She planned her day.  The doctor would come, in the first place, at about ten o’clock.  He would recommend her to be quiet, to take a little broth for luncheon, and a little more broth for dinner.  She smiled grimly, as she thought of his probable instructions, and she knew what she could do and bear at pinch of pressing need.  He would also tell her that the powder contained only just the right quantity of medicine, and that she must have been poisoned in some other way.  She knew that.

Afterwards, Gregorio would need his instructions.  He was to be at home in the afternoon, and to come and drink his tea in Veronica’s room when Matilde sent for him.  Just when Matilde was pouring out the tea, he was to distract Veronica’s attention from the tea-table for a moment.  She would not tell him that she intended to half poison him, too, for he was a coward, and at the last minute, dreading pain, he would not drink from his cup.  She knew that well enough.  She would tell him when he began to suffer the effects, and assure him that he was not going to die.  Again she smiled grimly, and chancing to be just then before the mirror, she saw that her face had all at once grown old since yesterday.  And in spite of her strength of body and will, she felt weak and exhausted, and hated the hours that were to be between.

But when she had spoken to Gregorio, she would go out alone, on foot.  And she knew that she should find the address given on Giuditta Astarita’s card, and enter the house and see the woman who had written to her, and hear the message that was promised.  If she left her own house, her feet must take her that way, whether she would or not.

And so it all happened just as she foresaw.  But she had not known that in threading the intricate, dark streets she would almost forget what she was to do that day, in the mad hope of the one more word from beyond.  She had not known that at the thought her eyes would brighten eagerly, the colour would come back to her cheeks, and the strength to her limbs as she walked.  After all, the strongest thing that had ever been in her, or ever could be, was that passionate, dominating, despotic devotion to one being; and the merest suggestion that he might not be gone quite beyond the reach of spiritual touch had power to veil the awful future of the day, when her hand was already uplifted to kill.  She was not a woman to hesitate at the last moment, unstrung and womanishly trembling because the victim was young, and smiled, and had innocent eyes.  And yet, perhaps, had she not gone that day to answer the spirit-seer’s summons and to catch at the straw thrown to her from beyond the grave, she might have seen a reason for changing her mind, and all might have happened very differently.  But Fate does not sleep, though she seems sometimes to nod and forget to kill.