As the physician had foreseen, Matilde was soon better, and by bed-time she felt no ill effects from what had happened to her, beyond great weakness and lassitude.  The doctor had asked many questions and had elicited the fact that Matilde had a preparation of arsenic in powders, which she took according to prescription, and which she showed him after the first spasms were passed.  She assured him, however, that she had only taken one on that day, and had taken it just before luncheon.  The rest of the powders were intact and still lay upon her toilet table.  She showed them also.  He took the next one, on the top of the pile, and said that he would examine it and ascertain whether the chemist had made any mistake.  Then he went away, promising to come in the morning.

At last Matilde was alone with her husband.  Veronica had gone to bed, and Gregorio waited for an opportunity of questioning his wife.

“Whom do you suspect?” he asked, sitting down by her bedside.

“No one,” she answered.  “I took it on purpose.  You need not be anxious.  I pretended to suffer more than I did, and I do not mind the pain at all.”

He stared at her, trying to fathom her thoughts, but he altogether failed to understand her.

“Why did you do it?” he asked, drawing the lids close together over his small eyes.

“You are so dull!” she answered.  “You shall see.  I cannot explain now.  I have been really poisoned and I feel ill and weak.  Do not go out to-morrow before I see you.”

He left her, but she did not sleep all night.  In spite of what she had gone through on that evening and of all the mental suffering of many days, she was stronger still than any one knew.  It was between two and three in the morning when she lighted a candle, wrapped herself in a dressing-gown and began to make certain preparations for the day.

In the first place she locked both her doors very softly, and arranged a stocking over each keyhole, twisting it round the keys themselves.  Then she got some stiff writing-paper, and a heavy ivory paper-knife, and from the locked drawers she took that other package which was done up in coarse paper.

From this she took some of the rough, half-pulverized white stuff, laid it upon the marble top of the chest of drawers, and with the ivory paper-knife, pressing heavily, she little by little crushed it as fine as dust.

She then took nine of the eighteen little papers containing the arsenic, which were left, opened each one at the end and poured out the contents apart, into a little heap quite separate from the other.  And of the other, she took a pinch for each little paper and dropped it in—­about as much in quantity as she had taken out.  Then she closed each of the papers, carefully slipping one folded end into the other as chemists do; when they were all closed, she made a tiny hole in each with the point of a needle, so that she should know the bad from the good, if necessary.