ious poisoner, Dr.
Yorke-Bannerman."

As he uttered the words, Hilda Wade's hands trembled more than ever, and
with a little scream she let the basin fall, breaking it into fragments.

Sebastian's keen eyes had transfixed her in a second. "How did you
manage to do that?" he asked, with quiet sarcasm, but in a tone full of
meaning.

"The basin was heavy," Hilda faltered. "My hands were trembling--and it
somehow slipped through them. I am not... quite myself... not quite well
this afternoon. I ought not to have attempted it."

The Professor's deep-set eyes peered out like gleaming lights from
beneath their overhanging brows. "No; you ought not to have attempted
it," he answered, withering her with a glance. "You might have let the
thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it is, can't you see
you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't stand there holding your
breath, woman: repair your mischief. Get a cloth and wipe it up, and
give ME the bottle."

With skilful haste he administered a little sal volatile and nux vomica
to the swooning patient; while Hilda set about remedying the damage.
"That's better," Sebastian said, in a mollified tone, when she had
brought another basin. There was a singular note of cloaked triumph in
his voice. "Now, we'll begin again.... I was just saying, gentlemen,
before this accident, that I had seen only ONE case of this peculiar
form of the tendency before; and that case was the notorious"--he kept
his glittering eyes fixed harder on Hilda than ever--"the notorious Dr.
Yorke-Bannerman."

_I_ was watching Hilda, too. At the words, she trembled violently all
over once more, but with an effort restrained herself. Their looks
met in a searching glance. Hilda's air was proud and fearless: in
Sebastian's, I fancied I detected, after a second, just a tinge of
wavering.

"You remember Yorke-Bannerman's case," he went on. "He committed a
murder--"

"Let ME take the basin!" I cried, for I saw Hilda's hands giving way a
second time, and I was anxious to spare her.

"No, thank you," she answered low, but in a voice that was full of
suppressed defiance. "I will wait and hear this out. I PREFER to stop
here."

As for Sebastian, he seemed now not to notice her, though I was aware
all the time of a sidelong glance of his eye, parrot-wise, in
her direction. "He committed a murder," he went on, "by means of
aconitine--then an almost unknown poison; and, after committing it, his
heart being a