Victor Carrington was very well content with the state of affairs at Hilton House in all but one respect. The fulfilment of his purpose was not approaching with sufficient rapidity. The rich marriage which he had talked about for Reginald was a pure figment; the virtuous ironmonger, with the richly dowered daughter, existed only in his prolific brain — the need of money was growing pressing. He had done much, but there was still much to do, and he must make haste to do it. He had also been mistaken on one point of much importance to his success; he had not calculated on the strength of Douglas Dale’s constitution. Each day that he dined with Paulina — and the days on which he did not were exceedingly few — Dale drank a small quantity of cura?oa, into which Carrington had poured poison of a slow but sure nature. As the small carafon in which the liquor was placed upon the table was emptied, the poisoner never found any difficulty in gaining access to the fresh supply.

The antique liquor-chest, with its fittings of Venetian glass was always kept on the side-board in the dining-room, and was never locked. Paulina had a habit of losing anything that came into her hands, and the key of the liquor-chest had long been missing.

But the time was passing, and the poison was not telling, as far as he, the poisoner, could judge from appearances, on Douglas Dale. He never complained of illness, and beyond a slight lassitude, he did not seem to have anything the matter with him. This would not do. It behoved Carrington to expedite matters. His project was to accomplish the death of Douglas Dale by poison, throwing the burthen of suspicion — should suspicion arise — upon Paulina. To advance this purpose, he had industriously circulated reports of the most injurious character respecting her; so that Douglas Dale, if he had not been blinded and engrossed by his love, must have seen that he was regarded by the men whom he was in the habit of meeting even more coldly and curiously than when he had first boldly announced his engagement to Madame Durski. He made it known that Douglas Dale had made a will, by which the whole of his disposable property was bequeathed to Paulina, and circulated a rumour that the Austrian widow was utterly averse to the intended marriage, in feeling, and was only contracting it from interested motives.

“If Dale was only out of the way, and his heir had come into the money, she would rather have Reginald,” was a spiteful saying current among those who knew the lady and her suitor, and which had its unsuspected origin with Carrington. Supposing Dale to come to his death by poison, and that fact to be ascertained, who would be suspected but the woman who had everything to gain by his death, whose acknowledged lover was his next heir, and who succeeded by his will to all the property which did not go immediately into the possession of that acknowledged lover? The plan was admirably laid, and there was no apparent hitch in it, and it only remained now for Carrington to accelerate his proceedings. He still maintained reserve with Reginald Eversleigh, who would go to his house, and lounge purposelessly about, sullen and gloomy, but afraid to question the master-mind which had so completely subjugated his weak and craven nature.

The engagement between Paulina and Douglas had lasted nearly two months, when a cloud overshadowed the horizon which had seemed so bright.

Madame Durski became somewhat alarmed by a change in her lover’s appearance, which struck her suddenly on one of his visits to the villa. For some weeks past she had seen him only by lamplight — that light which gives a delusive brightness to the countenance.

To-day she saw him with the cold northern sunlight shining full upon his face; and for the first time she perceived that he had altered much of late.

“Douglas,” she said, earnestly, “how ill you are looking!”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; I see it to-day for the first time, and I can only wonder that I never noticed it before. You have grown so much paler, so much thinner, within the last few weeks. I am sure you cannot be well.”

“My dearest Paulina, pray do not look at me with such alarm,” said Douglas, gently. “Believe me, there is nothing particular the matter. I have not been quite myself for the last few weeks, I admit — a touch of low fever, I think; but there is not the slightest occasion for fear on your part.”

“Oh, Douglas,” exclaimed Paulina, “how can you speak so carelessly of a subject so vital to me? I implore you to consult a physician immediately.”

“I assure you, my dearest, it is not necessary. There is nothing really the matter.”

“Douglas, I beg and entreat you to see a physician directly. I entreat it as a favour to me.”

“My dear Paulina, I am ready to do anything you wish.”

“You will promise me, then, to see a doctor you can trust, without an hour’s unnecessary delay?”

“I promise, with all my heart,” replied Douglas. “Ah, Paulina, what happiness to think that my life is of some slight value to her I love so fondly!”

No more was said upon the subject; but during dinner, and throughout the evening, Paulina’s eyes fixed themselves every now and then with an anxious, scrutinizing gaze upon her lover’s face.

When he had left her, she mentioned her fears to her confidante and shadow, Miss Brewer.

“Do you not see a change in Mr. Dale?” she asked.

“A change! What kind of change?”

“Do you not perceive an alteration in his appearance? In plainer words, do you not think him looking very ill?”

Miss Brewer, generally so impassive, started, and looked at her patroness with a gaze in which alarm was plainly visible.

