

Mr. Gallilee silently followed them out.

At the head of the stairs the giddiness increased. Firm as her resolution might be, it gave way before the bodily injury which Mrs. Gallilee had received. Her husband's help was again needed to take her to her bedroom. She stopped them at the ante-chamber; still obstinately bent on following her own designs. "I shall be better directly," she said; "put me on the sofa." Marceline relieved her of her bonnet and veil, and asked respectfully if there was any other service required. She looked defiantly at her husband, and reiterated the order—"Send for Joseph." Intelligent resolution is sometimes shaken; the inert obstinacy of a weak creature, man or animal, is immovable. Mr. Gallilee dismissed the maid with these words: "You needn't wait, my good girl—I'll speak to Joseph myself, downstairs."

His wife heard him with amazement and contempt. "Are you in your right senses?" she asked.

He paused on his way out. "You were always hard and headstrong," he said sadly; "I knew that. A cleverer man than I am might—I suppose it's possible—a clear-headed man might have found out how wicked you are." She lay, thinking; indifferent to anything he could say to her. "Are you not ashamed?" he asked wonderingly. "And not even sorry?" She paid no heed to him. He left her.

Descending to the hall, he was met by Joseph. "Doctor Benjulia has come back, sir. He wishes to see you."

"Where is he?"

"In the library."

"Wait, Joseph; I have something to say to you. If your mistress asks where they have taken Miss Carmina, you mustn't—this is my order, Joseph—you mustn't tell her. If you have mentioned it to any of the other servants—it's quite likely they may have asked you, isn't it?" he said, falling into his old habit for a moment. "If you have mentioned it to the others," he resumed, "they mustn't tell her. That's all, my good man; that's all."

To his own surprise, Joseph found himself regarding his master with a feeling of respect. Mr. Gallilee entered the library.

"How is she?" he asked, eager for news of Carmina.

"The worse for being moved," Benjulia replied. "What about your wife?"

Answering that question, Mr. Gallilee mentioned the precautions that he had taken to keep the secret of Teresa's address.

"You need be under no anxiety about that," said Benjulia. "I have left orders that Mrs. Gallilee is not to be admitted. There is a serious necessity for keeping her out. In these cases of partial catalepsy, there is no saying when the change may come. When it does come, I won't answer for her niece's reason, if those two see each other again. Send for you own medical man. The girl is his patient, and he is the person on whom the responsibility rests. Let the servant take my card to him directly. We can meet in consultation at the house."

He wrote a line on one of his visiting cards. It was at once sent to Mr. Null.

"There's another matter to be settled before I go," Benjulia proceeded. "Here are some papers, which I have received from your lawyer, Mr. Moot. They relate to a slander, which your wife unfortunately repeated—"

Mr. Gallilee got up from his chair. "Don't take my mind back to that—pray don't!" he pleaded earnestly. "I can't bear it, Doctor Benjulia—I can't bear it! Please to excuse my rudeness: it isn't intentional—I don't know myself what's the matter with me. I've always led a quiet life, sir; I'm not fit for such things as these. Don't suppose I speak selfishly. I'll do what I can, if you will kindly spare me."

He might as well have appealed to the sympathy of the table at which they were sitting. Benjulia was absolutely incapable of understanding the state of mind which those words revealed.

"Can you take these papers to your wife?" he asked. "I called here this evening—being the person to blame—to set the matter right. As it is, I leave her to make the discovery for herself. I desire to hold no more communication with your wife. Have you anything to say to me before I go?"

"Only one thing. Is there any harm in my calling at the house, to ask how poor Carmina goes on?"

"Ask as often as you like—provided Mrs. Gallilee doesn't accompany you. If she's obstinate, it may not be amiss to give your wife a word of warning. In my opinion, the old nurse is not likely to let her off, next time, with her life. I've had a little talk with that curious foreign savage. I said, 'You have committed, what we consider in England, a murderous assault. If Mrs. Gallilee doesn't mind the public exposure, you may find yourself in a prison.' She snapped her fingers in my face. 'Suppose I find myself with the hangman's rope round my neck,' she said, 'what do I care, so long as Carmina is safe from her aunt?' After that pretty answer, she sat down by her girl's bedside, and burst out crying."

Mr. Gallilee listened absently: his mind still dwelt on Carmina.

"I meant well," he said, "when I asked you to take her out of this house. It's no wonder if I was wrong. What I am too stupid to understand is—why you allowed her to be moved."

Benjulia listened with a grim smile; Mr. Gallilee's presumption amused him.

"I wonder whether there was any room left for memory, when nature furnished your narrow little head," he answered pleasantly. "Didn't I say that moving her was the least of two risks? And haven't I just warned you of what might have happened, if we had left your wife and her niece together in the same house? When I do a thing at my time of life, Mr. Gallilee—don't think me conceited—I know why I do it."

While he was speaking of himself in these terms, he might have said something more. He might have added, that his dread of the loss of Carmina's reason really meant his dread of a commonplace termination to an exceptionally interesting case. He might also have acknowledged, that he was not yielding obedience to the rules of professional etiquette, in confiding the patient to her regular medical attendant, but following the selfish suggestions of his own critical judgment.

His experience, brief as it had been, had satisfied him that stupid Mr. Null's course of action could be trusted to let the instructive progress of the malady proceed. Mr. Null would treat the symptoms in perfect good faith—without a suspicion of the nervous hysteria which, in such a constitution as Carmina's, threatened to establish itself, in course of time, as the hidden cause. These motives—not only excused, but even ennobled, by their scientific connection with the interests of Medical Research—he might have avowed, under more favourable circumstances. While his grand discovery was still barely within reach, Doctor Benjulia stood committed to a system of diplomatic reserve, which even included simple Mr. Gallilee.

He took his hat and stick, and walked out into the hall. "Can I be of further use?" he asked carelessly. "You will hear about the patient from Mr. Null."

"You won't desert Carmina?" said Mr. Gallilee. "You will see her yourself, from time to time—won't you?"

"Don't be afraid; I'll look after her." He spoke sincerely in saying this. Carmina's case had already suggested new ideas. Even the civilised savage of modern physiology (where his own interests are concerned) is not absolutely insensible to a feeling of gratitude.

Mr. Gallilee opened the door for him.

"By the-bye," he added, as he stepped out, "what's become of Zo?"

"She's upstairs, in the schoolroom."

He made one of his dreary jokes. "Tell her, when she wants to be tickled again, to let me know. Good-evening!"

Mr. Gallilee returned to the upper part of the house, with the papers left by Benjulia in his hand. Arriving at the dressing-room door, he hesitated. The papers were enclosed in a sealed envelope, addressed to his wife. Secured in this way from inquisitive eyes, there was no necessity for personally presenting them. He went on to the schoolroom, and beckoned to the parlour-maid to come out, and speak to him.

Having instructed her to deliver the papers—telling her mistress that they had been left at the house by Doctor Benjulia—he dismissed the woman from duty. "You needn't return," he said; "I'll look after the children myself."

Maria was busy with her book; and even idle Zo was employed!

She was writing at her own inky desk; and she looked up in confusion, when her father appeared. Unsuspicious Mr. Gallilee took if for granted that his favourite daughter was employed on a writing lesson—following Maria's industrious example for once. "Good children!" he said, looking affectionately from one to the other. "I won't disturb you; go on." He took a chair, satisfied—comforted, even—to be in the same room with the girls.

If he had placed himself nearer to the desk, he might have seen that Zo had been thinking of Carmina to some purpose.

What could she do to make her friend and playfellow well and happy again? There was the question which Zo asked herself, after having seen Carmina carried insensible out of the room.

Possessed of that wonderful capacity for minute observation of the elder persons about them, which is one among the many baffling mysteries presented by the minds of children, Zo had long since discovered that the member of the household, preferred to all others by Carmina, was the good brother who had gone away and left them. In his absence, she was always talking of him—and Zo had seen her kiss his photograph before she put it back in the case.

Dwelling on these recollections, the child's slowly-working mental process arrived more easily than usual at the right conclusion. The way to make Carmina well and happy again, was to bring Ovid back. One of the two envelopes which he had directed for her still remained—waiting for the letter which might say to him, "Come home!"

Zo determined to write that letter—and to do it at once.

She might have confided this design to her father (the one person besides Carmina who neither scolded her nor laughed at her) if Mr. Gallilee had distinguished himself by his masterful position in the house. But she had seen him, as everybody else had seen him, "afraid of mamma." The doubt whether he might not "tell mamma," decided her on keeping her secret. As the event proved, the one person who informed Ovid of the terrible necessity that existed for his return, was the little sister whom it had been his last kind effort to console when he left England.

When Mr. Gallilee entered the room, Zo had just reached the end of her letter. Her system of composition excluded capitals and stops; and reduced all the words in the English language, by a simple process of abridgment, to words of one syllable.

"dear ov you come back car is ill she wants you be quick be quick don't say I writ this miss min is gone I hate books I like you zo."

With the pen still in her hand, the wary writer looked round at her father. She had her directed envelope (sadly crumpled) in her pocket; but she was afraid to take it out. "Maria," she thought, "would know what to do in my place. Horrid Maria!"

