"You puzzle me horribly." But for that unendurable sense of perplexity, he would still have doubted and distrusted her as resolutely as ever.

As it was, his bewildered mind unconsciously took its refuge in belief.

"If it was medicine," asked the poor creature vacantly, "what is the medicine good for ?" At those words, an idea of the devil's own prompting entered Madame Fontaine's mind.

Still standing at the fireplace, she turned her head slowly, and looked at the cupboard.
"It's a better remedy even than the blue-glass bottle," she said; "it cures you so soon when you are tired, or troubled in your mind, that I have brought it away with me from Wurzburg, to use it for myself." Jack's face brightened with a new interest.

"Oh," he said eagerly, "do let me see it again!" She put her hand in her pocket, took out the key, and hesitated at the last moment.
"Just one look at it," Jack pleaded, "to see if it's the same." She unlocked the cupboard..