and's life!

With his hand still mechanically pointing at the table Noel Vanstone
raised his head and looked up at Mrs. Lecount.

"I took it from the cupboard," she said, answering the look. "I took
both bottles out together, not knowing which might be the bottle I
wanted. I am as much shocked, as much frightened, as you are."

"Poison!" he said to himself, slowly. "Poison locked up by my wife in
the cupboard in her own room." He stopped, and looked at Mrs. Lecount
once more. "For _me?_" he asked, in a vacant, inquiring tone.

"We will not talk of it, sir, until your mind is more at ease," said
Mrs. Lecount. "In the meantime, the danger that lies waiting in this
bottle shall be instantly destroyed in your presence." She took out the
cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the empty bottle after
it. "Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery for the present," she
resumed; "let us go downstairs at once. All that I have now to say to
you can be said in another room."

She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her own.
"It is well for him; it is well for me," she thought, as they went
downstairs together, "that I came when I did."

On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the
carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and instructed
the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to call again
for her in two hours' time. This done, she accompanied Noel Vanstone
into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed him before it
comfortably in an easy-chair. He sat for a few minutes, warming his
hands feebly like an old man, and staring straight into the flame. Then
he spoke.

"When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk," he began,
still staring into the fire, "you came back to the parlor after she was
gone, and you told me--?" He stopped, shivered a little, and lost the
thread of his recollections at that point.

"I told you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, "that the woman was, in my
opinion, Miss Vanstone herself. Don't start, Mr. Noel! Your wife is
away, and I am here to take care of you. Say to yourself, if you feel
frightened, 'Lecount is here; Lecount will take care of me.' The truth
must be told, sir, however hard to bear the truth may be. Miss Magdalen
Vanstone was the woman who came to you in disguise; and the woman who
came to you in disguise is the woman you have married. The conspiracy
which she threatened you with in London