"Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care of for you, you know. I'll give it back if I break you off. Honour bright!"
"I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I could afford sixpence for Prussic acid. Fancy being able to kill oneself, or one's friends, for sixpence! It must have come to a lot more than that in the Middle Ages. We have every reason to be thankful we are Modern...."
"Don't go from the point. Will you give up the little bottle of Indian poison, or not?"
"Not. At least, not now! If I hand it to you at the altar, when you have led me there won't that do?"
Gwen considered, judicially, and appeared to be in favour of accepting the compromise. "Only remember!" said she, "if you don't produce that bottle at the altar—with the poison in it still; no cheating!—I shall cry off, in the very jaws of matrimony." She paused a moment, lest she should have left a flaw in the contract, then added:—"Whether I have led you there or not, you know! Very likely you will walk up the aisle by yourself."
If Adrian had really determined to conceal the Miss Scatcherd incident from Gwen, so as not to foster false hopes, he should have worded his reply differently. For no sooner had he said:—"Well—we are all hoping so," than Gwen exclaimed:—"Then there has been more Septimius Severus." Adrian accepted this without protest, as ordinary human speech; and the story feels confident that if its reader will be on the watch, he will very soon chance across something quite as unlike book-talk in Nature. Adrian merely said:—"How on earth did you guess that?" Gwen replied:—"Because you said, 'We are all hoping so'—not 'We hope so.' Can't you see the difference?"
Anyway, Gwen's guess was an accomplished fact, and it was no use pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore:—"Yes—there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's corrections showed an opposite bias.
Gwen was, strange to say, really uneasy about that little bottle of Indian poison. Whether there was anything prophetic in this uneasiness, it is difficult to determine. The decision of common sense will probably be that she knew that Poets were not to be trusted, and she wished to be on the safe side. By "common sense" we mean the faculty which instinctively selects the common prejudices of its age as oriflammes to follow on Life's battlefield. Hopkins the witch-finder's common sense suggested pricking all over to find an insensible flesh-patch, in which case the prickee was a witch. We prefer to keep an open mind about Lady Gwendolen Rivers' foreboding anent that little bottle of Indian poison, until vivisection has shown us, more plainly than at present, how brain secretes Man's soul. We are aware that this language is Browning's.
Gwen remained at Pensham until the end of the week. Events occurred, no doubt, but, with one exception, they are outside the story. That exception was a visit to Chorlton, in order that Adrian should not remain a stranger to the interesting old twins. His interest would have been stronger no doubt could he have really seen them. Even as it was he was keenly alive to the way in which old Mrs. Prichard seemed to have fascinated Gwen, and was eager to make as much acquaintance with her as his limitations left possible to him.