“I saw the end as the end must be,” she said to herself, “on Thursday night. I have been wrong ever since.”
When she and her companion met that morning, she reiterated her complaint of suffering from the toothache; she repeated her refusal to allow Mrs. Wragge to procure a remedy; she left the house after breakfast, in the direction of the chemist’s shop, exactly as she had left it on the morning before.
This time she entered the shop without an instant’s hesitation.
“I have got an attack of toothache,” she said, abruptly, to an elderly man who stood behind the counter.
“May I look at the tooth, miss?”
“There is no necessity to look. It is a hollow tooth. I think I have caught cold in it.”
The chemist recommended various remedies which were in vogue fifteen years since. She declined purchasing any of them.
“I have always found Laudanum relieve the pain better than anything else,” she said, trifling with the bottles on the counter, and looking at them while she spoke, instead of looking at the chemist. “Let me have some Laudanum.”
“Certainly, miss. Excuse my asking the question—it is only a matter of form. You are staying at Aldborough, I think?”
“Yes. I am Miss Bygrave, of North Shingles.”