I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my couchsmiling at madame. The unction,
the suavity of her behaviour offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind
was busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation, through parted bough or open
window, she had doubtless caught a glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that nights
transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of surveillance, it was next to impossible that
a casket could be thrown into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it, without that
she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall, or stilly murmur (and though Dr. John had
spoken very low in the few words he dropped me, yet the hum of his mans voice pervaded, I thought,
the whole conventual ground)without, I say, that she should have caught intimation of things extraordinary
transpiring on her premises. What things, she might by no means see, or at that time be able to discover; but
a delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her to disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round and
round in cobwebs, had she not secured Meess Lucie, clumsily involved, like the foolish fly she was?