oulder. In that embrace they remained some moments silent,
and an angel might unreprovingly have heard their hearts beat through
the stillness.

At length Percival tore himself from those arms which relaxed their
imploring hold reluctantly; she heard his hurried step descend the
stairs, and in a moment more the roll of the wheels in the court
without; a dreary sense, as of some utter desertion, some everlasting
bereavement, chilled and appalled her. She stood motionless, as if
turned to stone, on the floor; suddenly the touch of something warm on
her hand, a plaining whine, awoke her attention; Percival's favourite
dog missed his master, and had slunk for refuge to her. The dread
sentiment of loneliness vanished in that humble companionship; and
seating herself on the ground, she took the dog in her arms, and bending
over it, wept in silence.

CHAPTER XXIV. MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST.

The reader will doubtless have observed the consummate art with which
the poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her prey. The design conceived
from afar, and executed with elaborate stealth, defied every chance of
detection against which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard.
Grant even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the death
they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of
chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto
baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of
the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not
one suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The
medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her
hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.
The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had assumed,
forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of
night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was
sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might
sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of
light struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish
from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the
colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania
(Tufania water) was wholly without taste or colour] in the morning
draught, meant to bring strength and healing. Grant that the draught was
u