"Then the Lady Glaslyn at The Hollies was not your mother?" I gasped, profoundly amazed at this revelation. "I am about to explain," she went on in a hard voice. "On the night before our departure from Zurich I chanced to pass the door of Madame's bedroom after everybody had retired to rest, and seeing a light issuing from the keyhole was prompted by natural curiosity to peep within. What I saw was certainly strange. In one hand she was holding an unopened bottle of Benedictine liqueur upside down, while with the other she took a hypodermic syringe filled with some liquid, and with the long thin needle pierced the cork, then slowly, and with infinite care, she injected the liquid from the tiny glass syringe. Afterwards she withdrew the hollow needle, glanced at the parchment capsule beneath the light, and having satisfied herself that the puncture made was quite unnoticeable, she shook the bottle so as to thoroughly mix the injected liquid with the liqueur. Then I saw her wrap the bottle carefully in a number of towels and place it in her trunk. Next day, when packing, I glanced at the bottle with some curiosity, examining the parchment covering the cork, but so tiny had been the puncture that I failed to discover the hole. The parchment had, I think, been touched with gum, which had caused the tiny hole to close." "That liqueur was evidently poisoned," Boyd remarked, his brows knit in thought. "Yes," she answered. "I have every reason to believe so, although the true state of affairs did not dawn upon me until long afterwards. When alone in our compartment in the _wagon-lit_ between Basle and Calais, Madame, however, made a very extraordinary proposal to me. She confessed that her husband had been made the scapegoat of some financial fraud in England and was in hiding somewhere near Paris, therefore, in going back, she feared that if she went under her right name--Damant-- that the police would begin to make active inquiries regarding monsieur. She wished, she said, to avoid this and set up a house in some pleasant suburb of London, so as to have a _pied-a-terre_ in the country she so dearly loved. Now my mother was dead, and no friends in England knew her, so many years had she lived on the Continent, why should she not pass as Lady Glaslyn and I as her daughter? At first this proposal utterly staggered me, but when she pointed out how much more I would be respected as her daughter instead of her companion, and told me of the manner in which she intended to live--a manner befitting her assumed station--I at length gave my consent, for which she made me a present there and then of a very acceptable bank-note." "Then that woman only posed as your mother!" I exclaimed. "She was not the real Lady Glaslyn?"