When this was done, she put all the packages into the original paper,
loosely opened, and laid them once more before her looking-glass, upon
the toilet table. Her large white hands were exceedingly skilful, and it
would have needed sharp eyes to see that the papers of medicine had been
tampered with.
After this, she cut a sheet of the writing-paper into four square
pieces, and very neatly made out of three of them three very small open
boxes, for moulds, each of the size of a large lump of sugar, and she
set them up side by side in a row. One was larger than the other two.
They had brought her powdered sugar, with the juice of a lemon in a
glass and a decanter of water; she had said that if she were thirsty she
would make herself a glass of lemonade in the night. She had also a
bottle of ordinary sticking gum.
She took the sugar and mixed a very little with some of the stuff she
had pulverized, and with a few drops of the gum, till it was a stiff,
hard paste, and with the end of the paper-knife she carefully filled the
largest of her three moulds with it. She was sure that it would be dry
and hard by the next day, and it would have the size, the appearance,
and somewhat the taste of a lump of sugar.
Then she halved the little heap of arsenic medicine as exactly as she
could. There were nine powders in all. To produce the symptoms of
poisoning in herself, she had taken four from her old supply, that
evening. Half of nine would be four and a half, and that would not be
too much.
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