the floor; and the window, whose curtains were still undrawn, looked out upon a sky covered with heavy clouds, from whence the wan and misty moon sometimes emerged, but oftener only indicated her presence by a dim white ring, amid the dusky vapours.
Henrietta kept wandering to and fro like a disturbed spirit; now watching the shelves, covered with dusty volumes, now gazing on the different articles, scattered in the same confusion as when Sir Jasper last used his laboratory. On a small table, drawn close to his arm-chair, lay opened a large book, which Henrietta stopped, every now and then, in her troubled walk, to read.
"It may easily be done!" muttered she; and her fine features set with an expression of stern determination. Again she read the passage that had riveted her attention; and, rising from her seat, carried the still open volume, and laid it on a slab by the furnace in the laboratory: it was a celebrated treatise on poisons, written in the fifteenth century. The grate was laid with charcoal, to that she put
