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 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!"
"I have nothing to do with the present business, Mrs. Hazleton," replied Marlow, "but I am bound to say that in consequence of information I have procured, it would have been my duty to have caused your apprehension upon other charges, had not this, of which I know nothing, been preferred against you. All is discovered, madam; all is known. With a slight clue, at first, I have pursued the intricate labyrinth of your conduct for the last two years to its conclusion, and every thing has been made plain as day."
"You, Marlow, you?" cried Mrs. Hazleton, fixing her eyes steadfastly upon him, and then adding, as he bowed his head in token of assent, "but all is not known, even to you. You shall know all, however, before I die; and perhaps to know all may wring your heart, hard though it be. But what am I talking of?" she continued, her face becoming suddenly suffused with crimson, and her fine features convulsed with rage. "All is discovered, is it? And you have done it? What matters it to me, then, whose heart is wrung—or what becomes of you, or me, or any one? A drop more or less is nothing in the overflowing well. Why should I struggle longer? Why should I hide any thing? Why should I fly from this charge to meet another? I did it—I poisoned her—I put the drug by her bedside. It is all true—I did it all—I have had my revenge as far as it could be obtained, and now do with me what you like. But remember, Marlow, remember, if Emily Hastings marries you, she does it with a mother's curse upon her head—a curse that will fall upon her heart like a milldew, and wither it for ever—a curse that will dry up the source of all fond affections, blacken the brightest hours, and embitter the purest joys—a dying mother's curse! She knows it—she has heard it—it can never be recalled. I have put that beyond fate. Ha ha! It is upon you both; and if you venture to unite your unhappy destinies, may that curse cling to you and blast you for ever."
She spoke with all the vehemence of intense passion, breaking, for the first time in life, through strong habitual self-control; and when she had done, she cast herself into a chair, and covered her eyes with her hands.