Mrs. Hazleton made no answer to her dear friend's questions, and the high constable, taking a little step forward, said, "I beg pardon, Mrs. Warmington, for intruding into your house; but I have been ordered to apprehend this lady, and to have her person and her carriage strictly searched, without giving the opportunity for the concealment or destruction of any thing. It seems to me that Mrs. Hazleton has something bulky in that left hand pocket. As I do not like to put my hand rudely upon a lady, may I ask you, Madam, to let me see what that pocket contains?"
Without the slightest hesitation, but with a good deal of curiosity, Mrs. Warmington advanced at once and took hold of the rich silk brocade of the prisoner's gown.
"Out, woman!" cried Mrs. Hazleton, with the fire flashing from her eyes; and she struck her.
But Mrs. Warmington did not quit her hold or her purpose. "Good gracious, what a termagant!" she exclaimed, and at once thrust her right hand into the pocket, and drew forth the vial which had been sent by the surgeon to Lady Hastings.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Warmington. "Why, this is the very bottle I saw you mixing stuff in this morning, when you seemed so angry and vexed at my coming into the still-room.--No, it isn't the same either; but it was one very like this, only darker in the the color."
"Ha!" said Mr. Atkinson. "Madam, will you have the goodness to put a mark upon that bottle by which you can know it again?--Scratch it with a diamond or something."
"Oh, poor I have no diamonds," said Mrs. Warmington. "My dear, will you lend me that ring?"
Mrs. Hazleton gave her a withering glance, but made no reply; and Marlow pointed to two peculiar spots in the glass of the bottle, saying, "By those marks it will be known, so that it cannot be mistaken." His words were addressed to Mr. Atkinson; for he felt disgusted and sickened by the heartless and insulting tone of Mrs. Warmington towards her former friend.
At the sound of his voice--for she had not yet looked at him--Mrs. Hazleton started and looked round. It is not possible to tell the feelings which affected her heart at that moment, or to picture with the pen the varied expressions, all terrible, which swept over her beautiful countenance like a storm. She remembered how she had loved him. Perhaps at that moment she knew for the first time how much she had loved him. She felt too, how strongly love and hate had been mingled together by the fiery alchemy of disappointment, as veins of incongruous metals have been mixed by the great convulsions of the early earth. She felt too, at that moment, that it was this love and this hate which had been the cause of her deepest crimes, and all their consequences--the awful situation in which she there stood, the lingering tortures of imprisonment, the agonies of trial, and the bitter consummation of the scaffold.
"Oh, Marlow, Marlow," she cried--in a tone for the first time sorrowful--"to see you mingling in these acts!"