Glancing upward at the windows of her mother’s room as she entered her gate she was surprised not to see there a loving face on the watch for her coming. She opened the front door and the silence of the house struck her heart with a chill of apprehension.
“Mother! Bella!” she called, a flutter of alarm in her tones. “Where are you?”
“Miss Harry! Miss Harry!” came Delia’s voice in response. “Do come here, quick, quick!”
She rushed to the dining room and saw her sister stretched upon the lounge and Delia kneeling beside her. On the floor was an empty bottle bearing a death’s head and cross-bones and “strychnine” upon its label. She herself had bought it on their physician’s prescription, as a tonic for Mrs. Marne, only a few days before.
“What is it, Delia? Did she take that poison?” gasped Henrietta.
“Yes’m, she took it, the whole bottle full. I heard her scream in the hall an’ soon she come flyin’ in here, an’ she snatched up that bottle an’ swallowed all them pills before I knew what she was doin’. Then she tumbled down an’ I grabbed her an’ stuck me finger down her throat. She fought me and tried to push me away, but I wouldn’t an’ I kep’ on stickin’ me finger way down an’ after a while she spewed it all up. Oh, the dear an’ lovely darlin’, an’ her so merry an’ happy all the time! She won’t die now, will she, Miss Harry?”
Henrietta had hastily mixed an emetic and together they forced it down her throat.
“I hope she won’t, Delia—I hope you’ve saved her. But we must have a doctor now, at once. Run, Delia, and send the first person you can find as fast as he can go for a doctor to come immediately—say it’s a case of life and death.”
Delia rushed away and Henrietta, though her heart was full of anxiety about her mother, hovered over Isabella, who lay with closed eyes and ghastly face, moaning but seemingly unconscious.
Presently, fearful of what the silence of the house might mean with regard to its other occupant, she left her sister and hurried upstairs. There she found Mrs. Marne unconscious on the floor. But she knew what should be done and met the crisis with quick and capable action. And in a few moments more she heard in the hall below the voice of their own physician, whom the maid had luckily encountered nearby upon the street.