"For a long time I was greatly puzzled by these and other circumstances. Certain scraps of conversation which I overheard between Madame and Blain, and between my employer and Hartmann, increased my suspicions, and especially so when I found Madame carrying on a series of secret experiments in her own rooms, often boiling certain decoctions over the tiny spirit-lamp used to heat her curling-irons. Several of the liquids thus manufactured she placed in the tiny phials of her medicine-chest. All this time, while passing everywhere as my mother, Lady Glaslyn, she was extremely kind to me, until I even began to believe that my suspicions were unfounded. Only now do I know how subtle was her cunning, how ingenious and how daring she was. One day, in April, I, however, had my suspicions still more deeply strengthened by a strange request she made to me, namely, that if at any time I should chance to witness any uncommon scene in her house, that I would breathe no word to a single soul. This struck me as peculiar, and I demanded the reason, whereupon she smiled, giving me bluntly to understand that my own safety lay alone in my secrecy, and pointing out that by obtaining quantities of goods and jewellery on credit, as I had done at her request from firms in Regent Street and Oxford Street, in the name of Lady Glaslyn, I had placed myself in grave peril of being arrested for fraud. I saw instantly that this woman who had posed as my friend had most cleverly spread about me a web from which there was now no possible escape. She evidently desired my assistance in whatever nefarious purpose she had in view." "What a position!" I exclaimed. "Then the woman had compelled you to obtain the goods by fraud in order to secure a certain hold over you?"