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