ll at once it was quiet.

"Get up," said Veronica, nervously, for she was fond of the creature.
"Help me to move the chest of drawers out. Then we can get it out."

"It is dead," answered Elettra, still on the floor, and thrusting her
long, thin arm under the piece of furniture. "But I cannot pull him
out," she added. "He is so big!"

She got upon her feet, and together, without much difficulty, the two
dragged the chest of drawers away from the wall, and then bent down
behind it, with the candle, to look at the dead animal.

"It is quite dead," said Elettra. "Poor beast! What can have happened to
it?" Veronica was really sorry, but of the two the maid had been the
more fond of the cat. "It must have eaten something."

Elettra looked up, suspiciously, and Veronica drew back a step, half
straightening herself. Her foot touched something close to the wall. She
stooped again and picked up the package of rat-poison which Matilda had
hidden under the chest of drawers on the previous night. She looked at
it closely. It had evidently not lain long where she had found it, for
there was no dust on it, and the coarse paper had an unmistakably fresh
look. The indication of the contents was written upon it in ink, in
illiterate characters.

"It is rat-poison!" exclaimed Veronica. "The cat must have eaten some of
it! How did it come here?"

She looked at her maid curiously.

"The cat could not have wrapped it up and folded in the ends of the
paper," observed Elettra.

"That is true."

They looked at each other, in considerable astonishment. Then they
talked about it. Veronica asked whether Elettra had complained that
there were mice in her room, and whether some stupid servant, having a
package of rat-poison at hand, had not stuck it under the chest of
drawers, not even thinking of opening the paper. Elettra was suspicious.

"At all events, Excellency," she said, "remember that you found it, and
that it was carefully closed."

Suddenly, as they were speaking together, Veronica's face changed, and
she grasped the corner of the piece of furniture convulsively. Though
she had taken the poisoned lump from her cup in time to save her life,
enough had been dissolved already to make her very ill.

Again there was dire confusion and fear in the Palazzo Macomer, by
night. It was a wholesale poisoning. Veronica, Matilde, and Gregorio
were all seized nearly at the same time.

Several of the servants left the house within half