A few minutes after this Brenda seemed to be taken with a fit, for she got up suddenly, made a bolt, as it were, for the door, shook with some convulsive movements of her jaw, gave a horrible sort of strangled sob, and fell with a heavy thud on the floor. I leapt out of bed, got some water in a basin and knelt down beside her, but she was already stiff, her teeth were clenched, and she showed a horribly distorted mask. A horrid suspicion awoke in my mind. I searched with my torch on the floor where my Lady had dropped the powder, and I could plainly see the wet edge of Brenda's tongue and the smudge of the white powder which she had licked up. I went back to where Brenda lay stiff and stark, and felt with a trembling hand for her heart. It beat no more; my Brenda was dead--poisoned by the beautiful Lady. THE WARLOCK OF GLORORUM 'But are you sure your father wouldn't object?' I asked of my companion--a most bright and amusing Eton boy--to whom I was playing bear leader. 'Not a bit,' replied he; 'my father is a naturalist and Darwinian; not a sceptic, but _Agnosticus suavis_ or _Verecundus, ordo compositae_, you know. "Hunt the ghost by all means," said he, when I suggested a ghost "worry," and then as he does sometimes over coffee and a cigarette after dinner he talked with a real keen interest on the whole subject. He talked so long that old Mac (the butler) got quite shirty, and finally--after putting his head round the door two or three times--came in like the Lord Mayor and bore off the whisky decanter to the smoking-room. Now, the pater said that the love of the marvellous was native to mankind, and Tertullian had acquired a false credit for his motto, _Credo quia impossible_, since that was the natural failing of the untrained intellect, and, scientifically speaking, he ought to have been shot sitting.