"I asked to see the dead; but this privilege was refused to me. I inquired for Fétis, and was told he had gone out on business, and was not expected back for some hours. The key of the room in which Margharita was lying was in his possession. There were lights burning in the room, but there was no one watching there. There had been no religious ministrations. My granddaughter had perished as the companion of an infidel, surrounded by infidels. "I sat in the hall for some hours, despite the sneers and incivilities of the servants, waiting for the return of Fétis; but he did not reappear until I was worn out by agitation and fasting and the misery of my position as the mark of insolence from overfed lackeys. I left the house broken-hearted, and returned there next morning only in time to see the coffin carried to the pompous hearse with its tall plumes and velvet trappings and six Flanders horses. I followed on foot to a graveyard in the neighbourhood, where my granddaughter was buried in a soil crowded with the dead. Topsparkle was not present. He was too ill to attend, I was told; and there were hootings and hissings from the crowd as the funeral procession, with Fétis at its head, went back to Soho Square. "I followed him to the threshold of his master's house. "'Do you know why the rabble hooted you?' I asked him, as we stood side by side within the doors, which the porter shut quickly to keep out the crowd. "'Only because they are rabble, and hate their betters,' he answered. "'They hooted you because a good many people in this neighbourhood suspect that which I know for a certainty. They suspect you and your master of having murdered that unhappy girl.' "He called me an idiot and a liar; but I saw how his face, which had been white to the lips as he passed through the crowd, now changed to a still more ghastly hue. "'O, you forget that it was I who armed your arsenal of murder. It was in my laboratory you learnt all the arts of the old Italian toxicologists--the poison, and the antidote, and the drug that neutralises the antidote. You were laborious and persevering; you wanted to master the whole science of secret murder. You had no definite views of mischief then, only the thirst for evil, as Satan has, revelling in sin for its own sake, courting iniquity; but you soon found a use for your wicked power. First you snared your victim, and then you killed her--you, the passionless hireling of a profligate master, the venal slave and tool.' "He made a sign to his underlings--the stalwart porter and three tall footmen--and they came round me and thrust me out of the house, flung me on to the pavement, helpless and exhausted. There was no constable within call; the crowd had dispersed. I had nothing to do but crawl back to my lodging, an impotent worm.