Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/189

Rh floor, quite senseless." Mr. Maclean, in his written account of the occurrence, addressed to her brother, further says, in reference to that remedy for the spasms, which she was in the habit of taking,—"The surgeon thought it possible that she swallowed too much of this medicine, which is very powerful; but nothing indicated this, nor was anything got off the stomach." No appearances are described by either of the three witnesses, corresponding with those of which we read in accounts of death by the poison referred to, and which medical authorities declare to be the invariable consequences of taking it. Not a word is said of the effluvia which is instantly created in the apartment where the acid has been taken—effluvia much too powerful for any one approaching the scene to be unaffected by, or unconscious of it.

These are some of the inferences against the hypothesis of self-destruction, which are fairly to be drawn from the statements made at the inquest; inferences, however, equally unfavourable to the verdict that she died by an incautious use of the poison, to which she is supposed to have resorted for relief, on a return of the spasmodic affection of the night before, when she had wished to take it.

In support of these inferences, may be adduced the result of inquiries made on the return of Emily Bailey to this country, at the close of last year, a twelvemonth after the time appointed for her arrival. She found her mistress on the floor, she assisted to lift her on the bed, she supported her head on the pillow, she bent over her before death for several minutes,—inhaling, in fact, her dying breath—and yet declares, though repeatedly questioned, that she was unaffected by any effluvia,