She had hazarded so much in order to bring about a marriage between Douglas and her patroness; and what if mortality’s dread enemy, Death, should forbid the banns?

“Ill!” she exclaimed; “do you think Mr. Dale is ill?”

“I do, indeed; and he confesses as much himself, though he makes light of the matter. He talks of low fever. I cannot tell you how much he has alarmed me.”

“There may be nothing serious in it,” answered Miss Brewer, with some hesitation. “One is so apt to take alarm about trifles which a doctor would laugh at. I dare say Mr. Dale only requires change of air. A London life is not calculated to improve any one’s health.”

“Perhaps that is the cause of his altered appearance,” replied Paulina, only too glad to be reassured as to her lover’s safety. “I will beg him to take change of air. But he has promised to see a doctor to-morrow: when he comes to me in the afternoon I shall hear what the doctor has said.”

Douglas Dale was very much inclined to make light of the slight symptoms of ill-health which had oppressed him for some time — a languor, a sense of thirst and fever, which were very wearing in their effect, but which he attributed to the alternations of excitement and agitation that he had undergone of late.

He was, however, too much a man of honour to break the promise made to Paulina.

He went early on the following morning to Savile Row, where he called upon Dr. Harley Westbrook, a physician of some eminence, to whom he carefully described the symptoms of which he had complained to Paulina.

“I do not consider myself really ill,” he said, in conclusion; “but I have come to you in obedience to the wish of a friend.”

“I am very glad that you have come to me,” answered Dr. Westbrook, gravely.

“Indeed! do you, then, consider the symptoms alarming?”

“Well, no, not at present; but I may go so far as to say that you have done very wisely in placing yourself under medical treatment. It is a most interesting case,” added the doctor with an air of satisfaction that was almost enjoyment.

He then asked his patient a great many questions, some of which Douglas Dale considered frivolous, or, indeed, absurd; questions about his diet, his habits: questions even about the people with whom he associated, the servants who waited upon him.

These latter inquiries might have seemed almost impertinent, if Dr. Westbrook’s elevated position had not precluded such an idea.

“You dine at your club, or in your chambers, eh, Mr. Dale?” he asked.

“Neither at my club, nor my chambers; I dine every day with a friend.”

“Indeed; always with the same friend?”

“Always the same.”

“And you breakfast?”

“At my chambers.”

Here followed several questions as to the nature of the breakfast.

“These sort of ailments depend so much on diet,” said the physician, as if to justify the closeness of his questioning. “Your servant prepares your breakfast, of course — is he a person whom you can trust?”

“Yes; he is an old servant of my father’s. I could trust him implicitly in far more important matters than the preparation of my breakfast.”

“Indeed! Will you pardon me if I ask rather a strange question?”

“Certainly, if it is a necessary one.”

“Answered like a lawyer, Mr. Dale,” replied Dr. Westbrook, with a smile. “I want to know whether this old and trusted servant of yours has any beneficial interest in your death?”

“Interest in my death —”

“In plainer words, has he reason to think that you have put him down in your will — supposing that you have made a will; which is far from probable?”

“Well, yes,” replied Douglas, thoughtfully; “I have made a will within the last few months, and Jarvis, my old servant knows that he is provided for, in the event of surviving me — not a very likely event, according to the ordinary hazards; but a man is bound to prepare for every contingency.”

“You told your servant that you had provided for him?”

“I did. He has been such an excellent creature, that it was only natural I should leave him comfortably situated in the event of my death.”

“No; to be sure,” answered the physician, with rather an absent manner. “And now I need trouble you with no further questions this morning. Come to me in a few days, and in the meantime take the medicine I prescribe for you.”

Dr. Westbrook wrote a prescription, and Mr. Dale departed, very much perplexed by his interview with the celebrated physician.

Douglas went to Fulham that evening as usual, and the first question Paulina asked related to his interview with the doctor.

“You have seen a medical man?” she asked.

“I have; and you may set your mind at rest, dearest. He assures me that there is nothing serious the matter.”

Paulina was entirely reassured, and throughout that evening she was brighter and happier than usual in the society of her lover — more lovely, more bewitching than ever, as it seemed to Douglas.

He waited a week before calling again on the physician; and he might, perhaps, have delayed his visit even longer, had he not felt that the fever and languor from which he suffered increased rather than abated.

This time Dr. Westbrook’s manner seemed graver and more perplexed than on the former visit. He asked even more questions, and at last, after a thoughtful examination of the patient, he said, very seriously —

“Mr. Dale, I must tell you frankly that I do not like your symptoms.”

“You consider them alarming?”

“I consider them perplexing, rather than alarming. And as you are not a nervous subject I think I may venture to trust you fully.”

“You may trust in the strength of my nerve, if that is what you mean.”

