"One would fancy," said Agnes, in her usual rallying tone, the first time she saw Captain De Crespigny after her recovery, "that Dixon had been some old admirer of yours. Not a vestige is left of anything I ever received from you! The last year's annual which you gave me, the music which you copied for me, even my withered bouquet of the night before, all gone at one fell swoop, leaving not a wreck behind!"
Captain De Crespigny colored violently, and strode to the window in evident confusion, which Marion could not but remark with astonishment and perplexity; but Agnes, quite unconscious of his agitation, rattled on with increasing animation.
"I always now put my money and everything valuable in the most conspicuous part of my room, to save anybody the trouble of murdering me for them. I have a perfect horror of being murdered! It never occurred to me, however, that the treasures which for certain reasons I value most, were in any danger, being of no intrinsic value to other people. I really would have died in defence of my little scent-bottle."
Captain De Crespigny had recourse now to the poker, an inestimable refuge in all cases where the concealment of emotion is an object, as his heightened color could excite no reasonable surprise after the exertion of lifting it, and the noise he made afterwards seemed equivalent to a reply.
"It was, after all, a most terrifying escape!" continued Agnes, rather delighted than otherwise by the importance she had acquired by this adventure, and holding it up continually in every light that she could. "That horrid Dixon! she always had a half-crazed look! You must remember my telling you so, Marion?"
"I remember it perfectly it was I who said so to you!" replied her sister, laughing,
"Ah! that is exactly the same thing!"
"Not in the least," persisted Marion, good-humoredly smiling. "All great discoveries occasion disputes about the originators. Watt and Bell about steam, and you and I about this poisoning affair!"
"Well, it was clever of you, Marion! I shall do as much for you another time. That ungrateful creature! The arsenic would probably, at the very least, have spoiled my teeth, and perhaps made my hair grow grey! That I never could have survived!"
"The strangest thing of all is, that there seems to have been so much malice in the whole business," continued Marion. "She might easily have carried off all the plate, or Patrick's gold dressing-case! What could ail Dixon at you, Agnes? You were kindness itself to her."