to a small box.  Once, when the nurse had reassured her by showing her the box, which was kept in a little bureau by the bed, she said, with an odd smile:  ’If I believed in the devil I should be very glad that I can pay him back all he lent me when I don’t want it any more.’  At another time she asked for the box and took out some papers, and told the nurse to light a candle close to her as she was going to burn some old letters.  Then she began to read a long, long letter, and as she read, she became more and more angry until she had a sudden attack of the heart.  The nurse swept the papers into the box and locked it up, knowing that she could do nothing to soothe the patient while they were lying about.  That night the doctors thought Madame Danterre would die, but she rallied.  She did not speak of the papers again until some days later.  The nurse described how, one evening, when she thought her sleeping, she was surprised to find her great eyes fixed on the candle in a sconce near the bed.  ’The candle was burnt half way down, but the paper was not burnt at all,’ the nurse heard her whisper; ’I shall not do it now.  I cannot be expected to settle such questions while I am ill.  After all, I have always given her a full share; she can destroy it herself if she likes, or she can give it all up to that woman—­it shall be her own affair.’

“She did not seem to know that she had been speaking aloud, and she muttered a little more to herself and then slept.

“The nurse heard no further allusion to the box for weeks.  She said the old woman was using all her fine vitality and her iron will in fighting death.  Then came the last change, and her torpid calm turned into violent excitement.  While she thought herself alone with Dr. Larrone she implored him to take the box to England the moment she died, and put it into her daughter’s hands.  ‘No one knows it matters,’ she said more than once.  But when she found that he did not wish to go, and said it was impossible for him to go at once, her entreaties were terrible.  ’She had always had her own way, and she had it to the end,’ was the nurse’s comment.

“Dr Larrone, coming out of the room, realised that the nurse must have known what passed, and told her he was glad she was there.  He put a box on a table with a little bang of impatience.

“‘It’s delirium, delusion, madness!’ he said, ’but I’ve given my word.  I never hated a job more; she wouldn’t have the morphia till I had taken my oath I would go as soon as she was dead.’”

Grosse was absorbed by the pictures feebly conveyed through the nurse’s words, through the detective’s letters, through the English lawyer’s translation and summary.  He could supply what was missing.  He had seen Madame Danterre.  He could so well imagine the frightful force of the woman, a tyrant to the very last moment.  He could guess, too, at the reaction of those about her when once she was dead, and they were quite out of her reach.  There is always a reaction when feebler personalities have to fill the space left by a tyrant.  He could realise the buzz of gossip, and the sense of courage with which servants and tradesmen would make wild, impossible stories of her wicked life.  He came back from these thoughts with a certain shock when he found Murray saying: