Twenty stillness,
And after that ... blackness!
It should be easy!... Yes, it should be easy ... in a dish of tea! What a round throat the hussy has!”
“Well, father,” said Ellinor’s clear voice, “I must see to David’s sleeping draught.”
Lady Lochore in the doorway started and turned round. All at once a light shone into her brain as if some invisible hand had turned the lens of a lantern upon it: David’s sleeping draught—David.... Of course! How clear the whole thing lay before her! She had been about to be clumsy, stupid, inartistic. But now.... Oh, truly this one drop of the old man’s Elixir had been a drop of genius.... “The secret of genius,” had the old man said! Ellinor—what of Ellinor! Merely a thing in the way; a stone to trip up the step of her son’s fate. Throw it aside, and who shall say how soon another might not cast the beloved lad to earth? Aye, and when she would not be there to help. David—it was David!... Who could reckon on the doings of such a madman as David now this wooing mood had been started?
Presently, with slow steps, she came down the room once more.
Ellinor, bending over her fragrant infusion, felt a shadowing presence and looked round, to find Lady Lochore at her shoulder. It was in the dim and vapoury corner behind the screen lit only by the glow of the charcoal. An impression of gleaming eyes and of teeth from which the lips were drawn back for one moment troubled her vaguely; but the next she was full of pity. “Poor creature! How ill she is, and how restless!” she thought.
“Is that the stuff?” inquired Lady Lochore, laughing aimlessly like a mischievous child. And Mrs. Marvel answered her gently, as if it had been indeed a child who questioned:
“Yes, does it not smell sweet? An old recipe, ‘The Good Woman’s Brew’; Vervaine, Red Lavender and Violet, Thyme, Camphire, and a sprig of Basil.”
She now placed the vessel on a low shelf close at hand, and began deftly lifting out the sodden herbs with a glass rod. Little jets of aromatic steam rose and circled about her. Lady Lochore followed her, and once again bent over her shoulder. Barnaby seated, cross-legged, in the darkest corner near the furnace and nursing humpy Belphegor, stared at the two women with all the might of his wistful eyes.