Again she paused and thought, and then said to herself, "That drug which the Italian monk sold me would do well enough if I did but fully know its effects. There are things which leave terrible signs behind them--besides it is old, and may have lost its virtue. I must run no risk of that--and it must be speedy as well as sure. I have but four and twenty hours--the time is very short;" and relapsing into silence again, she continued in deep and silent meditation till the carriage stopped at her own gates. Mrs. Hazleton sat in the library that night for two or three hours, and studied diligently a large folio volume which she had taken down herself. She read, and she seemed puzzled. A servant entered to ask some unimportant question, and she waved him away impatiently. Then leaning her head upon her hand she thought profoundly. She calculated in her own mind what Emily knew--how much--how intimately, and how she had learned it. Such a thing as remorse she know not; but she had some fear, though very little--a sort of shrinking from the commission of acts more daring and terrible than any she had yet performed. There was something appalling--there is always something appalling--in the commission of a great new crime, and the turning back, as it were, of the mind of Mrs. Hazleton from the search for means to accomplish a deed determined, in order to calculate the necessity of that deed, proceeded from this sort of awe at the next highest step of evil to those which she had already committed. "She must know all," said Mrs. Hazleton to herself, after having considered the matter for some moments deeply. "And she must have learned it accurately. I know her caution well. From whom can she have learned it?" "From that young villain Ayliffe," was the prompt reply. "I was too harsh with him, and in his fit of rage he has gone away at once to tell this girl--or perhaps that old fool Dixwell. Most likely he has furnished her with evidence too, before he fled the country. Without that I could have set Marlow's discoveries at naught. Yet I doubt his having gone to Dixwell; he always despised him. Mean as he was himself, he looked upon him as a meaner. He would not go to him to whine and cant over him. He would go to the girl herself. Her he always loved, even in the midst of his violence and his rage. He would go to her or write to her beyond all doubt. She must be silenced. But I must deal with another first. Come what will, this marriage shall not take place. Besides, she is the most dangerous of the two. The girl might be frightened or awed into secresy, and it will take longer time to reach her, but nothing will keep that weak woman's tongue from babbling, and in four and twenty hours her consent will be given to this marriage. If I can but contrive it rightly, that at least may be stopped, and a part of my revenge obtained at all events. It must be so--it must be so."