mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he
continued, slowly and with meaning,

"Terque quaterque redit!

You remember the Sibylline books? How often they were offered, and the
terms? It is not too late, Messer Blondel--even now. While there is life
there is hope, there is more than hope. There is certainty."

"Is there?" Blondel cried; he extended a lean hand, shaking with
vindictive passion. "Is there? Go and look in your casket, fool! Go and
look in your steel box!" he hissed. "Go! And see if it be not too late!"

For a moment Basterga peered at him, his brow contracted, his eyes
screwed up. The blow was unexpected. Then, "Have you taken the stuff?"
he muttered.

"I? No! But she has!" And on that, seeing the change in the other's
face--for, for once, the scholar's mask slipped and suffered his
consternation to appear--Blondel laughed triumphantly: in torture
himself, he revelled in a disaster that touched another. "She has! She
has!"

"She? Who?"

"The girl of the house! Anne you call her! Curse her! child of
perdition, as she is! She!" And he clawed the air.

"She has taken it?" Basterga spoke incredulously, but his brow was damp,
his cheeks were a shade more sallow than usual; he did not deceive the
other's penetration. "Impossible!" he continued, striving to rally his
forces. "Why should she take it? She has no illness, no disease!
Try"--he swallowed something--"to be clear, man. Try to be clear. Who
has told you this cock-and-bull story?"

"It is the truth."

"She has taken it?"

"To give to her mother--yes."

"And she?"

"Has taken it? Yes."

The scholar, ordinarily so cool and self-contained, could not withhold
an execration. His small eyes glittered, his face swelled with rage; for
a moment he was within a little of an explosion. Of what mad, what
insensate folly, unworthy of a schoolboy, worthy only of a sot, an
imbecile, a Grio, had he been guilty! To leave the potion, that if it
had not the virtues which he ascribed to it, had virtue--or it had not
served his purpose of deceiving the Syndic during some days or hours--to
leave the potion unprotected, at the mercy of a chance hand, of a
treacherous girl! Safeguarded, in appearance only, and to blind his
dupe! It seemed incredible that he could have been so careless!

True, he might replace the stuff at some expense; but not in a day or an
hour. And how--with one dose in all the world!--keep up the farce? T