Fortune, using the affairs of the household as an instrument, befriended Zo. In a minute more her opportunity arrived. The parlour-maid unexpectedly returned. She addressed Mr. Gallilee with the air of mystery in which English servants, in possession of a message, especially delight. "If you please, sir, Joseph wishes to speak to you."

"Where is he?"

"Outside, sir."

"Tell him to come in."

Thanks to the etiquette of the servants' hall—which did not permit Joseph to present himself, voluntarily, in the regions above the drawing-room, without being first represented by an ambassadress—attention was now diverted from the children. Zo folded her letter, enclosed it in the envelope, and hid it in her pocket.

Joseph appeared. "I beg your pardon, sir, I don't quite know whether I ought to disturb my mistress. Mr. Le Frank has called, and asked if he can see her."

Mr. Gallilee consulted the parlour-maid. "Was your mistress asleep when I sent you to her?"

"No, sir. She told me to bring her a cup of tea."

On those rare former occasions, when Mrs. Gallilee had been ill, her attentive husband never left it to the servants to consult her wishes. That time had gone by for ever.

"Tell your mistress, Joseph, that Mr. Le Frank is here."



CHAPTER XLVII.

The slander on which Mrs. Gallilee had reckoned, as a means of separating Ovid and Carmina, was now a slander refuted by unanswerable proof. And the man whose exertions had achieved this result, was her own lawyer—the agent whom she had designed to employ, in asserting that claim of the guardian over the ward which Teresa had defied.

As a necessary consequence, the relations between Mr. Mool and herself were already at an end.

There she lay helpless—her authority set at naught; her person outraged by a brutal attack—there she lay, urged to action by every reason that a resolute woman could have for asserting her power, and avenging her wrong—without a creature to take her part, without an accomplice to serve her purpose.

She got on her feet, with the resolution of despair. Her heart sank—the room whirled round her—she dropped back on the sofa. In a recumbent position, the giddiness subsided. She could ring the hand-bell on the table at her side. "Send instantly for Mr. Null," she said to the maid. "If he is out, let the messenger follow him, wherever he may be."

The messenger came back with a note. Mr. Null would call on Mrs. Gallilee as soon as possible. He was then engaged in attendance on Miss Carmina.

At that discovery, Mrs. Gallilee's last reserves of independent resolution gave way. The services of her own medical attendant were only at her disposal, when Carmina had done with him! At the top of his letter the address, which she had thus far tried vainly to discover, stared her in the face: the house was within five minutes' walk—and she was not even able to cross the room! For the first time in her life, Mrs. Gallilee's imperious spirit acknowledged defeat. For the first time in her life, she asked herself the despicable question: Who can I find to help me?

Someone knocked at the door.

"Who is it?" she cried.

Joseph's voice answered her. "Mr. Le Frank has called, ma'am—and wishes to know if you can see him."

She never stopped to think. She never even sent for the maid to see to her personal appearance. The horror of her own helplessness drove her on. Here was the man, whose timely betrayal of Carmina had stopped her on her way to Ovid, in the nick of time! Here was the self-devoted instrument, waiting to be employed.

"I'll see Mr. Le Frank," she said. "Show him up."

The music-master looked round the obscurely lit room, and bowed to the recumbent figure on the sofa.

"I fear I disturb you, madam, at an inconvenient time."

"I am suffering from illness, Mr. Le Frank; but I am able to receive you—as you see."

She stopped there. Now, when she saw him, and heard him, some perverse hesitation in her began to doubt him. Now, when it was too late, she weakly tried to put herself on her guard. What a decay of energy (she felt it herself) in the ready and resolute woman, equal to any emergency at other times! "To what am I to attribute the favour of your visit?" she resumed.

Even her voice failed her: it faltered in spite of her efforts to steady it. Mr. Le Frank's vanity drew its own encouraging conclusion from this one circumstance.

"I am anxious to know how I stand in your estimation," he replied. "Early this evening, I left a few lines here, enclosing a letter—with my compliments. Have you received the letter?"

"Yes."

"Have you read it?"

Mrs. Gallilee hesitated. Mr. Le Frank smiled.

"I won't trouble you, madam, for any more direct reply," he said; "I will speak plainly. Be so good as to tell me plainly, on your side, which I am—a man who has disgraced himself by stealing a letter? or a man who has distinguished himself by doing you a service?"

An unpleasant alternative, neatly defined! To disavow Mr. Le Frank or to use Mr. Le Frank—there was the case for Mrs. Gallilee's consideration. She was incapable of pronouncing judgment; the mere effort of decision, after what she had suffered, fatigued and irritated her. "I can't deny," she said, with weary resignation, "that you have done me a service."

He rose, and made a generous return for the confidence that had been placed in him—he repeated his magnificent bow, and sat down again.

"Our position towards each other seems too plain to be mistaken," he proceeded. "Your niece's letter—perfectly useless for the purpose with which I opened it—offers me a means of being even with Miss Carmina, and a chance of being useful to You. Shall I begin by keeping an eye on the young lady?"

"Is that said, Mr. Le Frank, out of devotion to me?"

"My devotion to you might wear out," he answered audaciously. "You may trust my feeling towards your niece to last—I never forget an injury. Is it indiscreet to inquire how you mean to keep Miss Carmina from joining her lover in Quebec? Does a guardian's authority extend to locking her up in her room?"

Mrs. Gallilee felt the underlying familiarity in these questions—elaborately concealed as it was under an assumption of respect.

"My niece is no longer in my house," she answered coldly.

"Gone!" cried Mr. Le Frank.

She corrected the expression. "Removed," she said, and dropped the subject there.

Mr. Le Frank took the subject up again. "Removed, I presume, under the care of her nurse?" he rejoined.

The nurse? What did he know about the nurse? "May I ask—?" Mrs. Gallilee began.

He smiled indulgently, and stopped her there. "You are not quite yourself to-night," he said. "Permit me to remind you that your niece's letter to Mr. Ovid Vere is explicit, and that I took the liberty of reading it before I left it at your house."

Mrs. Gallilee listened in silence, conscious that she had committed another error. She had carefully excluded from her confidence a man who was already in possession of her secrets! Mr. Le Frank's courteous sympathy forbade him to take advantage of the position of superiority which he now held.

"I will do myself the honour of calling again," he said, "when you are better able to place the right estimate on my humble offers of service. I wouldn't fatigue you, Mrs. Gallilee, for the world! At the same time, permit me to put one last question which ought not to be delayed. When Miss Carmina left you, did she take away her writing-desk and her keys?"

"No."

"Allow me to suggest that she may send for them at any moment."

Before it was possible to ask for an explanation, Joseph presented himself again. Mr. Null was waiting downstairs. Mrs. Gallilee arranged that he should be admitted when she rang her bell. Mr. Le Frank approached the sofa, when they were alone, and returned to his suggestion in a whisper.

"Surely, you see the importance of using your niece's keys?" he resumed. "We don't know what correspondence may have been going on, in which the nurse and the governess have been concerned. After we have already intercepted a letter, hesitation is absurd! You are not equal to the effort yourself. I know the room. Don't be afraid of discovery; I have a naturally soft footfall—and my excuse is ready, if somebody else has a soft footfall too. Leave it to me."

He lit a candle as he spoke. But for that allusion to the nurse, Mrs. Gallilee might have ordered him to blow it out again. Eager for any discovery which might, by the barest possibility, place Teresa at her mercy, she silently submitted to Mr. Le Frank. "I'll call to-morrow," he said—and slipped out of the room.

When Mr. Null was announced, Mrs. Gallilee pushed up the shade over the globe of the lamp. Her medical attendant's face might be worth observing, under a clear light.

His timid look, his confused manner, when he made the conventional apologies, told her at once that Teresa had spoken, and that he knew what had happened. Even he had never before been so soothing and so attentive. But he forgot, or he was afraid, to consult appearances by asking what was the matter, before he felt the pulse, and took the temperature, and wrote his prescription. Not a word was uttered by Mrs. Gallilee, until the medical formalities came to an end. "Is there anything more that I can do?" he asked.

"You can tell me," she said, "when I shall be well again."

Mr. Null was polite; Mr. Null was sympathetic. Mrs. Gallilee might be herself again in a day or two—or Mrs. Gallilee might be unhappily confined to her room for some little time. He had hope in his prescription, and hope in perfect quiet and repose—he would suggest the propriety of going to bed at once, and would not fail to call early the next morning.

"Sit down again," said Mrs. Gallilee.

Mr. Null turned pale. He foresaw what was coming.

"You have been in attendance on Miss Carmina. I wish to know what her illness is."

Mr. Null began to prevaricate at the outset. "The case causes us serious anxiety. The complications are formidable. Doctor Benjulia himself—"

"In plain words, Mr. Null, can she be moved?"

This produced a definite answer. "Quite impossible."

She only ventured to put her next question after waiting a little to control herself.

"Is that foreign woman, the nurse—the only nurse—in attendance?"

"Don't speak of her, Mrs. Gallilee! A dreadful woman; coarse, furious, a perfect savage. When I suggested a second nurse—"

"I understand. You asked just now if you could do anything for me. You can do me a great service—you can recommend me a trustworthy lawyer."

Mr. Null was surprised. As the old medical attendant of the family, he was not unacquainted with the legal adviser. He mentioned Mr. Mool's name.

"Mr. Mool has forfeited my confidence," Mrs. Gallilee announced. "Can you, or can you not, recommend a lawyer?"

