Until to-day! From the moment that she saw Mrs. Balfame empty and rinse the vial, she was convinced that Broderick was right in his deductions and that for some reason the terrible woman had changed her mind and used the revolver. It was a stupider act than she would have expected of Mrs. Balfame, for Dave was a man whose sudden death would excite little suspicion, nor would Mrs. Balfame be the woman to use a common poison. Her intimacy with Dr. Anna would put her on the track of one of those organic potions that were too subtle for chemical analysis. She had heard doctors talk of them herself. Then abruptly she recalled the sinister change in Mrs. Balfame's smiling countenance on that day she sketched her at the Friday Club; her mind opened and closed on the conviction that in that moment Mrs. Balfame had conceived the purpose of murder. But why the change of method? She dismissed the riddle. It was not for her to unravel. Nor did she care. The fact was enough. This good friend of her family was an abominable creature from whom in even mental contact she shuddered away with a spasm of spiritual nausea. But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone--for hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her, instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and the woman were one. If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty, although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him. She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and of her own confirmations; and she could tell him of her certain knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.