nd drink! Eat and drink in this
house? It is so likely! How am I to tell, for example, if your coffee is
not poisoned? You would not be very sorry if I were to die! Parbleu, if
you want to poison me, you should tempt me with brandy or champagne.
Have you neither of those to offer me?"

Lettice had drawn back at the first hint of this insinuation, with a
look of irrepressible disgust. She answered coldly, "I have neither
brandy nor champagne to give you."

"Allons, donc! Why do I stay here then?" said Cora jumping up from the
chair where she had seated herself. "This is very wearisome. Your idea
was not very clever, Mademoiselle Lettice; you should lay your plans
better if you want to trick a woman like me."

"Why should I wish to trick you?" said Lettice, with grave, quiet scorn.
"What object could I have in killing you?"

"Ma foi, what object should you not have? Revenge, of course. Have I not
injured you? have I not taken away your good name already? All who know
you have heard my story, and many who do not know you; and nearly every
one of them believes it to be true. You robbed me of my husband,
mademoiselle, you know it; and you have but too good reason to wish me
dead, in order that you may take a wife's place at the convict's side."

"You are mad. Listen to me----"

"I will listen to nothing. I will speak now. I will give you a last
warning. Do you know what this is?"

She took a bottle from her pocket, a bottle of fluted, dark-colored
glass, and held it in her hand.

"Look! This is vitriol, the friend of the injured and the defenceless. I
have carried it with me ever since I followed my husband to your house
at Brook Green, and saw you making signals to him at midnight. I came
once after that, and knocked at your door, intending then to avenge my
wrongs; but you had gone away, and I was brutally treated by your
police. But if I could not punish you I could punish _him_, for he
belonged to me and not to you, and I had a right to make him suffer. I
have made him suffer a little, it seems to me. Wait--I have more to say.
Shall I make him suffer more? I have punished you through him; shall I
punish him through you? For he would not like you to be maimed and
disfigured through life: his sensitive soul would writhe, would it not?
to know that you were suffering pain. Do you know what this magic water
is? It stings and bites and eats away the flesh--it will blind you so
that you can never see him again; and it