I drank from the tumbler to the last drop.
It was not water.
It had a taste which I can compare to no drink, and to no medicine, known to me. I thought of the other strange taste peculiar to the tea. At last, the tremendous truth forced itself on my mind. The man in whom my boyish generosity had so faithfully believed had attempted my life.
Cristel took the tumbler from me. My poor angel clasped her free arm round my neck, and pressed her lips, in an ecstasy of joy, on my cheek. The next instant, she seized the claret jug, and dashed it into pieces on the floor. "Get the jug from his washhand-stand," she said. When I gave it to her, she poured some of the water upon the broken fragments of crystal scattered on the floor. I had put the jug back in its place, and was returning to Cristel, when the poisoner showed himself, entering from the servant's room.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "Gloody's name ought to be Glutton. An attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. I have relieved him. You remember, Mr. Roylake, that I was once a surgeon—"
The broken claret jug caught his eye.
We have all read of men who were petrified by terror. Of the few persons who have really witnessed that spectacle, I am one. The utter stillness of him was really terrible to see. Cristel wrote in his book an excuse, no doubt prepared beforehand: "That fall in the next room frightened me, and I felt faint. I went to get some water from the jug you drank out of, and it slipped from my hand."
She placed those words under his eyes—she might just as well have shown them to the dog. A dead man, erect on his feet—so he looked to our eyes. So he still looked, when I took Cristel's arm, and led her out of that dreadful presence.
"Take me into the air!" she whispered.
A burst of tears relieved her, after the unutterable suspense that she had so bravely endured. When she was in some degree composed again, we walked gently up and down for a minute or two in the cool night air. "Don't speak to me," she said, as we stopped before her father's door. "I am not fit for it yet; I know what you feel." I pressed her to my heart, and let the embrace speak for me. She yielded to it, faintly sighing. "To-morrow?" I whispered. She bent her head, and left me.