"Oh, certainly! My own lawyer."

"You will find writing materials on the table behind me. I won't keep you more than five minutes. I want you to write from my dictation."

"My dear lady, in your present condition—"

"Do as I tell you! My head is quiet while I lie down. Even a woman in my condition can say what she means to do. I shall not close my eyes tonight, unless I can feel that I have put that wretch in her right place. Who are your lawyers?"

Mr. Null mentioned the names, and took up his pen.

"Introduce me in the customary form," Mrs. Gallilee proceeded; "and then refer the lawyers to my brother's Will. Is it done?"

In due time it was done.

"Tell them next, how my niece has been taken away from me, and where she has been taken to."

To the best of his ability, Mr. Null complied.

"Now," said Mrs. Gallilee, "write what I mean to do!"

The prospect of being revenged on Teresa revived her. For the moment, at least, she almost looked like herself again.

Mr. Null turned over to a new leaf, with a hand that trembled a little. The dictating voice pronounced these words:

"I forbid the woman Teresa to act in the capacity of nurse to Miss Carmina, and even to enter the room in which that young lady is now lying ill. I further warn this person, that my niece will be restored to my care, the moment her medical attendants allow her to be removed. And I desire my legal advisers to assert my authority, as guardian, to-morrow morning."

Mr. Null finished his task in silent dismay. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"Is there any very terrible effort required in saying those few words—even to a shattered creature like me?" Mrs. Gallilee asked bitterly. "Let me hear that the lawyers have got their instructions, when you come to-morrow; and give me the name and address of a nurse whom you can thoroughly recommend. Good-night!"

At last, Mr. Null got away. As he softly closed the dressing-room door, the serious question still dwelt on his mind: What would Teresa do?



CHAPTER XLVIII.

Even in the welcome retirement of the school-room, Mr. Gallilee's mind was not at ease. He was troubled by a question entirely new to him—the question of himself, in the character of husband and father.

Accustomed through long years of conjugal association to look up to his wife as a superior creature, he was now conscious that her place in his estimation had been lost, beyond recovery. If he considered next what ought to be done with Maria and Zo, he only renewed his perplexity and distress. To leave them (as he had hitherto left them) absolutely submitted to their mother's authority, was to resign his children to the influence of a woman, who had ceased to be the object of his confidence and respect. He pondered over it in the schoolroom; he pondered over it when he went to bed. On the next morning, he arrived at a conclusion in the nature of a compromise. He decided on applying to his good friend, Mr. Mool, for a word of advice.

His first proceeding was to call at Teresa's lodgings, in the hope of hearing better news of Carmina.

The melancholy report of her was expressed in two words: No change. He was so distressed that he asked to see the landlady; and tried, in his own helpless kindhearted way, to get a little hopeful information by asking questions—useless questions, repeated over and over again in futile changes of words. The landlady was patient: she respected the undisguised grief of the gentle modest old man; but she held to the hard truth. The one possible answer was the answer which her servant had already given. When she followed him out, to open the door, Mr. Gallilee requested permission to wait a moment in the hall. "If you will allow me, ma'am, I'll wipe my eyes before I go into the street."

Arriving at the office without an appointment, he found the lawyer engaged. A clerk presented to him a slip of paper, with a line written by Mr. Mool: "Is it anything of importance?" Simple Mr. Gallilee wrote back: "Oh, dear, no; it's only me! I'll call again." Besides his critical judgment in the matter of champagne, this excellent man possessed another accomplishment—a beautiful handwriting. Mr. Mool, discovering a crooked line and some ill-formed letters in the reply, drew his own conclusions. He sent word to his old friend to wait.

In ten minutes more they were together, and the lawyer was informed of the events that had followed the visit of Benjulia to Fairfield Gardens, on the previous day.

For a while, the two men sat silently meditating—daunted by the prospect before them. When the time came for speaking, they exercised an influence over each other, of which both were alike unconscious. Out of their common horror of Mrs. Gallilee's conduct, and their common interest in Carmina, they innocently achieved between them the creation of one resolute man.

"My dear Gallilee, this is a very serious thing."

"My dear Mool, I feel it so—or I shouldn't have disturbed you."

"Don't talk of disturbing me! I see so many complications ahead of us, I hardly know where to begin."

"Just my case! It's a comfort to me that you feel it as I do."

Mr. Mool rose and tried walking up and down his room, as a means of stimulating his ingenuity.

"There's this poor young lady," he resumed. "If she gets better—"

"Don't put it in that way!" Mr. Gallilee interposed. "It sounds as if you doubted her ever getting well—you see it yourself in that light, don't you? Be a little more positive, Mool, in mercy to me."

"By all means," Mr. Mool agreed. "Let us say, when she gets better. But the difficulty meets us, all the same. If Mrs. Gallilee claims her right, what are we to do?"

Mr. Gallilee rose in his turn, and took a walk up and down the room. That well-meant experiment only left him feebler than ever.

"What possessed her brother to make her Carmina's guardian?" he asked—with the nearest approach to irritability of which he was capable.

The lawyer was busy with his own thoughts. He only enlightened Mr. Gallilee after the question had been repeated.

"I had the sincerest regard for Mr. Robert Graywell," he said. "A better husband and father—and don't let me forget it, a more charming artist—never lived. But," said Mr. Mool, with the air of one strong-minded man appealing to another: "weak, sadly weak. If you will allow me to say so, your wife's self-asserting way—well, it was so unlike her brother's way, that it had its effect on him! If Lady Northlake had been a little less quiet and retiring, the matter might have ended in a very different manner. As it was (I don't wish to put the case offensively) Mrs. Gallilee imposed on him—and there she is, in authority, under the Will. Let that be. We must protect this poor girl. We must act!" cried Mr. Mool with a burst of energy.

"We must act!" Mr. Gallilee repeated—and feebly clenched his fist, and softly struck the table.

"I think I have an idea," the lawyer proceeded; "suggested by something said to me by Miss Carmina herself. May I ask if you are in her confidence?"

Mr. Gallilee's face brightened at this. "Certainly," he answered. "I always kiss her when we say good-night, and kiss her again when we say good-morning."

This proof of his friend's claims as Carmina's chosen adviser, seemed rather to surprise Mr. Mool. "Did she ever hint at an idea of hastening her marriage?" he inquired.

Plainly as the question was put, it thoroughly puzzled Mr. Gallilee. His honest face answered for him—he was not in Carmina's confidence. Mr. Mool returned to his idea.

"The one thing we can do," he said, "is to hasten Mr. Ovid's return. There is the only course to take—as I see it."

"Let's do it at once!" cried Mr. Gallilee.

"But tell me," Mr. Mool insisted, greedy for encouragement—"does my suggestion relieve your mind?"

"It's the first happy moment I've had to-day!" Mr. Gallilee's weak voice piped high: he was getting firmer and firmer with every word he uttered.

One of them produced a telegraph-form; the other seized a pen. "Shall we send the message in your name?" Mr. Mool asked.

If Mr. Gallilee had possessed a hundred names he would have sent them (and paid for them) all. "John Gallilee, 14 Fairfield Gardens, London, To—" There the pen stopped. Ovid was still in the wilds of Canada. The one way of communicating with him was through the medium of the bankers at Quebec, To the bankers, accordingly, the message was sent. "Please telegraph Mr. Ovid Vere's address, the moment you know it."

When the telegram had been sent to the office, an interval of inaction followed. Mr. Gallilee's fortitude suffered a relapse. "It's a long time to wait," he said.

His friend agreed with him. Morally speaking, Mr. Mool's strength lay in points of law. No point of law appeared to be involved in the present conference: he shared Mr. Gallilee's depression of spirits. "We are quite helpless," he remarked, "till Mr. Ovid comes back. In the interval, I see no choice for Miss Carmina but to submit to her guardian; unless—" He looked hard at Mr. Gallilee, before he finished his sentence. "Unless," he resumed, "you can get over your present feeling about your wife."

"Get over it?" Mr. Gallilee repeated.

"It seems quite impossible now, I dare say," the worthy lawyer admitted. "A very painful impression has been produced on you. Naturally! naturally! But the force of habit—a married life of many years—your own kind feeling—"

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Gallilee, bewildered, impatient, almost angry.

"A little persuasion on your part, my good friend—at the interesting moment of reconciliation—might be followed by excellent results. Mrs. Gallilee might not object to waive her claims, until time has softened existing asperities. Surely, a compromise is possible, if you could only prevail on yourself to forgive your wife."

"Forgive her? I should be only too glad to forgive her!" cried Mr. Gallilee, bursting into violent agitation. "How am I to do it? Good God! Mool, how am I to do it? You didn't hear those infamous words. You didn't see that dreadful death-struck look of the poor girl. I declare to you I turn cold when I think of my wife! I can't go to her when I ought to go—I send the servants into her room. My children, too—my dear good children—it's enough to break one's heart—think of their being brought up by a mother who could say what she said, and do—What will they see, I ask you what will they see, if she gets Carmina back in the house, and treats that sweet young creature as she will treat her? There were times last night, when I thought of going away for ever—Lord knows where—and taking the girls with me. What am I talking about? I had something to say, and I don't know what it is; I don't know my own self! There, there; I'll keep quiet. It's my poor stupid head, I suppose—hot, Mool, burning hot. Let's be reasonable. Yes, yes, yes; let's be reasonable. You're a lawyer. I said to myself, when I came here, 'I want Mool's advice.' Be a dear good fellow—set my mind at ease. Oh, my friend, my old friend, what can I do for my children?"

