Then she took to opium, and was never without a bottle of laudanum in her pocket, from which she would take frequent sips. Yet she _knew_ that she was quite safe. She tried to prove this to herself. She tried to laugh away her senseless fears, but it was no good. The horrors will not give way to logic. Though human law could not punish her, she suffered enough in all conscience to satisfy those strictest lovers of retributive justice who would require even more than a tooth for a tooth. A month of this condition robbed her of a considerable portion of her beauty. Her peachy complexion was no more; her cheeks were sunken and sallow; and the crows' feet about her eyes were as those of a woman twice her age. Curiously enough, it was the very loss of beauty which at last brought about her recovery, and prevented her from becoming a hopeless lunatic. The horror had to battle with a formidable foe--vanity, and, indeed, had ultimately to retreat before it. Her great dread of age and ugliness saved her. She observed the fast deepening wrinkles, the fading roses, and felt greatly alarmed. "This must not be allowed to go on," she thought. "I must live more healthily. I must get calmer, or all my beauty will go." So now she had another idea, though it was an unpleasant one, to occupy her thoughts. The horror did not now altogether absorb her mind--one terror distracted her attention from the other. Thus monomania was averted. It is better to be possessed by two or even a legion of devils than by one alone. So, gradually, she became something like her old self again, but not quite so. She had lost a good deal of her nerve, and could not altogether abandon her laudanum drinking. The horror faded away, but the wrinkles would not. She could not smooth those crows' feet out. Her cheeks resumed their roundness, but not all their purity of complexion. This soured her temper. Her old jovial flippancy, objectionable though it was, gave way to a still more objectionable cynical ill-humour, which made her hurt the feelings of others whenever possible. She could not help revealing this at times even to the men she wished to fascinate. She made a practice of saying very nasty things on all occasions, and became a very disagreeable person generally. She never returned to the hospital to resume her duties as nurse, but when she was fairly recovered from her strange illness, she went up to London, reported herself to the Secret Society, and threw herself with a zeal she had never displayed before into its machinations. With congenial villainy and occasional laudanum, she hoped to drown thought and so recover her lost beauty. CHAPTER XVII. A DARKENED MIND. As soon as Catherine King heard of Mary's illness, she hurried to the hospital in her great anxiety. She loved the girl with the intensity which characterised all her passions--loved her far more dearly than her own life and happiness--almost as much as she loved the "cause" itself.