“I believe I may, and I shall have to test your moral courage and general force of character.”

“Pray be brief, then,” said Douglas with a faint smile. “I can almost guess what you have to say. You are going to tell me that I carry the seeds of a mortal disease; that the shadowy hand of death already holds me in its fatal grip.”

“I am going to tell you nothing of the kind,” answered Dr. Westbrook. “I can find no symptoms of disease. You have a very fair lease of life, Mr. Dale, and may enjoy a green old age, if other people would allow you to enjoy it.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that if I can trust my own judgment in a matter which is sometimes almost beyond the reach of science, the symptoms from which you suffer are those of slow poisoning.”

“Slow poisoning!” replied Douglas, in almost inaudible accents. “It is impossible!” he exclaimed, after a pause, during which the physician waited quietly until his patient should have in some manner recovered his calmness of mind. “It is quite impossible. I have every confidence in your skill, your science; but in this instance, Dr. Westbrook, I feel assured that you are mistaken.”

“I would gladly think so, Mr. Dale,” replied the doctor, gravely; “but I cannot. I have given my best thought to your case. I can only form one conclusion — namely, that you are labouring under the effects of poison.”

“Do you know what the poison is?”

“I do not; but I do know that it must have been administered with a caution that is almost diabolical in its ingenuity — so slowly, by such imperceptible degrees, that you have scarcely been aware of the change which it has worked in your system. It was a most providential circumstance that you came to me when you did, as I have been able to discover the treachery to which you are subject while there is yet ample time for you to act against it. Forewarned is forearmed, you know, Mr. Dale. The hidden hand of the secret poisoner is about its fatal work; it is for you and me to discover to whom the hand belongs. Is there any one about you whom you can suspect of such hideous guilt?”

“No one — no one. I repeat that such a thing is impossible.”

“Who is the person most interested in your death?” asked Dr. Westbrook, calmly.

“My first cousin, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, who would succeed to a very handsome income in that event. But I have not met him, or, at any rate, broke bread with him, for the last two months. Nor can I for a moment believe him capable of such infamy.”

“If you have not been in intimate association with him for the last two months, you may absolve him from all suspicion,” answered Dr. Westbrook. “You spoke to me the other day of dining very frequently with one particular friend; forgive me if I ask an unpleasant question. Is that friend a person whom you can trust?”

“That friend I could trust with a hundred lives, if I had them to lose,” Douglas replied, warmly.

The doctor looked at his patient thoughtfully. He was a man of the world, and the warmth of Mr. Dale’s manner told him that the friend in question was a woman.

“Has the person whom you trust so implicitly any beneficial interest in your death?” he asked.

“To some amount; but that person would gain much more by my continuing to live.”

“Indeed; then we must needs fall back upon my original idea and painful as it may be to you, the old servant must become the object of your suspicion.”

“I cannot believe him capable —”

“Come, come, Mr. Dale,” interrupted the physician. “We must look at things as men of the world. It is your duty to ascertain by whom this poison has been administered, in order to protect yourself from the attacks of your insidious destroyer. If you will follow my advice, you will do this; if, on the other hand, you elect to shut your eyes to the danger that assails you, I can only tell you that you will most assuredly pay for your folly by the forfeit of your life.”

“What am I to do?” asked Douglas.

“You say that your habits of life are almost rigid in their regularity. You always breakfast in your own chambers; you always dine and take your after-dinner coffee in the house of one particular friend. With the exception of a biscuit and a glass of sherry taken sometimes at your club, these two meals are all you take during the day. It is, therefore, an indisputable fact, that poison has bee a administered at one or other of these two meals. Your old butler serves one — the servants of your friend prepare the other. Either in your own chambers, or in your friend’s house, you have a hidden foe. It is for you to find out where that foe lurks.”

“Not in her house,” gasped Douglas, unconsciously betraying the depth of his feeling and the sex of his friend; “not in hers. It must be Jarvis whom I have to fear — and yet, no, I cannot believe it. My father’s old servant — a man who used to carry me in his arms when I was a boy!”

“You may easily set the question of his guilt or innocence at rest, Mr. Dale,” answered Dr. Westbrook. “Contrive to separate yourself from him for a time. If during that time you find your symptoms cease, you will have the strongest evidence of his guilt; if they still continue, you must look elsewhere.”

“I will take your advice,” replied Douglas, with a weary sigh; “anything is better than suspense.”

Little more was said.

As Douglas walked slowly from the physician’s house to the Phoenix Club, he meditated profoundly on the subject of his interview with Dr. Westbrook.

“Who is the traitor?” he asked himself. “Who? Unhappily there can be no doubt about it. Jarvis is the guilty wretch.”

It was with unspeakable pain that Douglas Dale contemplated the idea of his old servant’s guilt: his old servant, who had seemed a model of fidelity and devotion!

