It was the insidious chloroform stealing her consciousness from her and deadening every nerve. She saw him take a tiny vial from his pocket, fit a perforated top upon it, and direct a spurt of deadly perfume, fine as a hair, into her face.
She tried to move, but could not. The breath was cut off from her nostrils by that fatal jet; she could only gaze with a sad, anguished look into those flaming eyes opposite her.
Something in the harrowing intensity of that silent look troubled the man.
He missed his aim, and the death-giving essence streamed harmlessly upon the bosom of her dress.
Again and again he adjusted the cunning little tube so as to force her to breathe its fatal contents; but his hand trembled, his face waxed white—he quailed before the ghostly appeal of those fixed orbs.
Minutes passed. Why did not the man finish his victim.
Was ever yet a woman more completely in a murderer's power?
Her attendant drugged into a senseless clod beside her, her faculties all benumbed, no eye to watch the tragedy, no hand to seize the villain—why did he not act out his instructions?
She held him by that mesmeric gaze, where the soul stood plainly forth pleading for mercy. She was so young, so gentle, so sorrowful.
Oh! he cowered away from his fell purpose; he dallied with his chance, and that chance slipped by.