Her first impulse was to rid herself of
it on the spot. She raised the bottle to throw the contents out of the
window, and paused, in sudden distrust of the impulse that had come to
her. "I have accepted my new life," she thought. "How do I know what
that life may have in store for me?" She turned from the window and went
back to the table. "I may be forced to drink it yet," she said, and put
the laudanum into her dressing-case.
Her mind was not at ease when she had done this: there seemed to be some
indefinable ingratitude in the act. Still she made no attempt to
remove the bottle from its hiding-place. She hurried on her toilet; she
hastened the time when she could ring for the maid, and forget herself
and her waking thoughts in a new subject. After touching the bell, she
took from the table her letter to Norah and her letter to the captain,
put them both into her dressing-case with the laudanum, and locked it
securely with the key which she kept attached to her watch-chain.
Magdalen's first impression of her attendant was not an agreeable one.
She could not investigate the girl with the experienced eye of the
landlady at the London hotel, who had characterized the stranger as a
young person overtaken by misfortune, and who had showed plainly, by her
look and manner, of what nature she suspected that misfortune to be.
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