Her store being exhausted, and the key
falling no more into her possession, she was
obliged for a time to desist from her
beguiling experiments. Mistress Lucy,
however, still steadily continued her applications,
—she used the water in which the powder
was dissolved as a cosmetic,—but, though her
complexion became clear, it did not gain the
much-coveted bloom of the village smith's
wife. Both the sisters would occasionally
visit her in her cottage, and as Rose's beauty
was on the blush always when they so
honoured her, they went away each time
more emulous and more envious than before.
At last Mistress Gilbert's ebony box was
empty, and no more of the powder could be
obtained, until Sir Roger Bedinfield went up
to London with his family, when the
celebrated Mistress Turner might be induced to
part with more at a price something like
twice its weight in gold. Mistress Lucy was
very impatient of this delay, but at length,
though Mistress Turner was then in trouble,
for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in
the Tower, a supply was obtained from
another person, and the beautifying discipline
was recommenced by the elder sister
at once. Whether some more deadly
ingredient was now mingled with it, or it was
unskilfully prepared, or, what is still more
probable, Mistress Lucy used it incautiously,
and too often, it now began to work on the
muscles of the face, and the miserable girl
awoke one morning with her mouth drawn
on one side, and frightfully disfigured.
Mistress Gilbert, terrified at her appearance,
and rightly attributing it to the cosmetic, to
shield herself from all suspicion, immediately
exclaimed that her young lady was bewitched
—and, as all new or ill-understood disease
was, in these good old times, laid to
supernatural influences, this was readily believed.
But, bewitched or poisoned, poor young
Mistress Lucy's days of vanity were past.
and she would never charm Sir Henry
Cavendish, or any gay gallant, with her face
again. Mistress Elizabeth was so much
shocked and grieved for some days that she
forgot to profit by all the opportunities that,
at this crisis, fell in her way for appropriating
the powder; and, when she recovered her
spirits, and looked for it in the jewel-box, she
found that it had been removed. At first
she thought of frightening Mistress Gilbert
into giving her some by threatening to tell
Lady Bedinfield; but caution interposed to
remind her how many petty secrets of hers
the waiting-woman could employ against her
if so disposed. Therefore she determined to
wait until they returned in spring to Hambledon,
when she would endeavour to get at the
precious store kept in the ebony box itself.

III.

Lady Bedinfield devoted herself like a
good mother to her afflicted daughter; and,
when they retired to their country-house—
where the only amusements were such as
her health and spirits were far too broken
to enjoy—they might be seen almost daily
wandering through the shrubberies together,
or sitting under the trees. Poor Mistress
Lucy could not bear to be seen by the most
intimate friends, or even by the villagers;
and, the idea that she had been bewitched,
gained ground fast.

Mistress Gilbert was one of those patient
haters, who never balk themselves of their
revenge by rushing upon it prematurely. To
screen her own malpractices, she had said at
first, that Mistress Lucy was bewitched; but
it did not occur to her then to turn this to
the furtherance of her schemes against Rose
Nicholl. One lovely June evening, however,
in passing by the smith's cottage, she saw a
gathering of the village goodies, who told
her that the White Rose, her detested rival,
had just got a little son; and, a week or
two later, she saw the young mother herself
standing at her open window with the child
in her arms, and the stalwart smith leaning
in, making gentle paternal advances, to her
great and laughing delight. Mistress
Gilbert's heart felt like a lump of molten lead
in her bosom at this picture. She stopped
and looked at it wickedly over the hedge for
several minutes, and then rushed rapidly
homewards. Her plan was maturing.

A dreadful scene greeted her when she
arrived: the house was in an uproar. Everybody
running hither and thither, calling for
this thing and that, in frantic haste. Mistress
Elizabeth was ill, she was dying—dying in
agonies; her shrieks could be heard half over
the house.

"She is poisoned," said Lady Bedinfield,
who was shuddering and weeping by her
daughter's writhing form; but Mistress
Gilbert, bending over the bed her ash-grey face,
said: "No, I have seen these convulsions
before; she is bewitched, like Mistress Lucy."

Everyone in the room paused aghast with
their remedies, but Lady Bedintield said,
"Who can pursue our family with such a
relentless hatred? Whom have we any of
us injured? There is worthy Parson Phillips
coming to our aid; let him be admitted."

While the minister recited his prayers,
Mistress Elizabeth died. "She has been
poisoned," he also observed; but the doctor,
not being able to name the drug that had
killed her, solemnly countenanced Mistress
Gilbert's idea, that she had been bewitched.
The waiting-woman was not long in discovering
where Mistress Elizabeth had found her
fatal draught. Advantage had been taken of
her absence to break open the ebony box and
abstract the cosmetic powder. Too large an
internal dose had done its work for ever.

From the time of her sister's death, poor
Mistress Lucy's health also began fast to
decline. She became subject to long fits of
melancholy depression, and more than ever evaded
seeing strangers. Still she would go out of