treets. She could not get at him in his
meals to poison him. She could not creep to his bedside and strangle
him in the silent watches of the night. And this woman's heart, even
while from day to day she was meditating murder,--while she was
telling herself that it would be a worthy deed to cut off from life
one whose life was a bar to her own success,--even then revolted from
the shrinking stealthy step, from the low cowardice of the hidden
murderer. To look him in the face and then to slay him,--when no
escape for herself would be possible, that would have in it something
that was almost noble; something at any rate bold,--something that
would not shame her. They would hang her for such a deed! Let them
do so. It was not hanging that she feared, but the tongues of those
who should speak of her when she was gone. They should not speak of
her as one who had utterly failed. They should tell of a woman who,
cruelly misused throughout her life, maligned, scorned, and tortured,
robbed of her own, neglected by her kindred, deserted and damned by
her husband, had still struggled through it all till she had proved
herself to be that which it was her right to call herself;--of
a woman who, though thwarted in her ambition by her own child,
and cheated of her triumph at the very moment of her success, had
dared rather to face an ignominious death than see all her efforts
frustrated by the maudlin fancy of a girl. Yes! She would face it
all. Let them do what they would with her. She hardly knew what might
be the mode of death adjudged to a Countess who had murdered. Let
them kill her as they would, they would kill a Countess;--and the
whole world would know her story.

That day and night were very dreadful to her. She never asked a
question about her daughter. They had brought her food to her in that
lonely parlour, and she hardly heeded them as they laid the things
before her, and then removed them. Again and again did she unlock the
old desk, and see that the weapon was ready to her hand. Then she
opened that letter to Sir William Patterson, and added a postscript
to it. "What I have since done will explain everything." That was
all she added, and on the following morning, about noon, she put the
letter on the mantelshelf. Late at night she took herself to bed,
and was surprised to find that she slept. The key of the old desk
was under her pillow, and she placed her hand on it the moment that
she awoke. On leaving her own room