they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of
chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto
baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of
the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not one
suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The
medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her
hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.
The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had assumed,
forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of
night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was
sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might
sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of light
struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish from the
general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the colourless and
tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania (Tufania water) was
wholly without taste or colour] in the morning draught, meant to bring
strength and healing. Grant that the draught was untouched, that it was
examined by the surgeon, that the fell admixture could be detected,
suspicion would wander anywhere rather than to that crippled and helpless
kinswoman who could not rise from her bed without aid.

But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the serpent were
to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey.

Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her resolves by
the discovery of her son, and her impatience to endow him with her
forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from the face of Helen that day; on
the excuse of illness, she kept her room, and admitted only Varney, who
stole in from time to time, with creeping step and haggard countenance,
to sustain her courage or his own. And every time he entered, he found