sent of a
little glass medicine dropper which I chanced to have with me, and a
small quantity of arsenic, which he tested with very satisfactory
results, on a dog, he gave me a portion of the drug, but I'm sorry to
say I could not prevail on the old scoundrel to give or sell the secret
of its composition," concluded Hilyard regretfully, lifting the phial
with tenderness. "I've tried to analyze it myself, and I sent it to a
celebrated chemist, but the ingredients completely defy classification,
and tests seem powerless to determine anything except that they are
purely vegetable," he said, shaking the liquid angrily, and then rising
to lock it in his cabinet.

I, too, rose with a shudder, half-believing, half-sceptical, yet none
the less with a strong distaste for the memory of the story I had just
heard. I left Hilyard arranging the shelf of his cabinet, and opening
the long French window I walked out on the lawn.

Under the elm I saw Mrs. Mershon, Amy's aunt, with whom we were all
staying. Kate Mershon was idly tossing a tennis-ball into the air, and
making ineffectual strokes at it with a racquet, and at Mrs. Mershon's
feet sat Amy, reading, the golden sunlight resting tenderly on her head,
and bringing out the reddish tones of her hair. We were to be married in
a month, and she looked so beautiful in the peace and quiet of the
waning day, that I wished we two were alone that I might take her in my
yearning arms and raise that exquisite colorless face to my lips. She
never seemed so lovely as when contrasted with Kate's mature, sensual
beauty, dark and rich as the Creole, and completely devoid of that touch
of the pure and heavenly without which no woman's face is perfect to me.
Amy was brilliant, full of raillery at times, but in the depths of
those great clear eyes, like agates, in the candor of that white face,
like a tea-rose, one read the beautiful chastity of soul in whose
presence passion becomes mixed with a reverence that sanctifies it.

Later that evening, when the drawing-room was gay with light and music,
and Kate was singing one of Judie's least objectionable songs, with a
verve and grace of gesture that the prima donna herself need not have
despised, Amy and I went out on the moonlit lawn, leaving Hilyard
leaning over the piano, and Mrs. Mershon sleeping peacefully in a
corner. We strolled up and down the gravelled path in a silence more
pregnant than words, and I felt my darling's hands clasped on my a