She put the bottle on the table, and advanced to the fireplace to ring the bell. Warm as the room was, she began to shiver. Did the eager life in her feel the fatal purpose that she was meditating, and shrink from it? Instead of ringing the bell, she bent over the fire, trying to warm herself. “Other women would get relief in crying,” she thought. “I wish I was like other women!” The whole sad truth about herself was in that melancholy aspiration. No relief in tears, no merciful oblivion in a fainting-fit, for _her._ The terrible strength of the vital organization in this woman knew no yielding to the unutterable misery that wrung her to the soul. It roused its glorious forces to resist: it held her in a stony quiet, with a grip of iron. She turned away from the fire wondering at herself. “What baseness is there in me that fears death? What have I got to live for _now?”_ The open letter on the table caught her eye. “This will do it!” she said--and snatched it up, and read it at last. “The least I can do for you is to act like a gentleman, and spare you unnecessary suspense. You will not see me this morning at ten, for the simple reason that I really don’t know, and never did know, where to find your daughter. I wish I was rich enough to return the money. Not being able to do that, I will give you a word of advice instead. The next time you confide any secrets of yours to Mr. Goldenheart, take better care that no third person hears you.” She read those atrocious lines, without any visible disturbance of the dreadful composure that possessed her. Her mind made no effort to discover the person who had listened and betrayed her. To all ordinary curiosities, to all ordinary emotions, she was morally dead already. The one thought in her was a thought that might have occurred to a man. “If I only had my hands on his throat, how I could wring the life out of him! As it is--” Instead of pursuing the reflection, she threw the letter into the fire, and rang the bell. “Take this at once to the nearest chemist’s,” she said, giving the strychnine prescription to the servant; “and wait, please, and bring it back with you.” She opened her desk, when she was alone, and tore up the letters and papers in it. This done, she took her pen, and wrote a letter. It was addressed to Amelius. When the servant entered the room again, bringing with her the prescription made up, the clock downstairs struck eleven. CHAPTER 6 Toff returned to the cottage, with the slippers and the stockings. “What a time you have been gone!” said Amelius. “It is not my fault, sir,” Toff explained. “The stockings I obtained without difficulty. But the nearest shoe shop in this neighbourhood sold only coarse manufactures, and all too large. I had to go to my wife, and get her to take me to the right place. See!” he exclaimed, producing a pair of quilted silk slippers with blue rosettes, “here is a design, that is really worthy of pretty feet. Try them on, Miss.”