Amazed and distressed—utterly at a loss how to interfere to any good purpose—Mr. Mool recovered his presence of mind, the moment Mr. Gallilee appealed to him in his legal capacity. "Don't distress yourself about your children," he said kindly. "Thank God, we stand on firm ground, there."

"Do you mean it, Mool?"

"I mean it. Where your daughters are concerned, the authority is yours. Be firm, Gallilee! be firm!"

"I will! You set me the example—don't you? You're firm—eh?"

"Firm as a rock. I agree with you. For the present at least, the children must be removed."

"At once, Mool!"

"At once!" the lawyer repeated.

They had wrought each other up to the right pitch of resolution, by this time. They were almost loud enough for the clerks to hear them in the office.

"No matter what my wife may say!" Mr. Gallilee stipulated.

"No matter what she may say," Mr. Mool rejoined, "the father is master."

"And you know the law."

"And I know the law. You have only to assert yourself."

"And you have only to back me."

"For your children's sake, Gallilee!"

"Under my lawyer's advice, Mool!"

The one resolute Man was produced at last—without a flaw in him anywhere. They were both exhausted by the effort. Mr. Mool suggested a glass of wine.

Mr. Gallilee ventured on a hint. "You don't happen to have a drop of champagne handy?" he said.

The lawyer rang for his housekeeper. In five minutes, they were pledging each other in foaming tumblers. In five minutes more, they plunged back into business. The question of the best place to which the children could be removed, was easily settled. Mr. Mool offered his own house; acknowledging modestly that it had perhaps one drawback—it was within easy reach of Mrs. Gallilee. The statement of this objection stimulated his friend's memory. Lady Northlake was in Scotland. Lady Northlake had invited Maria and Zo, over and over again, to pass the autumn with their cousins; but Mrs. Gallilee's jealousy had always contrived to find some plausible reason for refusal. "Write at once," Mr. Mool advised. "You may do it in two lines. Your wife is ill; Miss Carmina is ill; you are not able to leave London—and the children are pining for fresh air." In this sense, Mr. Gallilee wrote. He insisted on having the letter sent to the post immediately. "I know it's long before post-time," he explained. "But I want to compose my mind."

The lawyer paused, with his glass of wine at his lips. "I say! You're not hesitating already?"

"No more than you are," Mr. Gallilee answered.

"You will really send the girls away?"

"The girls shall go, on the day when Lady Northlake invites them."

"I'll make a note of that," said Mr. Mool.

He made the note; and they rose to say good-bye. Faithful Mr. Gallilee still thought of Carmina. "Do consider it again!" he said at parting. "Are you sure the law won't help her?"

"I might look at her father's Will," Mr. Mool replied.

Mr. Gallilee saw the hopeful side of this suggestion, in the brightest colours. "Why didn't you think of it before?" he asked.

Mr. Mool gently remonstrated. "Don't forget how many things I have on my mind," he said. "It only occurs to me now that the Will may give us a remedy—if there is any open opposition to the ward's marriage engagement, on the guardian's part."

There he stopped; knowing Mrs. Gallilee's methods of opposition too well to reckon hopefully on such a result as this. But he was a merciful man—and he kept his misgivings to himself.

On the way home, Mr. Gallilee encountered his wife's maid. Marceline was dropping a letter into the pillar-post-box at the corner of the Square; she changed colour, on seeing her master. "Corresponding with her sweetheart," Mr. Gallilee concluded.

Entering the house with an unfinished cigar in his mouth, he made straight for the smoking-room—and passed his youngest daughter, below him, waiting out of sight on the kitchen stairs.

"Have you done it?" Zo whispered, when Marceline returned by the servants' entrance.

"It's safe in the post, dear. Now tell me what you saw yesterday, when you were hidden in Miss Carmina's bedroom."

The tone in which she spoke implied a confidential agreement. With honourable promptitude Zo, perched on her friend's knee, exerted her memory, and rewarded Marceline for posting her letter to Ovid.



CHAPTER XLIX.

It was past the middle of the day, before Mr. Le Frank paid his promised visit to Mrs. Gallilee. He entered the room with gloomy looks; and made his polite inquiries, as became a depressed musician, in the minor key.

"I am sorry, madam, to find you still on the sofa. Is there no improvement in your health?"

"None whatever."

"Does your medical attendant give you any hope?"

"He does what they all do—he preaches patience. No more of myself! You appear to be in depressed spirits."

Mr. Le Frank admitted with a sigh that appearances had not misrepresented him. "I have been bitterly disappointed," he said. "My feelings as an artist are wounded to the quick. But why do I trouble you with my poor little personal affairs? I humbly beg your pardon."

His eyes accompanied this modest apology with a look of uneasy anticipation: he evidently expected to be asked to explain himself. Events had followed her instructions to Mr. Null, which left Mrs. Gallilee in need of employing her music-master's services. She felt the necessity of exerting herself; and did it—with an effort.

"You have no reason, I hope, to complain of your pupils?" she said.

"At this time of year, madam, I have no pupils. They are all out of town."

She was too deeply preoccupied by her own affairs to trouble herself any further. The direct way was the easy way. She said wearily, "Well, what is it?"

He answered in plain terms, this time.

"A bitter humiliation, Mrs. Gallilee! I have been made to regret that I asked you to honour me by accepting the dedication of my Song. The music-sellers, on whom the sale depends, have not taken a tenth part of the number of copies for which we expected them to subscribe. Has some extraordinary change come over the public taste? My composition has been carefully based on fashionable principles—that is to say, on the principles of the modern German school. As little tune as possible; and that little strictly confined to the accompaniment. And what is the result? Loss confronts me, instead of profit—my agreement makes me liable for half the expenses of publication. And, what is far more serious in my estimation, your honoured name is associated with a failure! Don't notice me—the artist nature—I shall be better in a minute." He took out a profusely-scented handkerchief, and buried his face in it with a groan.

Mrs. Gallilee's hard common sense understood the heart-broken composer to perfection.

"Stupid of me not to have offered him money yesterday," she thought: "this waste of time need never have happened." She set her mistake right with admirable brevity and directness. "Don't distress yourself, Mr. Le Frank. Now my name is on it, the Song is mine. If your publisher's account is not satisfactory—be so good as to send it to me." Mr. Le Frank dropped his dry handkerchief, and sprang theatrically to his feet. His indulgent patroness refused to hear him: to this admirable woman, the dignity of Art was a sacred thing. "Not a word more on that subject," she said. "Tell me how you prospered last night. Your investigations cannot have been interrupted, or I should have heard of it. Come to the result! Have you found anything of importance in my niece's room?"

Mr. Le Frank had again been baffled, so far as the confirmation of his own suspicions was concerned. But the time was not favourable to a confession of personal disappointment. He understood the situation; and made himself the hero of it, in three words.

"Judge for yourself," he said—and held out the letter of warning from Father Patrizio.

In silence, Mrs. Gallilee read the words which declared her to be the object of Teresa's inveterate resentment, and which charged Carmina with the serious duty of keeping the peace.

"Does it alarm you?" Mr. Le Frank asked.

"I hardly know what I feel," she answered. "Give me time to think."

Mr. Le Frank went back to his chair. He had reason to congratulate himself already: he had shifted to other shoulders the pecuniary responsibility involved in the failure of his Song. Observing Mrs. Gallilee, he began to see possibilities of a brighter prospect still. Thus far she had kept him at a certain distance. Was the change of mind coming, which would admit him to the position (with all its solid advantages) of a confidential friend?

She suddenly took up Father Patrizio's letter, and showed it to him.

"What impression does it produce on you," she asked, "knowing no more than you know now?"

"The priest's cautious language, madam, speaks for itself. You have an enemy who will stick at nothing."

She still hesitated to trust him.

"You see me here," she went on, "confined to my room; likely, perhaps, to be in this helpless condition for some time to come. How would you protect yourself against that woman, in my place?"

"I should wait."

"For what purpose?"

"If you will allow me to use the language of the card-table, I should wait till the woman shows her hand."

"She has shown it."

"May I ask when?"

"This morning."

Mr. Le Frank said no more. If he was really wanted, Mrs. Gallilee had only to speak. After a last moment of hesitation, the pitiless necessities of her position decided her once more. "You see me too ill to move," she said; "the first thing to do, is to tell you why."

She related the plain facts; without a word of comment, without a sign of emotion. But her husband's horror of her had left an impression, which neither pride nor contempt had been strong enough to resist. She allowed the music-master to infer, that contending claims to authority over Carmina had led to a quarrel which provoked the assault. The secret of the words that she had spoken, was the one secret that she kept from Mr. Le Frank.

"While I was insensible," she proceeded, "my niece was taken away from me. She has been suffering from nervous illness; she was naturally terrified—and she is now at the nurse's lodgings, too ill to be moved. There you have the state of affairs, up to last night."

"Some people might think," Mr. Le Frank remarked, "that the easiest way out of it, so far, would be to summon the nurse for the assault."

"The easiest way compels me to face a public exposure," Mrs. Gallilee answered. "In my position that is impossible."

