Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE PHYSICIAN AND THE LADY 41 House, and hence the catastrophe. Therefore, now that I find Mrs. Smith identified with Lady Saxondale, you can full well understand with what difhdence it is that I am compelled to repeat my suspicion to your face, that your ladyship took away that bottle of poison with you on that particular night.” “Doctor Ferney, can you believe me capable of having used the venom for a murderous purpose?’’ and Lady Saxondale spoke in a voice of mild and melancholy rebuke, for she knew the physician’s character too well to assume indignation with him. “ Oh, tell me that you took the phial,” he said, with far greater excitement than it was his wont to display, “ and that it must have fallen into villainous and unscrupulous hands. Tell me this — tell me anything that will still enable me to contemplate you on that high pedestal which you have ever occupied in my mind.”’ ‘Well, then, my dear Doctor Ferney,” said her ladyship, taking his hand, and looking in an appealing manner up into his countenance, ‘‘ I must plead guilty to that little act which you have named. I will not stigmatize myself with the commission of a theft, because in respect to a friend such as you, it cannot be regarded in that lhght, but 1t was through curiosity that I took it. You know how deeply interested I felt in your discoveries — ”’ “Ah! but now that I bethink me,’’ interrupted Doctor Ferney, “‘ I cannot feel otherwise than deeply, deeply grieved to hear that you did take that phial. The deed was not well,”’ he continued, in a tone of exceeding mournfulness and with corresponding looks. “It almost makes me regret, Lady Saxondale, that I lent myself to that transaetion which nineteen years ago —’”’ “For God’s sake,’ murmured the unhappy woman, clasping her hands appealingly, and casting her shuddering looks around, “do not allude to it. The very walls have ears. Oh, my dear Doctor Ferney, did you not assure me but a short time back, at your house, that my secret was sacred, that 1t was my own mystery, into which you would never seek to penetrate? I beseech and implore that you will not fly from your word.” ‘ But what am I to do in this present case? Let us think no more of the past for the moment. Here, Lady Saxondale, CONnNIEDOOKS (E(0)