again--and the unrelenting
venom is at its work!

Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his
hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the
right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the
star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the
grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning
the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an
unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.
The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays,
though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all
things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of
our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the
accomplishment of our desires.

It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that
the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed
actually to be present in Margaret's chamber, watching every movement
and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips
and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not
therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.

It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection
that he was musing.

"Now it's done, it can't be undone," he said. "But is it so very safe,
after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it's much
more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any
other way. And then there's all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there
is not an inquest--as, of course, there won't be--they'll ask who the
girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they'll, some of
them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound
her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries,
perhaps."

And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his
thumb-nail, and yawned.

"By gad! I wish I had not risked it," he said to himself; and his
complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to
flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk
back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the
finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could
scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.
A long pull at the liquor r