Mr. Le Frank accepted this view of the case as a matter of course. "Under the circumstances," he said, "it's not easy to advise you. How can you make the woman submit to your authority, while you are lying here?"

"My lawyers have made her submit this morning."

In the extremity of his surprise, Mr. Le Frank forgot himself. "The devil they have!" he exclaimed.

"They have forbidden her, in my name," Mrs. Gallilee continued, "to act as nurse to my niece. They have informed her that Miss Carmina will be restored to my care, the moment she can be moved. And they have sent me her unconditional submission in writing, signed by herself."

She took it from the desk at her side, and read it to him, in these words:

"I humbly ask pardon of Mrs. Gallilee for the violent and unlawful acts of which I have been guilty. I acknowledge, and submit to, her authority as guardian of Miss Carmina Graywell. And I appeal to her mercy (which I own I have not deserved) to spare me the misery of separation from Miss Carmina, on any conditions which it may be her good will and pleasure to impose."

"Now," Mrs. Galilee concluded, "what do you say?"

Speaking sincerely for once, Mr. Le Frank made a startling reply.

"Submit on your side," he said. "Do what she asks of you. And when you are well enough to go to her lodgings, decline with thanks if she offers you anything to eat or drink."

Mrs. Gallilee raised herself on the sofa. "Are you insulting me, sir," she asked, "by making this serious emergency the subject of a joke?"

"I never was more in earnest, madam, in my life."

"You think—you really think—that she is capable of trying to poison me?"

"Most assuredly I do."

Mrs. Gallilee sank back on the pillow. Mr. Le Frank stated his reasons; checking them off, one by one, on his fingers.

"Who is she?" he began. "She is an Italian woman of the lower orders. The virtues of the people among whom she had been born and bred, are not generally considered to include respect for the sanctity of human life. What do we know already that she has done? She has alarmed the priest, who keeps her conscience, and knows her well; and she has attacked you with such murderous ferocity that it is a wonder you have escaped with your life. What sort of message have you sent to her, after this experience of her temper? You have told the tigress that you have the power to separate her from her cub, and that you mean to use it. On those plain facts, as they stare us in the face, which is the soundest conclusion? To believe that she really submits—or to believe that she is only gaining time, and is capable (if she sees no other alternative) of trying to poison you?"

"What would you advise me to do?" In those words Mrs. Gallilee—never before reduced to ask advice of anybody—owned that sound reasoning was not thrown away on her.

Mr. Le Frank answered the demand made on him without hesitation.

"The nurse has not signed that act of submission," he said, "without having her own private reasons for appearing to give way. Rely on it, she is prepared for you—and there is at least a chance that some proof of it may be found. Have all her movements privately watched—and search the room she lives in, as I searched Miss Carmina's room last night."

"Well?" said Mrs. Gallilee.

"Well?" Mr. Le Frank repeated.

She angrily gave way. "Say at once that you are the man to do it for me!" she answered. "And say next—if you can—how it is to be done."

Mr. Le Frank's manner softened to an air of gentle gallantry.

"Pray compose yourself!" he said. "I am so glad to be of service to you, and it is so easily done!"

"Easily?"

"Dear madam, quite easily. Isn't the house a lodging-house; and, at this time of year, have I anything to do?" He rose, and took his hat.

"Surely, you see me in my new character now? A single gentleman wants a bedroom. His habits are quiet, and he gives excellent references. The address, Mrs. Gallilee—may I trouble you for the address?"



CHAPTER L.

Towards seven o'clock on the evening of Thursday, Carmina recognised Teresa for the first time.

Her half-closed eyes opened, as if from a long sleep: they rested on the old nurse without any appearance of surprise. "I am so glad to see you, my dear," she said faintly. "Are you very tired after you journey?" None of the inquiries which might have been anticipated followed those first words. Not the slightest allusion to Mrs. Gallilee escaped her; she expressed no anxiety about Miss Minerva; no sign of uneasiness at finding herself in a. strange room, disturbed her quiet face. Contentedly reposing, she looked at Teresa from time to time and said, "You will stay with me, won't you?" Now and then, she confessed that her head felt dull and heavy, and asked Teresa to take her hand. "I feel as if I was sinking away from you," she said; "keep hold of my hand and I shan't be afraid to go to sleep." The words were hardly spoken, before she sank into slumber. Occasionally, Teresa felt her hand tremble and kissed it. She seemed to be conscious of the kiss, without waking—she smiled in her sleep.

But, when the first hours of the morning came, this state of passive repose was disturbed. A violent attack of sickness came on. It was repeated again and again. Teresa sent for Mr. Null. He did what he could to relieve the new symptom; and he despatched a messenger to his illustrious colleague.

Benjulia lost no time in answering personally the appeal that had been made to him.

Mr. Null said, "Serious derangement of the stomach, sir." Benjulia agreed with him. Mr. Null showed his prescription. Benjulia sanctioned the prescription. Mr. Null said, "Is there anything you wish to suggest, sir?" Benjulia had nothing to suggest.

He waited, nevertheless, until Carmina was able to speak to him. Teresa and Mr. Null wondered what he would say to her. He only said, "Do you remember when you last saw me?" After a little consideration, she answered, "Yes, Zo was with us; Zo brought in your big stick; and we talked—" She tried to rouse her memory. "What did we talk about?" she asked. A momentary agitation brought a flush to her face. "I can't remember it," she said; "I can't remember when you went away: does it matter?" Benjulia replied, "Not the least in the world. Go to sleep."

But he still remained in the room—watching her as she grew drowsy. "Great weakness," Mr. Null whispered. And Benjulia answered, "Yes; I'll call again."

On his way out, he took Teresa aside.

"No more questions," he said—"and don't help her memory if she asks you."

"Will she remember, when she gets better?" Teresa inquired.

"Impossible to say, yet. Wait and see."

He left her in a hurry; his experiments were waiting for him. On the way home, his mind dwelt on Carmina's case. Some hidden process was at work there: give it time—and it would show itself. "I hope that ass won't want me," he said, thinking of his medical colleague, "for at least a week to come."

The week passed—and the physiologist was not disturbed.

During that interval, Mr. Null succeeded in partially overcoming the attacks of sickness: they were less violent, and they were succeeded by longer intervals of repose. In other respects, there seemed (as Teresa persisted in thinking) to be some little promise of improvement. A certain mental advance was unquestionably noticeable in Carmina. It first showed itself in an interesting way: she began to speak of Ovid.

Her great anxiety was, that he should know nothing of her illness. She forbade Teresa to write to him; she sent messages to Mr. and Mrs. Gallilee, and even to Mr. Mool, entreating them to preserve silence.

The nurse engaged to deliver the messages—and failed to keep her word. This breach of promise (as events had ordered it) proved to be harmless. Mrs. Gallilee had good reasons for not writing. Her husband and Mr. Mool had decided on sending their telegram to the bankers. As for Teresa herself, she had no desire to communicate with Ovid. His absence remained inexcusable, from her point of view. Well or ill, with or without reason, it was the nurse's opinion that he ought to have remained at home, in Carmina's interests. No other persons were in the least likely to write to Ovid—nobody thought of Zo as a correspondent—Carmina was pacified.

Once or twice, at this later time, the languid efforts of her memory took a wider range.

She wondered why Mrs. Gallilee never came near her; owning that her aunt's absence was a relief to her, but not feeling interest enough in the subject to ask for information. She also mentioned Miss Minerva. "Do you know where she has gone? Don't you think she ought to write to me?" Teresa offered to make inquiries. She turned her head wearily on the pillow, and said, "Never mind!" On another occasion, she asked for Zo, and said it would be pleasant if Mr. Gallilee would call and bring her with him. But she soon dropped the subject, not to return to it again.

The only remembrance which seemed to dwell on her mind for more than a few minutes, was her remembrance of the last letter which she had written to Ovid.

She pleased herself with imagining his surprise, when he received it; she grew impatient under her continued illness, because it delayed her in escaping to Canada; she talked to Teresa of the clever manner in which the flight had been planned—with this strange failure of memory, that she attributed the various arrangements for setting discovery at defiance, not to Miss Minerva, but to the nurse.

Here, for the first time, her mind was approaching dangerous ground. The stealing of the letter, and the events that had followed it, stood next in the order of remembrance—if she was capable of a continued effort. Her weakness saved her. Beyond the writing of the letter, her recollections were unable to advance. Not the faintest allusion to any later circumstances escaped her. The poor stricken brain still sought its rest in frequent intervals of sleep. Sometimes, she drifted back into partial unconsciousness; sometimes, the attacks of sickness returned. Mr. Null set an excellent example of patience and resignation. He believed as devoutly as ever in his prescriptions; he placed the greatest reliance on time and care. The derangement of the stomach (as he called it) presented something positive and tangible to treat: he had got over the doubts and anxieties that troubled him, when Carmina was first removed to the lodgings. Looking confidently at the surface—without an idea of what was going on below it—he could tell Teresa, with a safe conscience, that he understood the case. He was always ready to comfort her, when her excitable Italian nature passed from the extreme of hope to the extreme of despair. "My good woman, we see our way now: it's a great point gained, I assure you, to see our way."

"What do you mean by seeing your way?" said the downright nurse. "Tell me when Carmina will be well again."

