Neal did not understand. "To take the pain out of them?" he repeated, looking questioningly at the speaker.
"That stuff that have come into fashion of late years. The doctors will give it you while you have a tooth took out, if you'll let 'em."
"Do you mean chloroform?"
"That's it. I never can remember the name. But I'd rather call it poison, for my part--killing folks dead off without a warning."
"Who gave it to Lady Oswald?"
"Your master," replied the man, lowering his voice to a whisper as he glanced at the windows of the house. "The servants was in the room with me up there, and they told me about it. There was something to be done to my lady--some bones to be set, I believe--and the doctors went this afternoon, and they give her this stuff, and it killed her. I wonder Parliament don't make a law again its use, for my part."
"I am sorry to hear this," exclaimed Neal. "My lady was very friendly to me."
"Ay. The servants be cut up like anything. And enough to make 'em! It's a shocking thing. The lady's maid says she can't think why they should have give her the stuff, for Mr. Cray himself told her, when he was there in the afternoon, that what they had to do wouldn't hurt my lady no more than a flea-bite. Anyway, she's dead. But I can't stop here, I must get along back with the measure. Goodnight, Mr. Neal."
"Goodnight," replied Neal.
He leaned on the gate, watching the man hurrying onwards with his fleet steps, and thinking over what he had heard. Perhaps it is not too much to say that Mr. Neal would have preferred to hear of the death of any other person in Hallingham than of Lady Oswald's. Lady Oswald had been a great friend to him, and it had been Neal's intention to put her friendliness to the test in a very short period of time. Neal was a subtle schemer, and he had been perfecting a plan by which at one bold stroke Lady Oswald's mind should be disabused of that suspicion against himself imparted to her by Dr. Davenal the day of Miss Caroline's marriage, to which he had been an unsuspected listener, and by which he should also be effectually served. Neal had begun to feel that his tenure in his present situation was no longer sure, and he intended by the help of Lady Oswald to secure to himself a situation of a different nature.