This very man had attended the deathbed of the rector — Douglas Dale’s father — had been recommended by that father to the care of his two sons, had exhibited every appearance of intense grief at the loss of his master.

What could he think, except that Jarvis was guilty? There was but one other direction in which he could look for guilt, and there surely it could not be found.

Who in Hilton House had any interest in his death, except that one person who was above the possibility of suspicion?

He sat by his solitary breakfast-table on the morning after his interview with the physician, and watched Jarvis as he moved to and fro, waiting on his master with what seemed affectionate attention.

Douglas ate little. A failing appetite had been one of the symptoms that accompanied the low fever from which he had lately suffered.

This morning, depression of spirits rendered him still less inclined to eat.

He was thinking of Jarvis and of the past — those careless, happy, childish days, in which this man had been second only to his own kindred in his boyish affection.

While he meditated gravely upon this most painful subject, deliberating as to the manner in which he should commence a conversation that was likely to be a very serious one, he happened to look up, and perceived that he was watched by the man he had been lately watching. His eyes met the gaze of his old servant, and he beheld a strange earnestness in that gaze.

The old man did not flinch on meeting his master’s glance.

“I beg your pardon for looking at you so hard, Mr. Douglas,” he said; “but I was thinking about you very serious, sir, when you looked up.”

“Indeed, Jarvis, and why?”

“Why you see, sir, it was about your appetite as I was thinking. It’s fallen off dreadful within the last few weeks. The poor breakfastes as you eats is enough to break a man’s heart. And you don’t know the pains as I take, sir, to tempt you in the way of breakfastes. That fish, sir, I fetched from Grove’s this morning with my own hands. They comes up in a salt-water tank in the bottom of their own boat, sir, as lively as if they was still in their natural eleming, Grove’s fish do. But they might be red herrings for any notice as you take of ’em. You’re not yourself, Mr. Douglas, that’s what it is. You’re ill, Mr. Douglas, and you ought to see a doctor. Excuse my presumption, sir, in making these remarks; but if an old family servant that has nursed you on his knees can’t speak free, who can?”

“True,” Douglas answered with a sigh; “I was a very small boy when you carried me on your shoulders to many a country fair, and you were very good to me, Jarvis.”

“Only my dooty, sir,” muttered the old man.

“You are right, Jarvis, as to my health — I am ill.”

“Then you’ll send for a doctor, surely, Mr. Douglas.”

“I have already seen a doctor.”

“And what do he say, sir?”

“He says my case is very serious.”

“Oh, Mr. Douglas, don’t ‘ee say that, don’t ‘ee say that,” cried the old man, in extreme distress.

“I can only tell you the truth, Jarvis,” answered Douglas: “but there is no occasion for despair. The physician tells me that my case is a grave one, but he does not say that it is hopeless.”

“Why don’t ‘ee consult another doctor, Mr. Douglas,” said Jarvis; “perhaps that one ain’t up to his work. If it’s such a difficult case, you ought to go to all the best doctors in London, till you find the one that can cure you. A fine, well-grown young gentleman like you oughtn’t to have much the matter with him. I don’t see as it can be very serious.”

“I don’t know about that, Jarvis; but in any case I have resolved upon doing something for you.”

“For me, sir! Lor’ bless your generous heart, I don’t want nothing in this mortal world.”

“But you may, Jarvis,” replied Douglas. “You have already been told that I have provided for you in case of my death.”

“Yes, sir, you was so good as to say you had left me an annuity, and it was very kind of you to think of such a thing, and I’m duly thankful. But still you see, sir, I can’t help looking at it in the light of a kind of joke, sir; for it ain’t in human nature that an old chap like me is going to outlive a young gentleman like you; and Lord forbid that it should be in human nature for such a thing to happen.”

“We never know what may happen, Jarvis. At any rate, I have provided against the worst. But as you are getting old, and have worked hard all your life, I think you must want rest; so, instead of putting you off till my death, I shall give you your annuity at once, and you may retire into a comfortable little house of your own, and live the life of an elderly gentleman, with a decent little income, as soon as you please.”

To the surprise of Douglas Dale, the old man’s countenance expressed only grief and mortification on hearing an announcement which his master had supposed would have been delightful to him.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he faltered; “but have you seen a younger servant as you like better and as could serve you better, than poor old Jarvis?”

“No, indeed,” answered Douglas, “I have seen no such person. Nor do I believe that any one in the world could serve me as well as you.”

“Then why do you want to change, sir?”

“I don’t want to change. I only want to make you happy, Jarvis.”

“Then make me happy by letting me stay with you,” pleaded the old servant. “Let me stay, sir. Don’t talk about annuities. I w............