a few words to you alone, if you please?'

Mrs. Darrell rose, with a hurried anxious look.

'What can you have to say to Mr. Hale alone, Miss Crofton?' she
asked.

'It is about herself, perhaps,' said the doctor kindly. 'I have told
her all along that she would be knocked up by this nursing; and now
I daresay she begins to find I am right.'

'Yes,' I said, 'it is about myself I want to speak.'

Mrs. Darrell went to one of the windows, and stood with her face
turned away from us, looking out. I followed Mr. Hale into the
dressing-room.

I unlocked the wardrobe, took out the medicine-bottle, and told the
doctor my suspicions of the previous night. He listened to me with
grave attention, but with an utterly incredulous look.

'A nervous fancy of yours, no doubt, Miss Crofton,' he said;
'however, I'll take the medicine back to my surgery and analyse it.'

'I have something more to tell you, Mr. Hale.'

'Indeed!'

I repeated, word for word, what Peter had told me about Mrs.
Darrell's visit to his grandmother.

'It is a very extraordinary business,' he said; 'but I cannot
imagine that Mrs. Darrell would be capable of such a hideous crime.
What motive could she have for such an act?'

'I do not feel justified in speaking quite plainly upon that
subject, Mr. Hale; but I have reason to know that Mrs. Darrell has a
very bitter feeling about her stepdaughter.'

'I cannot think the thing you suspect possible. However, the
medicine shall be analysed; and we will take all precautions for the
future. I will send you another bottle immediately, in a sealed
packet. You will take notice that the seal is unbroken before you
use the medicine.'

He showed me his crest on a seal at the end of his pencil-case, and
then departed. The medicine came a quarter of an hour later in a
sealed packet. This time I brought the bottle into the sick-room,
and placed it on the mantelpiece, where it was impossible for any
one to touch it.

When Mr. Hale came for his second visit, there was a grave and
anxious look in his face. He was very well satisfied with the
appearance of the patient, however, and pronounced that there was a
change for the better--slight, of course, but quite as much as could
be expected in so short a time. He beckoned me out of the room, and
I went down-stairs with him, leaving Susan Dodd with Milly.

'I am going to speak to Mrs. Darrell, and you had better come with
me,' he said.

She was in the library. Mr. Ha