the poison of which that resolute young wife proposed to make use
something that acted slowly, and told the doctors nothing if they looked
for it after death?

Would it be running too great a risk to show the story to the doctor,
and try to get a little valuable information in that way? It would be
useless. He would make some feeble joke; he would say, girls and poisons
are not fit company for each other.

But I might discover what I want to know in another way. I might call on
the doctor, after he has gone out on his afternoon round of visits,
and might tell the servant I would wait for his master's return.
Nobody would be in my way; I might get at the medical literature in the
consulting-room, and find the information for myself.

A knock at my door interrupted me in the midst of my plans. Mrs.
Tenbruggen again!--still in a fidgety state of feeling on the subject of
my health. "Which is it?" she said. "Pain of body, my dear, or pain of
mind? I am anxious about you."

"My dear Elizabeth, your sympathy is thrown away on me. As I have told
you already, I am over-tired--nothing more."

She was relieved to hear that I had no mental troubles to complain of.
"Fatigue," she remarked, "sets itself right with rest. Did you take a
very long walk?"

"Yes."

"Beyond the limits of the town, of course? Philip has been taking a walk
in the country, too. He doesn't say that he met you."

These clever people sometimes overreach themselves. How she suggested it
to me, I cannot pretend to have discovered. But I did certainly suspect
that she had led Philip, while they were together downstairs, into
saying to her what he had already said to Miss Jillgall. I was so angry
that I tried to pump my excellent friend, as she had been trying to pump
me--a vulgar expression, but vulgar writing is such a convenient way
of writing sometimes. My first attempt to entrap the Masseuse failed
completely. She coolly changed the subject.

"Have I interrupted you in writing?" she asked, pointing to my Diary.

"No; I was idling over what I have written already--an extraordinary
story which I copied from a book."

"May I look at it?"

I pushed the open Diary across the table. If I was the object of any
suspicions which she wanted to confirm, it would be curious to see if
the poisoning story helped her. "It's a piece of family history," I
said; "I think you will agree with me that it is really interesting."

She began to read. As she went on,