When she slept, she dreamed of the poppy bed on the western slope of
the garden. It was twilight, and she stood there with a vial of
laudanum in one hand and a necklace of discoloured pearls in the other.
She poured the laudanum upon the earth and a great black poppy with a
deadly fragrance sprang up at her feet. Then Anthony Dexter drove up
in a carriage and took the pearls away from her. She could not see him
clearly, because his face was veiled, like her own.

The odour of the black poppy made her faint and she went into the house
to escape from it, but the scent of it clung to her garments and hands
and could not be washed away.




IV

"From the Depths of his Love"

At seven o'clock, precisely, Anthony Dexter's old housekeeper rang the
rising bell. Drowsy with the soporific he had taken, the doctor did
not at once respond to the summons. In fact, the breakfast bell had
rung before he was fully awake.

He dressed leisurely, and was haunted by a vague feeling that something
unpleasant had happened. At length he remembered that just before
dusk, in the garden of Evelina Grey's old house, he had seen a ghost--a
ghost who confronted him mutely with a thing he had long since
forgotten.