We were a merry party that night.  Mrs. Mershon went to sleep as usual in the easy-chair in the corner, but Hilyard was gayer than I had seen him for weeks.  A capital mimic, he gave us some of his afternoon’s experiences in the little country town, occasionally rousing Mrs. Mershon with a start by saying, “Isn’t that so, Aunt?” and she, with a corroborative nod and smile, would doze off again.  Cards were suggested, but, mindful of my hand, its palm still empurpled and scarified, I suggested that Kate sing for us instead, and we kept her at the piano until she insisted that Amy should take her place.

Amy was tired, she declared, and indeed, the rose-white face did look paler than its wont, but she went to the piano and sang Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” and two or three airs from Mozart.  She always sang sacred music.  Then she sank into a chair, looking utterly fatigued.

“There, Amy,” I exclaimed, “I have just the thing for you.  I went into Lafitte’s to-day to order some claret down, and he insisted on filling a flask with some priceless sherry for me.  I’ll bring you a glass.”  Amy protested, “indeed she did not need it, she should be better to-morrow,” with a languid glance from those clear eyes; but I ran up to my room, and returned with the flask.

“Just my clumsiness,” I said, ruefully looking at the flask, “I uncorked it, to see if it were really all he said, and I’ve spilled nearly the whole of it.”

“Oh! come now, Lewis,” laughed Hilyard, “Is that the best story you can invent?”

I laughed too, as I brought a glass, and poured out all that remained.  Hilyard, I had managed, should hold the glass, and as I assumed to examine the flask, he carried the wine to Amy.  Not that I wished, in case of future inquiries, to implicate him, but I felt a melodramatic desire that he should give his poison to Amy with his own hand:  the wish to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk.

I watched her slowly drain the glass, without one pang that I had given her death to drink.  I experienced an atrocious satisfaction in feeling that no chance whim had deterred her from consuming it all.  I took the flask to my room again, saying that I had forgotten a letter from my mother, which I wished Amy to read, as it contained a tender message for her.

As I stood alone in my room a fear overcame me that I had been a credulous fool.  Suppose the whole story of the drug were a fabrication, what a farce were this!  Who ever heard of a poison with so strange an effect?  True, but who had ever heard of chloroform a century ago?  Let it go that he was a discoverer, and I the first to profit by it.  I would take this ground, at least until it was disproved; time enough then to devise other means.