Mr. Null's medical knowledge was not yet equal to this demand on it. "The progress is slow," he admitted, "still Miss Carmina is getting on."

"Is her aunt getting on?" Teresa asked abruptly. "When is Mistress Gallilee likely to come here?"

"In a few days—" Mr. Null was about to add "I hope;" but he thought of what might happen when the two women met. As it was, Teresa's face showed signs of serious disturbance: her mind was plainly not prepared for this speedy prospect of a visit from Mrs. Gallilee. She took a letter out of her pocket.

"I find a good deal of sly prudence in you," she said to Mr. Null. "You must have seen something, in your time, of the ways of deceitful Englishwomen. What does that palaver mean in plain words?" She handed the letter to him.

With some reluctance he read it.

"Mrs. Gallilee declines to contract any engagement with the person formerly employed as nurse, in the household of the late Mr. Robert Graywell. Mrs. Gallilee so far recognises the apology and submission offered to her, as to abstain from taking immediate proceedings. In arriving at this decision, she is also influenced by the necessity of sparing her niece any agitation which might interfere with the medical treatment. When the circumstances appear to require it, she will not hesitate to exert her authority."

The handwriting told Mr. Null that this manifesto had not been written by Mrs. Gallilee herself. The person who had succeeded him, in the capacity of that lady's amanuensis, had been evidently capable of giving sound advice. Little did he suspect that this mysterious secretary was identical with an enterprising pianist, who had once prevailed on him to take a seat at a concert; price five shillings.

"Well?" said Teresa.

Mr. Null hesitated.

The nurse stamped impatiently on the floor. "Tell me this! When she does come here, will she part me from Carmina? Is that what she means?"

"Possibly," said prudent Mr. Null.

Teresa pointed to the door. "Good-morning! I want nothing more of you. Oh, man, man, leave me by myself!"

The moment she was alone, she fell on her knees. Fiercely whispering, she repeated over and over again the words of the Lord's Prayer: "'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' Christ, hear me! Mother of Christ, hear me! Oh, Carmina! Carmina!"

She rose and opened the door which communicated with the bedroom. Trembling pitiably, she looked for a while at Carmina, peacefully asleep—then turned away to a corner of the room, in which stood an old packing-case, fitted with a lock. She took it up; and, returning with it to the sitting-room, softly closed the bedroom door again.

After some hesitation, she decided to open the case. In the terror and confusion that possessed her, she tried the wrong key. Setting this mistake right, she disclosed—strangely mingled with the lighter articles of her own dress—a heap of papers; some of them letters and bills; some of them faded instructions in writing for the preparation of artists' colours.

She recoiled from the objects which her own act had disclosed. Why had she not taken Father Patrizio's advice? If she had only waited another day; if she had only sorted her husband's papers, before she threw the things that her trunk was too full to hold into that half-empty case, what torment might have been spared to her! Her eyes turned mournfully to the bedroom door. "Oh, my darling, I was in such a hurry to get to You!"

At last, she controlled herself, and put her hand into the case. Searching it in one corner, she produced a little tin canister. A dirty label was pasted on the canister, bearing this quaint inscription in the Italian language:

"If there is any of the powder we employ in making some of our prettiest colours, left in here, I request my good wife, or any other trustworthy person in her place, to put a seal on it, and take it directly to the manufactory, with the late foreman's best respects. It looks like nice sugar. Beware of looks—or you may taste poison."

On the point of opening the canister she hesitated. Under some strange impulse, she did what a child might have done: she shook it, and listened.

The rustle of the rising and falling powder—renewing her terror—seemed to exercise some irresistible fascination over her. "The devil's dance," she said to herself, with a ghastly smile. "Softly up—and softly down—and tempting me to take off the cover all the time! Why don't I get rid of it?"

That question set her thinking of Carmina's guardian.

If Mr. Null was right, in a day or two Mrs. Gallilee might come to the house. After the lawyers had threatened Teresa with the prospect of separation from Carmina, she had opened the packing-case, for the first time since she had left Rome—intending to sort her husband's papers as a means of relief from her own thoughts. In this way, she had discovered the canister. The sight of the deadly powder had tempted her. There were the horrid means of setting Mrs. Gallilee's authority at defiance! Some women in her place, would use them. Though she was not looking into the canister now, she felt that thought stealing back into her mind. There was but one hope for her: she resolved to get rid of the poison.

How?

At that period of the year, there was no fire in the grate. Within the limits of the room, the means of certain destruction were slow to present themselves. Her own morbid horror of the canister made her suspicious of the curiosity of other people, who might see it in her hand if she showed herself on the stairs. But she was determined, if she lit a fire for the purpose, to find the way to her end. The firmness of her resolution expressed itself by locking the case again, without restoring the canister to its hiding-place.

Providing herself next with a knife, she sat down in a corner—between the bedroom door on one side, and a cupboard in an angle of the wall on the other—and began the work of destruction by scraping off the paper label. The fragments might be burnt, and the powder (if she made a vow to the Virgin to do it) might be thrown into the fire next—and then the empty canister would be harmless.

She had made but little progress in the work of scraping, when it occurred to her that the lighting of a fire, on that warm autumn day, might look suspicious if the landlady or Mr. Null happened to come in. It would be safer to wait till night-time, when everybody would be in bed.

Arriving at this conclusion, she mechanically suspended the use of her knife.

In the moment of silence that followed, she heard someone enter the bedroom by the door which opened on the stairs. Immediately afterwards, the person turned the handle of the second door at her side. She had barely time enough to open the cupboard, and hide the canister in it—when the landlady came in.

Teresa looked at her wildly. The landlady looked at the cupboard: she was proud of her cupboard.

"Plenty of room there," she said boastfully: "not another house in the neighbourhood could offer you such accommodation as that! Yes—the lock is out of order; I don't deny it. The last lodger's doings! She spoilt my tablecloth, and put the inkstand over it to hide the place. Beast! there's her character in one word. You didn't hear me knock at the bedroom door? I am so glad to see her sleeping nicely, poor dear! Her chicken broth is ready when she wakes. I'm late to-day in making my inquiries after our young lady. You see we have been hard at work upstairs, getting the bedroom ready for a new lodger. Such a contrast to the person who has just left. A perfect gentleman, this time—and so kind in waiting a week till I was able to accommodate him. My ground floor rooms were vacant, as you know—but he said the terms were too high for him. Oh, I didn't forget to mention that we had an invalid in the house! Quiet habits (I said) are indeed an essential qualification of any new inmate, at such a time as this. He understood. 'I've been an invalid myself' (he said); 'and the very reason I am leaving my present lodgings is that they are not quiet enough.' Isn't that just the sort of man we want? And, let me tell you, a handsome man too. With a drawback, I must own, in the shape of a bald head. But such a beard, and such a thrilling voice! Hush! Did I hear her calling?"

At last, the landlady permitted other sounds to be audible, besides the sound of her own voice. It became possible to discover that Carmina was now awake. Teresa hurried into the bedroom.

Left by herself in the sitting-room, the landlady—"purely out of curiosity," as she afterwards said, in conversation with her new lodger—opened the cupboard, and looked in.

The canister stood straight before her, on an upper shelf. Did Miss Carmina's nurse take snuff? She examined the canister: there was a white powder inside. The mutilated label spoke in an unknown tongue. She wetted her finger and tasted the powder. The result was so disagreeable that she was obliged to use her handkerchief. She put the canister back, and closed the cupboard.

"Medicine, undoubtedly," the landlady said to herself. "Why should she hurry to put it away, when I came in?"



CHAPTER LI.

In eight days from the date of his second interview with Mrs. Gallilee, Mr. Le Frank took possession of his new bedroom.

He had arranged to report his proceedings in writing. In Teresa's state of mind, she would certainly distrust a fellow-lodger, discovered in personal communication with Mrs. Gallilee. Mr. Le Frank employed the first day after his arrival in collecting the materials for a report. In the evening, he wrote to Mrs. Gallilee—under cover to a friend, who was instructed to forward the letter.

"Private and confidential. Dear Madam,—I have not wasted my time and my opportunities, as you will presently see.

"My bedroom is immediately above the floor of the house which is occupied by Miss Carmina and her nurse. Having some little matters of my own to settle, I was late in taking possession of my room. Before the lights on the staircase were put out, I took the liberty of looking down at the next landing.

"Do you remember, when you were a child learning to write, that one of the lines in your copy-books was, 'Virtue is its own reward'? This ridiculous assertion was actually verified in my case! Before I had been five minutes at my post, I saw the nurse open her door. She looked up the staircase (without discovering me, it is needless to say), and she looked down the staircase—and, seeing nobody about, returned to her rooms.

"Waiting till I heard her lock the door, I stole downstairs, and listened outside.

"One of my two fellow-lodgers (you know that I don't believe in Miss Carmina's illness) was lighting a fire—on such a warm autumn night, that the staircase window was left open! I am absolutely sure of what I say: I heard the crackle of burning wood—I smelt coal smoke.

"The motive of this secret proceeding it seems impossible to guess at. If they were burning documents of a dangerous and compromising kind, a candle would have answered their purpose. If they wanted hot water, surely a tin kettle and a spirit lamp must have been at hand in an invalid's bedroom? Perhaps, your superior penetration may be able to read the riddle which baffles my ingenuity.

