She had laid her head on the pillow, with the
same reckless resolution to submit to the coming
trial, which had already expressed itself in words,
when she and Mrs. Wragge met by accident on
the stairs. When she woke on the morning of
Saturday, the resolution was gone. The Friday's
thoughts—the Friday's events even—were blotted
out of her mind. Once again, creeping chill
through the flow of her young blood, she felt the
slow and deadly prompting of despair, which had
come to her in the waning moonlight, which
had whispered to her in the awful calm.

"I saw the end, as the end must be," she said
to herself, " on Thursday night. I have been
wrong ever since."

When she and her companion met that morning,
she reiterated her complaint of suffering
from the toothache; she repeated her refusal to
allow Mrs. Wragge to procure a remedy; she
left the house after breakfast, in the direction of
the chemist's shop, exactly as she had left it on
the morning before.

This time she entered the shop without an
instant's hesitation.

"I have got an attack of toothache," she said
abruptly to an elderly man who stood behind the
counter.

"May I look at the tooth, Miss?"
"There is no necessity to look. It is a hollow
tooth. I think I have caught cold in it."

The chemist recommended various remedies,
which were in vogue fifteen years since. She
declined purchasing any of them.

"I have always found Laudanum relieve the
pain better than anything else," she said, trifling
with the bottles on the counter, and looking at
them while she spoke, instead of looking at the
chemist. " Let me have some Laudanum."

"Certainly, Miss. Excuse my asking the
question—it is only a matter of form. You are
staying at Aldborough, I think?"

"Yes. I am Miss Bygrave, of North
Shingles."

The chemist bowed; and, turning to his
shelves, filled an ordinary half-ounce bottle with
laudanum, immediately. In ascertaining his
customer's name and address beforehand, the
owner of the shop had taken a precaution, which
was natural to a careful man—but which was by
no means universal, under similar circumstances,
in the state of the law at that time.

"Shall I put you up a little cotton wool with
the laudanum?" he asked, after he had placed a
label on the bottle, and had written a word on
it in large letters.

"If you please. What have you just written
on the bottle?" She put the question sharply,
with something of distrust as well as curiosity
in her manner.

The chemist answered the question by turning
the label towards her. She saw written on it, in
large letters—POISON.

"I like to be on the safe side, Miss," said the
old man, smiling. " Very worthy people in other
respects, are often sadly careless, where poisons
are concerned."

She began trifling again with the bottles on
the counter; and put another question, with an
ill-concealed anxiety to hear the answer.

"Is there danger," she asked, "in such a little
drop of Laudanum as that?"

"There is Death in it, Miss," replied the
chemist, quietly.

"Death to a child, or to a person in delicate
health?"

"Death to the strongest man in England, let
him be who he may."

With that answer, the chemist sealed up the
bottle in its wrapping of white paper, and handed
the laudanum to Magdalen across the counter.
She laughed as she took it from him, and paid
for it.

"There will be no fear of accidents at North
Shingles," she said. "I shall keep the bottle
locked up in my dressing-case. If it doesn't
relieve the pain, I must come to you again, and
try some other remedy. Good morning."

"Good morning, Miss."

She went straight back to the house, without
once looking up, without noticing any one who
passed her. She brushed by Mrs. Wragge in the
passage, as she might have brushed by a piece of
furniture. She ascended the stairs, and caught
her foot twice in her dress, from sheer inattention
to the common precaution of holding it up. The
trivial daily interests of life had lost their hold on
her already.

In the privacy of her own room, she took the
bottle from its wrapping, and threw the paper
and the cotton wool into the fireplace. At the
moment when she did this, there was a knock at
the door. She hid the little bottle, and looked up
impatiently. Mrs. Wragge came into the room.

"Have you got something for your toothache,
my dear?"

"Yes."

"Can I do anything to help you?"

"No."

Mrs. Wragge still lingered uneasily near the
door. Her manner showed plainly that she had
something more to say.

"What is it?" asked Magdalen, sharply.

"Don't be angry," said Mrs. Wragge. "I'm
not settled in my mind about the captain. He's
a great writer—and he hasn't written. He's as
quick as lightning—and he hasn't come back.
Here's Saturday, and no signs of him. Has he
run away, do you think? Has anything
happened to him?"

"I should think not. Go down stairs; I'll
come and speak to you about it, directly."

As soon as she was alone again, Magdalen rose
from her chair, advanced towards a cupboard in
the room which locked, and paused for a moment,
with her hand on the key, in doubt. Mrs.
Wragge's appearance had disturbed the whole
current of her thoughts. Mrs. Wragge's last
question, trifling as it was, had checked her on the
verge of the precipice—had roused the old vain
hope in her once more of release by accident.

"Why not?" she said. " Why may something
not have happened to one of them?"