is tongue was burnt and became rough
and numb. Then his suspicions were confirmed.

Presently Lady Bellamy opened her eyes again, and this time there was
intelligence in them. She gazed round her with a wondering air. Next
she spoke.

"Where am I?"

"In your own drawing-room, Lady Bellamy. Be quiet now, you will be
better presently."

She tried first to move her head, then her arm, then her lower limbs,
but they would not stir. By this time her faculties were wide awake.

"Are you the doctor?" she said.

"Yes, Lady Bellamy."

"Then tell me why cannot I move my arms."

He lifted her hand; it fell again like a lump of lead--and Dr.
Williamson looked very grave. Then he applied a current of
electricity.

"Do you feel that?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Why cannot I move? Do not trifle with me, tell me quick."

Dr. Williamson was a young man, and had not quite conquered
nervousness. In his confusion, he muttered something about
"paralysis."

"How is it that I am not dead?"

"I have brought you back to life, but pray do not talk."

"You fool, why could you not let me die? You mean that you have
brought my mind to life, and left my body dead. I feel now that I am
quite paralysed."

He could not answer her, what she said was only too true, and his look
told her so. She gazed steadily at him for a moment as he bent over
her, and realized all the horrors of her position, and for the first
time in her life her proud spirit absolutely gave way. For a few
seconds she was silent, and then, without any change coming over the
expression of her features--for the wild gaze with which she had faced
eternity was for ever frozen there--she broke out into a succession of
the most heart-rending shrieks that it had ever been his lot to listen
to. At last she stopped exhausted.

"Kill me!" she whispered, hoarsely, "kill me!"

It was a dreadful scene.

As the doctors afterwards concluded, rightly or wrongly, a very
curious thing had happened to Lady Bellamy. Either the poison she had
taken--and they were never able to discover what its exact nature was,
nor would she enlighten them--had grown less deadly during all the
years that she had kept it, or she had partially defeated her object
by taking an overdose, or, as seemed more probable, there was some
acid in the wine in which it had been mixed that had had the strange
effect of rendering it to a certain degree innocuous. Its result,
however, was, as she guessed