"So much for the first night.

"This afternoon, I had some talk with the landlady. My professional avocations having trained me in the art of making myself agreeable to the sex, I may say without vanity that I produced a favourable impression. In other words, I contrived to set my fair friend talking freely about the old nurse and the interesting invalid.

"Out of the flow of words poured on me, one fact of very serious importance has risen to the surface. There is a suspicious canister in the nurse's possession. The landlady calls the powder inside, medicine. I say, poison.

"Am I rushing at a fanciful conclusion? Please wait a little.

"During the week of delay which elapsed, before the lodger in possession vacated my room, you kindly admitted me to an interview. I ventured to put some questions, relating to Teresa's life in Italy and to the persons with whom she associated. Do you remember telling me, when I asked what you knew of her husband, that he was foreman in a manufactory of artists' colours? and that you had your information from Miss Carmina herself, after she had shown you the telegram announcing his death?

"A lady, possessed of your scientific knowledge, does not require to be told that poisons are employed in making artists' colours. Remember what the priest's letter says of Teresa's feeling towards you, and then say—Is it so very unlikely that she has brought with her to England one of the poisons used by her husband in his trade? and is it quite unreasonable to suppose (when she looks at her canister) that she may be thinking of you?

"I may be right or I may be wrong. Thanks to the dilapidated condition of a lock, I can decide the question, at the first opportunity offered to me by the nurse's absence from the room.

"My next report shall tell you that I have contrived to provide myself with a sample of the powder—leaving the canister undisturbed. The sample shall be tested by a chemist. If he pronounces it to be poison, I have a bold course of action to propose.

"As soon as you are well enough to go to the house, give the nurse her chance of poisoning you.

"Dear madam, don't be alarmed! I will accompany you; and I will answer for the result. We will pay our visit at tea-time. Let her offer you a cup—and let me (under pretence of handing it) get possession of the poisoned drink. Before she can cry Stop!—I shall be on my way to the chemist.

"The penalty for attempted murder is penal servitude. If you still object to a public exposure, we have the chemist's report, together with your own evidence, ready for your son on his return. How will he feel about his marriage-engagement, when he finds that Miss Carmina's dearest friend and companion has tried—perhaps, with her young lady's knowledge—to poison his mother?

"Before concluding, I may mention that I had a narrow escape, only two hours since, of being seen by Teresa on the stairs.

"I was of course prepared for this sort of meeting, when I engaged my room; and I have therefore not been foolish enough to enter the house under an assumed name. On the contrary, I propose (in your interests) to establish a neighbourly acquaintance—with time to help me. But the matter of the poison admits of no delay. My chance of getting at it unobserved may be seriously compromised, if the nurse remembers that she first met with me in your house, and distrusts me accordingly. Your devoted servant, L. F."

Having completed his letter, he rang for the maid, and gave it to her to post.

On her way downstairs, she was stopped on the next landing by Mr. Null. He too had a letter ready: addressed to Doctor Benjulia. The fierce old nurse followed him out, and said, "Post it instantly!" The civil maid asked if Miss Carmina was better. "Worse!"—was all the rude foreigner said. She looked at poor Mr. Null, as if it was his fault.

Left in the retirement of his room, Mr. Le Frank sat at the writing-table, frowning and biting his nails.

Were these evidences of a troubled mind connected with the infamous proposal which he had addressed to Mrs. Gallilee? Nothing of the sort! Having sent away his letter, he was now at leisure to let his personal anxieties absorb him without restraint. He was thinking of Carmina. The oftener his efforts were baffled, the more resolute he became to discover the secret of her behaviour to him. For the hundredth time he said to himself, "Her devilish malice reviles me behind my back, and asks me before my face to shake hands and be friends." The more outrageously unreasonable his suspicions became, under the exasperating influence of suspense, the more inveterately his vindictive nature held to its delusion. After meeting her in the hall at Fairfield Gardens, he really believed Carmina's illness to have been assumed as a means of keeping out of his way. If a friend had said to him, "But what reason have you to think so?"—he would have smiled compassionately, and have given that friend up for a shallow-minded man.

He stole out again, and listened, undetected, at their door. Carmina was speaking; but the words, in those faint tones, were inaudible. Teresa's stronger voice easily reached his ears. "My darling, talking is not good for you. I'll light the night-lamp—try to sleep."

Hearing this, he went back to his bedroom to wait a little. Teresa's vigilance might relax if Carmina fell asleep. She might go downstairs for a gossip with the landlady.

After smoking a cigar, he tried again. The lights on the staircase were now put out: it was eleven o'clock.

She was not asleep: the nurse was reading to her from some devotional book. He gave it up, for that night. His head ached; the ferment of his own abominable thoughts had fevered him. A cowardly dread of the slightest signs of illness was one of his special weaknesses. The whole day, to-morrow, was before him. He felt his own pulse; and determined, in justice to himself, to go to bed.

Ten minutes later, the landlady, on her way to bed, ascended the stairs. She too heard the voice, still reading aloud—and tapped softly at the door. Teresa opened it.

"Is the poor thing not asleep yet?"

"No."

"Has she been disturbed in some way?"

"Somebody has been walking about, overhead," Teresa answered.

"That's the new lodger!" exclaimed the landlady. "I'll speak to Mr. Le Frank."

On the point of closing the door, and saying good-night, Teresa stopped, and considered for a moment.

"Is he your new lodger?" she said.

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"I saw him when I was last in England."

"Well?"

"Nothing more," Teresa answered. "Good-night!"



CHAPTER LII.

Watching through the night by Carmina's bedside, Teresa found herself thinking of Mr. Le Frank. It was one way of getting through the weary time, to guess at the motive which had led him to become a lodger in the house.

Common probabilities pointed to the inference that he might have reasons for changing his residence, which only concerned himself. But common probabilities—from Teresa's point of view—did not apply to Mr. Le Frank. On meeting him, at the time of her last visit to England, his personal appearance had produced such a disagreeable impression on her, that she had even told Carmina "the music-master looked like a rogue." With her former prejudice against him now revived, and with her serious present reasons for distrusting Mrs. Gallilee, she rejected the idea of his accidental presence under her landlady's roof. To her mind, the business of the new lodger in the house was, in all likelihood, the business of a spy.

While Mr. Le Frank was warily laying his plans for the next day, he had himself become an object of suspicion to the very woman whose secrets he was plotting to surprise.

This was the longest and saddest night which the faithful old nurse had passed at her darling's bedside.

For the first time, Carmina was fretful, and hard to please: patient persuasion was needed to induce her to take her medicine. Even when she was thirsty, she had an irritable objection to being disturbed, if the lemonade was offered to her which she had relished at other times. Once or twice, when she drowsily stirred in her bed, she showed symptoms of delusion. The poor girl supposed it was the eve or her wedding-day, and eagerly asked what Teresa had done with her new dress. A little later, when she had perhaps been dreaming, she fancied that her mother was still alive, and repeated the long-forgotten talk of her childhood. "What have I said to distress you?" she asked wonderingly, when she found Teresa crying.

Soon after sunrise, there came a long interval of repose.

At the later time when Benjulia arrived, she was quiet and uncomplaining. The change for the worse which had induced Teresa to insist on sending for him, was perversely absent. Mr. Null expected to be roughly rebuked for having disturbed the great man by a false alarm. He attempted to explain: and Teresa attempted to explain. Benjulia paid not the slightest attention to either of them. He made no angry remarks—and he showed, in his own impenetrable way, as gratifying an interest in the case as ever.

"Draw up the blind," he said; "I want to have a good look at her."

Mr. Null waited respectfully, and imposed strict silence on Teresa, while the investigation was going on. It lasted so long that he ventured to say, "Do you see anything particular, sir?"

Benjulia saw his doubts cleared up: time (as he had anticipated) had brought development with it, and had enabled him to arrive at a conclusion. The shock that had struck Carmina had produced complicated hysterical disturbance, which was now beginning to simulate paralysis. Benjulia's profound and practised observation detected a trifling inequality in the size of the pupils of the eyes, and a slightly unequal action on either side of the face—delicately presented in the eyelids, the nostrils, and the lips. Here was no common affection of the brain, which even Mr. Null could understand! Here, at last, was Benjulia's reward for sacrificing the precious hours which might otherwise have been employed in the laboratory! From that day, Carmina was destined to receive unknown honour: she was to take her place, along with the other animals, in his note-book of experiments.

He turned quietly to Mr. Null, and finished the consultation in two words.

"All right!"

"Have you nothing to suggest, sir?" Mr. Null inquired.

"Go on with the treatment—and draw down the blind, if she complains of the light. Good-day!"

"Are you sure he's a great doctor?" said Teresa, when the door had closed on him.

"The greatest we have!" cried Mr. Null with enthusiasm.

"Is he a good man?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I want to know if we can trust him to tell us the truth?"

"Not a doubt of it!" (Who could doubt it, indeed, after he had approved of Mr. Null's medical treatment?)

"There's one thing you have forgotten," Teresa persisted. "You haven't asked him when Carmina can be moved."

"My good woman, if I had put such a question, he would have set me down as a fool! Nobody can say when she will be well enough to be moved."

He took his hat. The nurse followed him out.

"Are you going to Mrs. Gallilee, sir?"

"Not to-day."

"Is she better?"

