has a wide knowledge of the symptoms and effects of orosin."

The poor lady sighed, and with tired, sad eyes looked upon her
daughter, who had sunk into a chair with her pointed chin resting upon
her palms.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Garfield, I am not rich," she said in a low
earnest tone. "I will give most willingly all I possess in order that
my poor child be restored to her normal senses. But I have very little
in these post-war days, when everything is so dear, and taxation
strangles one, in face of what they told us during the war that they
were making England a place fit for heroes to live in! It seems to me
that they are now making it fit for Germans and aliens to live in."

"My dear Mrs. Tennison, our discussion does not concern politics," I
said, anxious for the future of the graceful girl whom I had grown to
love so dearly, even though her brain was unbalanced. At first I
regarded it as strange that being fellow-victims of Oswald De Gex and
his desperate, unscrupulous accomplices--who included the assassin
Despujol--I had been drawn towards her by some unknown and invisible
attraction. But when I analysed my feelings and surveyed the situation
calmly I saw that it was not more extraordinary than in any other
circumstances when a man, seeing a woman who fulfills all his high
ideals, falls desperately in love with her and worships at her shrine.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD

THE DEATH-DRUG

It was July.

The London season, later in these modern days, was already on the
wane. The Derby and Ascot had been won, in glorious weather. There had
been splendid cricket at Lord's, fine polo at Hurlingham, and Henley
Week had just passed. London Society was preparing for the country,
the Continental Spas, and the sea, leaving the metropolis to the
American cousins who were each week invading London's big hotels.

I was back at Francis and Goldsmith's hard at work as I had been
before my strange adventure, while Harry was busy at his legal work in
the police courts.

From our windows looking across the Thames between the trees on the
towing path we had a wide view of the river with the chimneys of the
factories on the opposite bank. On the right was Putney, the starting
place of the University Boat Race, and on the left the great
reservoirs and the bend of the river behind which lay Mortlake, the
finish of the boat-race course. Each morning, when I rose and dressed,
I looked out upon the wide and somewhat unint