CHAPTER XXXVI

PLEASANT DREAMS!

The duel had been fought to a finish, and Margaret had won.

When Mrs. Gregory Lamb was brought back out of that fit by which she had been overtaken she was lying on Cuthbert Grahame's bed, on which he had lived for so long, and died at her hand; the bed whose image had been borne in upon her phantom-haunted brain with such horrible persistency. Dr. Twelves was bending over her, standing where he had stood many a time to bend over the man she slew. She was little better than a babbling idiot. She is not much more than that now. She is a certified lunatic, under kindly, yet watchful, guardianship, the expense of which is paid by the girl whom she so cruelly wronged.

The physical and mental strain which had been placed upon her during that period of increasing financial pressure had been great; her attempts to relieve it by a resort to ether had made it ten times greater. How much of the spirit she drank has not been exactly ascertained. She must have consumed large quantities. Probably only the natural strength of her constitution enabled her to resist its effects so long as she