"She is almost well again."



CHAPTER LIII.

Left alone, Teresa went into the sitting-room: she was afraid to show herself at the bedside.

Mr. Null had destroyed the one hope which had supported her thus far—the hope of escaping from England with Carmina, before Mrs. Gallilee could interfere. Looking steadfastly at that inspiriting prospect, she had forced herself to sign the humble apology and submission which the lawyers had dictated. What was the prospect now? Heavily had the merciless hand of calamity fallen on that brave old soul—and, at last, it had beaten her down! While she stood at the window, mechanically looking out, the dreary view of the back street trembled and disappeared. Teresa was crying. Happily for herself, she was unable to control her own weakness; the tears lightened her heavy heart. She waited a little, in the fear that her eyes might betray her, before she returned to Carmina. In that interval, she heard the sound of a closing door, on the floor above.

"The music-master!" she said to herself.

In an instant, she was at the sitting-room door, looking through the keyhole. It was the one safe way of watching him—and that was enough for Teresa.

His figure appeared suddenly within her narrow range of view—on the mat outside the door. If her distrust of him was without foundation, he would go on downstairs. No! He stopped on the mat to listen—he stooped—his eye would have been at the keyhole in another moment.

She seized a chair, and moved it. The sound instantly drove him away. He went on, down the stairs.

Teresa considered with herself what safest means of protection—and, if possible, of punishment as well—lay within her reach. How, and where, could the trap be set that might catch him?

She was still puzzled by that question, when the landlady made her appearance—politely anxious to hear what the doctors thought of their patient. Satisfied so far, the wearisome woman had her apologies to make next, for not having yet cautioned Mr. Le Frank.

"Thinking over it, since last night," she said confidentially, "I cannot imagine how you heard him walking overhead. He has such a soft step that he positively takes me by surprise when he comes into my room. He has gone out for an hour; and I have done him a little favour which I am not in the habit of conferring on ordinary lodgers—I have lent him my umbrella, as it threatens rain. In his absence, I will ask you to listen while I walk about in his room. One can't be too particular, when rest is of such importance to your young lady—and it has struck me as just possible, that the floor of his room may be in fault. My dear, the boards may creak! I'm a sad fidget, I know; but, if the carpenter can set things right—without any horrid hammering, of course!—the sooner he is sent for, the more relieved I shall feel."

Through this harangue, the nurse had waited, with a patience far from characteristic of her, for an opportunity of saying a timely word. By some tortuous mental process, that she was quite unable to trace, the landlady's allusion to Mr. Le Frank had suggested the very idea of which, in her undisturbed solitude, she had been vainly in search. Never before, had the mistress of the house appeared to Teresa in such a favourable light.

"You needn't trouble yourself, ma'am," she said, as soon as she could make herself heard; "it was the creaking of the boards that told me somebody was moving overhead."

"Then I'm not a fidget after all? Oh, how you relieve me! Whatever the servants may have to do, one of them shall be sent instantly to the carpenter. So glad to be of any service to that sweet young creature!"

Teresa consulted her watch before she returned to the bedroom.

The improvement in Carmina still continued: she was able to take some of the light nourishment that was waiting for her. As Benjulia had anticipated, she asked to have the blind lowered a little. Teresa drew it completely over the window: she had her own reasons for tempting Carmina to repose. In half an hour more, the weary girl was sleeping, and the nurse was at liberty to set her trap for Mr. Le Frank.

Her first proceeding was to dip the end of a quill pen into her bottle of salad oil, and to lubricate the lock and key of the door that gave access to the bedroom from the stairs. Having satisfied herself that the key could now be used without making the slightest sound, she turned to the door of communication with the sitting-room next.

This door was covered with green baize. It had handles but no lock; and it swung inwards, so as to allow the door of the cupboard (situated in the angle of the sitting-room wall) to open towards the bedroom freely. Teresa oiled the hinges, and the brass bolt and staple which protected the baize door on the side of the bedroom. That done, she looked again at her watch.

Mr. Le Frank's absence was expected to last for an hour. In five minutes more, the hour would expire.

After bolting the door of communication, she paused in the bedroom, and wafted a kiss to Carmina, still at rest. She left the room by the door which opened on the stairs, and locked it, taking away the key with her.

Having gone down the first flight of stairs, she stopped and went back. The one unsecured door, was the door which led into the sitting-room from the staircase. She opened it and left it invitingly ajar. "Now," she said to herself, "the trap will catch him!"

The hall clock struck the hour when she entered the landlady's room.

The woman of many words was at once charmed and annoyed. Charmed to hear that the dear invalid was resting, and to receive a visit from the nurse: annoyed by the absence of the carpenter, at work somewhere else for the whole of the day. "If my dear husband had been alive, we should have been independent of carpenters; he could turn his hand to anything. Now do sit down—I want you to taste some cherry brandy of my own making."

As Teresa took a chair, Mr. Le Frank returned. The two secret adversaries met, face to face.

"Surely I remember this lady?" he said.

Teresa encountered him, on his own ground. She made her best curtsey, and reminded him of the circumstances under which they had formerly met. The hospitable landlady produced her cherry brandy. "We are going to have a nice little chat; do sit down, sir, and join us." Mr. Le Frank made his apologies. The umbrella which had been so kindly lent to him, had not protected his shoes; his feet were wet; and he was so sadly liable to take cold that he must beg permission to put on his dry things immediately.

Having bowed himself out, he stopped in the passage, and, standing on tiptoe, peeped through a window in the wall, by which light was conveyed to the landlady's little room. The two women were comfortably seated together, with the cherry brandy and a plate of biscuits on a table between them. "In for a good long gossip," thought Mr. Le Frank. "Now is my time!"

Not five minutes more had passed, before Teresa made an excuse for running upstairs again. She had forgotten to leave the bell rope, in case Carmina woke, within the reach of her hand. The excellent heart of the hostess made allowance for natural anxiety. "Do it, you good soul," she said; "and come back directly!" Left by herself, she filled her glass again, and smiled. Sweetness of temper (encouraged by cherry brandy) can even smile at a glass—unless it happens to be empty.

Approaching her own rooms, Teresa waited, and listened, before she showed herself. No sound reached her through the half open sitting-room door. She noiselessly entered the bedroom, and then locked the door again. Once more she listened; and once more there was nothing to be heard. Had he seen her on the stairs?

As the doubt crossed her mind, she heard the boards creak on the floor above. Mr. Le Frank was in his room.

Did this mean that her well-laid plan had failed? Or did it mean that he was really changing his shoes and stockings? The last inference was the right one.

He had made no mere excuse downstairs. The serious interests that he had at stake, were not important enough to make him forget his precious health. His chest was delicate; a cold might settle on his lungs. The temptation of the half-open door had its due effect on this prudent man; but it failed to make him forget that his feet were wet.

The boards creaked again; the door of his room was softly closed—then there was silence. Teresa only knew when he had entered the sitting-room by hearing him try the bolted baize door. After that, he must have stepped out again. He next tried the door of the bedchamber, from the stairs.

There was a quiet interval once more. Teresa noiselessly drew back the bolt; and, opening the baize door by a mere hair's-breadth, admitted sound from the sitting-room. She now heard him turning the key in a chiffonier, which only contained tradesmen's circulars, receipted bills, and a few books.

(Even with the canister in the cupboard, waiting to be opened, his uppermost idea was to discover Carmina's vindictive motive in Carmina's papers!)

The contents of the chiffonier disappointed him—judging by the tone in which he muttered to himself. The next sound startled Teresa; it was a tap against the lintel of the door behind which she was standing. He had thrown open the cupboard.

The rasping of the cover, as he took it off, told her that he was examining the canister. She had put it back on the shelf, a harmless thing now—the poison and the label having been both destroyed by fire. Nevertheless, his choosing the canister, from dozens of other things scattered invitingly about it, inspired her with a feeling of distrustful surprise. She was no longer content to find out what he was doing by means of her ears. Determined to see him, and to catch him in the fact, she pulled open the baize door—at the moment when he must have discovered that the canister was empty. A faint thump told her he had thrown it on the floor.

The view of the sitting-room was still hidden from her. She had forgotten the cupboard door.

Now that it was wide open, it covered the entrance to the bedroom, and completely screened them one from the other. For the moment she was startled, and hesitated whether to show herself or not. His voice stopped her.

"Is there another canister?" he said to himself. "The dirty old savage may have hidden it—"

Teresa heard no more. "The dirty old savage" was an insult not to be endured! She forgot her intention of stealing on him unobserved; she forgot her resolution to do nothing that could awaken Carmina. Her fierce temper urged her into furious action. With both hands outspread, she flew at the cupboard door, and banged it to in an instant.

A shriek of agony rang through the house. The swiftly closing door had caught, and crushed, the fingers of Le Frank's right hand, at the moment when he was putting it into the cupboard again.

Without stopping to help him, without even looking at him, she ran back to Carmina.

The swinging baize door fell to, and closed of itself. No second cry was heard. Nothing happened to falsify her desperate assertion that the shriek was the delusion of a vivid dream. She took Carmina in her arms, and patted and fondled her like a child. "See, my darling, I'm with you as usual; and I have heard nothing. Don't, oh, don't tremble in that way! There—I'll wrap you up in my shawl, and read to you. No! let's talk of Ovid."