There stood the frame, with the Berlin wool roses which she had watched slowly creeping into life under her mother’s white hands. She lifted the tissue-paper covering, and looked at the flowers, with awe-stricken eyes. All these empty years had scarcely faded them--and yet the hands that had wrought them were dust. The centre table was covered with books, and desks, and dainty workbaskets, all the trifles of a woman’s daily life--just as Mrs. Harefield had left them. Beatrix opened a blotting-book. There was a letter begun in a woman’s hand--her mother’s doubtless. The sight of it thrilled her, for it was the first scrap of her mother’s writing she had seen since she was old enough to distinguish one style of penmanship from another. The letter was dated in the year of her mother’s death. ‘_The Water House, September 10th, 1840._ ‘DEAR MRS. DULCIMER, ‘We should have been very pleased to come to you on the 22nd, but Mr. Harefield has made up his mind to leave for Italy on the 18th, so you see it would be impossible. Thanks for your kind advice about little Trix. I agree with you that she is far from strong, and I am happy to tell you that Mr. Harefield has consented to my taking her with me this year. A winter in the South will----’ Here the letter broke off. Mrs. Dulcimer had called, perhaps, and rendered its completion unnecessary. Beatrix could just remember that Mrs. Dulcimer used to call rather often in those days. The key was in one of the Japanese cabinets. Beatrix unlocked it, and looked inside. There were two rows of shallow drawers, with tarnished silver handles. In the first she opened there was a velvet covered miniature case which Beatrix recognised with a start. It was the one which her mother had taken out of her hand one day. She opened it and looked at the pictured face exquisitely painted on ivory. It was such a face as one sees in the pictures of the old Italian masters--darkly beautiful--the lips proud and firm--the nostrils exquisitely chiselled--the eyes Italian. ‘Was this Antonio?’ Beatrix asked herself, ‘and who was he? And why was his influence evil in my mother’s life?’ She pursued her examination of the room. What was this small brass inlaid casket on a table between the windows? It was a neat little medicine chest with stoppered bottles. She took them out one by one. They were for the most part empty. But one, labelled laudanum, poison, was three parts full. She put them back into their places and shut down the lid. ‘I wonder whether mamma used to take laudanum, as I have done sometimes, to kill pain?’ she said to herself. The morning-room opened into the dressing-room, which communicated with the bedroom. But the door between the morning-room and dressing-room was locked. Beatrix could explore no further.