"We were chatting, and Mr. De Gex had just said that it was about time we were off to Olympia, when I sipped my coffee. I noticed that both Doctor Moroni and our host glanced at me curiously. The coffee tasted unusually sweet, and also it seemed to be slightly perfumed, I remember, almost like _pot-pourri_. I had just replaced the cup upon the table when I felt a most violent pain in my head, and cried out. Miss Engledue was at my side in an instant, but I felt a sensation of giddiness, and next moment I knew nothing more." I remained silent for a few seconds, thinking deeply over her remarkable story. "Then Miss Engledue was quite well at the time?" I asked. "Quite, she sprang to my assistance." "Then you were taken ill before she became similarly affected?" "Was she? I did not know that!" said my beloved in surprise. "Yes. You were rendered unconscious by a drug which produced all the symptoms of death, but Miss Engledue was afterwards deliberately killed." Gabrielle stared at me as though she believed that I was bereft of my senses. "Was Gabrielle Engledue killed?" she gasped. "Surely she was not!" "She was," I replied. "And her body was afterwards cremated!" My beloved gave vent to a shriek of horror--and what more natural? She now realized, for the first time, that she had been the victim of a clever and amazing plot. "I recollect," she said, "that just at the moment of my sudden seizure I seemed to become fascinated by the gorgeous Spanish shawl which Gabrielle Engledue had around her shoulders. It was a most beautifully embroidered silk shawl with long, heavy fringe, and flowers worked in red, green and gold upon a silk fabric. I had been admiring it all the time I sat at the table, but the colours seemed so dazzling as to bewilder me, to muddle my senses--red, green and gold." How often had those words of hers puzzled me! Now I knew the truth! That magnificent Spanish shawl had stood out in her recollection as the last object she had seen before the deadly orosin had done its work. Then I told her my own story. "I was inveigled by a specious story into that house soon after you had sipped your coffee--perhaps even before," I said. "The library was filled with a curious, overpowering perfume of _pot-pourri_ which overcame me, and then De Gex gave me a liqueur glass of brandy into which there had been introduced that most baneful of all drugs orosin! It took immediate effect upon me, and a few moments later I was shown you lying upon the bed, as though you were dead! Indeed, I believed you to be dead, and in the muddled state of my brain I actually gave a certificate with which that fiend De Gex had already provided himself. I declared that you had died of heart disease, a malady for which I had for some months treated you!" "But I knew nothing more until I was found on the road in Hampshire," she said.