Her manner and bearing were curiously different from what they had been on the previous occasion. She was deadly pale, but firm as a rock. That firmness of hers, the calm distinctness of her tones, the proud carriage of her beautiful head, impressed the coroner and jury strongly, but not favourably. They had been more ready to sympathize with her a week ago, when she had stood before them trembling, and bowed down by her distress. The medicine chest was brought from the late Mrs. Harefield’s room. There was the bottle as Beatrix had described it--an empty bottle which had obviously contained laudanum. ‘Do you know if your mother was in the habit of taking laudanum?’ asked the coroner. ‘I know very little about her. All that I can remember of her is like a dream.’ Mr. Namby was re-examined upon this question of the laudanum. He remembered that Mrs. Harefield had suffered from neuralgic pains in the head and face during the last year of her residence at the Water House. She had complained to him, and he had prescribed for her, not successfully. He was of opinion that the Water House was too much on a level with the river. He would not go so far as to say the house was damp, but he was sure it was not dry. It was not unlikely that Mrs. Harefield would resort to laudanum as a palliative. He had never given her laudanum. Peacock, the butler, was examined. He remembered Mrs. Harefield complaining of pain in the head and face. It was called tic-dollerer. He fancied the name meant something like toothache, independent of teeth. As he understood it you might have tic-dollerer anywheres. He remembered being in Great Yafford with the carriage one day when Mrs. Harefield told him to go into a chemist’s shop and ask for some laudanum. He got a small quantity in a bottle. Mrs. Harefield used often to drive into Great Yafford. Sometimes he went on the box with the coachman--sometimes not. He knew that she had a medicine chest in her room. He had heard Chugg, the young woman who waited on her, say that she took sleeping draughts. The jury agreed upon their verdict, after some deliberation. Mr. Harefield had died from the effects of laudanum, but by whom administered there was no evidence to show. CHAPTER VI. BELLA’S REVENGE. THE blinds were drawn up at the Water House, and the wintry sun shone upon the empty rooms. Miss Scales had come back to her charge, leaving that provoking old lady in Devonshire still undecided whether to live or die, ‘making it so very perplexing as to one’s choice of a winter dress when one might be called upon at any moment to go into mourning,’ Miss Scales complained to her Devonshire acquaintance, when discussing her aunt’s weak-minded oscillation. But now there was no further difficulty about the mourning question. For Mr. Harefield, her employer of fifteen years, Miss Scales could not assume too deep a sable, especially when the sable would naturally be provided and paid for by her dearest Beatrix.