You
understand, do you?"
"Yes, Excellency."
Elettra stuck the little slip of paper, on which the recipe was written,
into her shabby pocket-book without looking at it. She could read and
write fairly well, and had been used to helping her husband the
under-steward with his accounts at Muro, but even if she had looked at
the recipe she would have understood nothing of the doctor's
hieroglyphics and abbreviated Latin words. The prescription was for a
preparation of arsenic, which Matilde had formerly taken for some time.
The chemist would not make any difficulty about preparing twenty doses
of it for the Countess Macomer, though the whole quantity of arsenic
contained in so many would probably be sufficient to kill one not
accustomed to the medicine, if taken all at once.
But though Matilde was so anxious to have the stuff before luncheon, she
had a number of doses of it put away in a drawer, which she took out and
counted, after Elettra had gone. She opened one of the little folded
papers and looked at the fine white powder it contained, took a little
on the end of her finger and tasted it. Then, from the same drawer, she
took a package done up in coarser paper, and opened it likewise, looked
at it, smelt it, and touched it with the tip of her tongue very
cautiously indeed. It was white, too, but coarser than the medicine.
She was very careful in tasting it, and she immediately rinsed her mouth
with water, before she tied up the package again, shut the drawer, and
put the key into her pocket.
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