If
she noticed its displacement, she would think the maid had been looking
at it, and the very fact of her picking it up and laying it among her
other trinkets would bring it to her thoughts when she awoke, with mind
set on death. _His_ poison, _his_ dagger--what fitness! Heaven itself
was helping me, and approving my ridding earth of this Lamia whose blood
ran evil.
When I gave Amy the letter, she took it languidly, saying she would read
it in her room; she was going to bed; the wine had made her drowsy; and
the others, too, declaring themselves worn with the great heat of the
day, we bade each other good-night, and the house was soon silent.
I undressed on going to my room, since, in case of certain events, it
would be to my interest to appear to have just risen from bed, and I
even lay down, wrapped in my dressing-gown, and put out my light. I
almost wondered that I felt no greater resentment and rage at Hilyard,
yet my sense of justice precluded it. As well blame the tree around
which the poison vine creeps and clings. I looked deeper than would the
world, which doubtless, judging from the surface, would have condemned
him rather than her, had all been known. She of the Madonna face and the
angel smile, anything but wronged? Never! The world would have acquitted
her triumphantly had she committed all the sins of the Borgias.
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