The colonel obeyed the summons, but without any extraordinary alacrity; Lady Lochore’s conversation with Master Simon was unexpectedly interesting. “Ten drops?” Master Simon was explaining. “Madness probably. More than ten, paralysis, no doubt. Twenty? Oh, twenty would be stillness for evermore—Death!” Having duly murdered the wasp, Colonel Harcourt was chagrined to find that the new student of pharmacopœia seemed to have already had enough of her lesson. She had risen to her feet and was standing deeply reflective. Her great eyes were roaming from side to side, yet unseeing. Her lips were moving noiselessly. He went up to her. An unusual gravity was upon his smooth countenance. He bent to her ear: “What are you saying to yourself?” he whispered. She started, flashed round half in anger, half in mockery; then their glances met and her face grew hard. “I was merely conning over to myself,” answered she, “our dear old necromancer’s last pregnant utterance; it sounds like a popular rhyme: One drop gladness, Ten drops madness, Twice ten a living death After that no more breath. Have I not put it into a useful jingle for you?” she cried, interpellating the old man. But Master Simon, deeply absorbed in watching Belphegor, as the beast stretched and yawned and rolled restlessly in the sun, never turned his head. Colonel Harcourt laid a finger on her wrist, and drew her away from the others. “What are you planning now?” he asked, in the same repressed undertone as before. “Planning?” she echoed, and crossed his searching gaze with one of stormy defiance. “Oh, my dear confidant, do you not know all my inmost secrets? _Dieu_, how you stare! Two drops gladness, ten drops madness. Let me give you some of the stimulant—say three drops—’twould stir your sluggish wits. Do, I pray you, accompany me to the laboratory, and with these fair hands I will measure you a dose from the magic phial. Oh, how Master Simon will love me if I bring him a new patient! Believe me, it will do you a vast service, my dear sir, you have grown dull and slow of late—very slow.” Out of her laughing face her eyes looked fiercely. He walked away from her; paused, with his back upon them all, to ponder. Then he frowned, and after that shrugged his shoulders. “What a fool you are, Antony Harcourt,” said he to himself, “to have let yourself be mixed up with this woman’s business! I vow you’ll pack!”