“Poison my cousin, Lady Gernon?” exclaimed Ada. “Nonsense! Absurd! Jane, you are mad!”
“I hope I am, ma’am, about that—indeed I do!” cried Jane, earnestly.
“But what have you seen? What do you know?” exclaimed Mrs Norton.
“I haven’t seen anything, ma’am, except Sir Murray coming sometimes out of the dressing-room, where the medicine’s kept; and I don’t know anything except that my lady’s medicine always tastes different, and looks different, when it’s been in the dressing-room a day or two; and every week it turns a darker colour, and tastes stronger than it did the week before. And besides all that, though Sir Murray smiles, and pretends to talk pleasant to the poor dear, suffering angel, than whom a better woman never lived, he hates her dreadfully, and more and more every day.”
“And how long has this been going on?” said Mrs Norton, with a faint smile.
“Weeks now, ma’am,” said Jane. “But I see you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you to be a good, affectionate girl, Jane,” said Mrs Norton, “and that you love your mistress; but this seems to me to be a fearful and perfectly unfounded suspicion—one that I am glad, for every one’s sake, that you have hinted to no one else. Think of the absurdity of the thing. This has, you say, been going on for weeks; and yet, you see, your mistress is not poisoned yet.”
“No, ma’am, not yet,” said Jane, meaningly.
“Well, then, my good girl, how do you account for that?”
“Because, ma’am,” said Jane, in a whisper, “she’s never taken any of the medicine but once.”