The woman turned upon me then with the spirit of a tigress. Her eyes flashed fire, the white teeth shone through her curved lips. She attempted to pass me, but I retreated to the door and kept the threshold. She came forward as if to force me away, still holding the bottle and handkerchief in her hands. Never in my life had I seen a face so beautiful and so fiendish. There was desperation in her eyes, violence in her action; but though weaker and smaller than her, I would have died on the threshold of that door rather than have allowed her to cross it. All at once her face changed. She was looking, not at me, but over my shoulder; a flash of quick intelligence shot from her eyes, and the next moment she had thrown both arms about my neck and pressed my face to her bosom. I knew that some one came close up behind me, and heard the clink of glass; then a rush of feet through Lottie's room, and along the passage. All this could not have lasted a minute. I struggled from the woman's embrace, and pushed her from me with a violence that made her stagger. Her face had changed to its old look of triumph. She laughed, not naturally--that was beyond even her powers of self-command--but in a way that made me shiver. "Dear Miss Hyde, is it you?" she said, in a voice that quaked in spite of herself. "How terribly frightened I was! Poor Mrs. Lee must have been very ill. I heard her moaning and calling for help in my room, and came at once; she seems quite insensible now." I looked toward the bed. Mrs. Lee lay upon it, white, and still as a corpse, her eyes closed, and her lips of a bluish white. Was she dead? Had the woman killed her? A strong, pungent smell filled the room--a smell of chloroform. It was almost suffocating. Mrs. Dennison seemed to think of this suddenly, and, darting toward the window, flung open two of the sashes before I knew what she was about. A gush of fresh air swept through the room; the pungent odor grew fainter and fainter, at which she smiled on me triumphantly. I looked at her, as she stood in the light; a toilet-bottle was still in her hand, but it was of crimson glass, spotted with gold; that which she held, when I came in, was white and pure as water. How had she managed to change the crystal flask? What had become of the handkerchief? Still smiling on me, she approached the bed and scattered fragrant drops from the crimson flask over the pillows and the deathly face of my poor friend. How still she lay! The whiteness of her face was terrible, but I dared not approach her; my post was by the door till Lottie came; but it made my blood run cold to see that woman bending over her, smoothing the pillows with her hand, and filling the room with that lying fragrance. CHAPTER XLV. BAFFLED AND DEFEATED.