“Perhaps,” suggested her companion, “it would be best for you to grapple with this thing at the outset—­to take our vampire by the throat and strangle her at once.  The knife is the only remedy for some forms of disease.  If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck away its life and destroy it in the end.”

“If I only knew how to do it,” replied Mrs. Dinneford.  “If I could only get her in my power, I’d make short works of her.”  Her eyes flashed with a cruel light.

“It might be done.”

“How?”

“Mr. Dinneford knows the chief of police.”

The light went out of Mrs. Dinneford’s eyes: 

“It can’t be done in that way, and you know it as well as I do.”

Mrs. Dinneford turned upon Mrs. Bray sharply, and with a gleam of suspicion in her face.

“I don’t know any other way, unless you go to the chief yourself,” replied Mrs. Bray, coolly.  “There is no protection in cases like this except through the law.  Without police interference, you are wholly in this woman’s power.”

Mrs. Dinneford grew very pale.

“It is always dangerous,” went on Mrs. Bray, “to have anything to do with people of this class.  A woman who for hire will take a new-born baby and sell it to a beggar-woman will not stop at anything.  It is very unfortunate that you are mixed up with her.”

“I’m indebted to you for the trouble,” replied.  Mrs. Dinneford, with considerable asperity of manner.  “You ought to have known something about the woman before employing her in a delicate affair of this kind.”

“Saints don’t hire themselves to put away new-born babies,” retorted Mrs. Bray, with an ugly gurgle in her throat.  “I told you at the time that she was a bad woman, and have not forgotten your answer.”

“What did I answer?”

“That she might be the devil for all you cared!”

“You are mistaken.”

“No; I repeat your very words.  They surprised and shocked me at the time, and I have not forgotten them.  People who deal with the devil usually have the devil to pay; and your case, it seems, is not to be an exception.”

Mrs. Bray had assumed an air of entire equality with her visitor.

A long silence followed, during which Mrs. Dinneford walked the floor with the quick, restless motions of a caged animal.

“How long do you think two hundred dollars will satisfy her?” she asked, at length, pausing and turning to her companion.

“It is impossible for me to say,” was answered; “not long, unless you can manage to frighten her off; you must threaten hard.”

Another silence followed.

“I did not expect to be called on for so large a sum,” Mrs. Dinneford said at length, in a husky voice, taking out her pocket-book as she spoke.  “I have only a hundred dollars with me.  Give her that, and put her off until to-morrow.”

“I will do the best I can with her,” replied Mrs. Bray, reaching out her hand for the money, “but I think it will be safer for you to let me have the balance to-day.  She will, most likely, take it into her head that I have received the whole sum from you, and think I am trying to cheat her.  In that case she will be as good as her word, and come down on you.”