After nearly a week of stormy and conflicting emotions and ever-changing plans, the troubled mind had calmed somewhat. Catherine had decided to put the matter of Mary's desertion before the Inner Circle, and was even then awaiting the arrival of Sisters Susan and Eliza, whom she had summoned for that object. Mary must die! Looking at it from every point of view, she could see no other way out of the difficulty. The girl could not be a wife and a baby-murderer, or even an innocent accomplice of baby-murderers at the same time. Yes, Mary must die! But Catherine could not trust herself. She could not look at Mary's case with an unbiassed mind. Her great hate and love of the girl prevented her from considering the question merely as it affected the interests, the safety of the Secret Society. She felt this keenly, so, as she above all things desired to act with strict justice, and knew that her present mood might as readily drive her to undue leniency as to unnecessary sternness, she determined to leave the judgment of Mary entirely in the hands of the other sisters of the Inner Circle. She would put the whole case before them: she would abide by their unimpassioned verdict. But yet she could scarcely doubt what that verdict would be. How could such a society exist unless deserters were removed beyond all possibility of their becoming traitors? So Catherine sat in the deserted room awaiting the two Sisters who were to decide her darling's doom. How dreary that room now appeared to the miserable creature! There was no Mary there now to lighten it, and she knew that there never again would be. The only human affection of her heart had been ruthlessly trampled upon. Were it not for the scheme she would have died; but she still had that to care for, and for that alone she must live for the remainder of her loveless life. At last there came a ring at the street-door bell. She started, she felt fearfully nervous now that the interview on which so much depended was so near. The maid-servant ushered in Sister Eliza and Sister Susan. Sister Eliza, fresh from the comfortable and substantial dinner, at which she had just been presiding in her Bayswater boarding-house, looked stout and beaming as usual; but Susan Riley looked pale and ill, her eyes, surrounded by dark circles, glittered strangely, and their contracted pupils showed that she had not yet abandoned her practice of laudanum-drinking. She was even then excited with the drug; her brain was on fire with it. Catherine rose and motioned the women to two chairs. Until the indispensable green tea came up they spoke little and on indifferent matters. The anxiety and nervousness of the Chief communicated itself to the others: even the volatile Susan was subdued in her manner.