"Is she gone, Watson? Is there a spark left? Surely we are not
too late!"

For half an hour it seemed that we were. What with actual
suffocation, and what with the poisonous fumes of the chloroform,
the Lady Frances seemed to have passed the last point of recall.
And then, at last, with artificial respiration, with injected
ether, and with every device that science could suggest, some
flutter of life, some quiver of the eyelids, some dimming of a
mirror, spoke of the slowly returning life. A cab had driven up,
and Holmes, parting the blind, looked out at it. "Here is
Lestrade with his warrant," said he. "He will find that his
birds have flown. And here," he added as a heavy step hurried
along the passage, "is someone who has a better right to nurse
this lady than we have. Good morning, Mr. Green; I think that
the sooner we can move the Lady Frances the better. Meanwhile,
the funeral may proceed, and the poor old woman who still lies in
that coffin may go to her last resting-place alone."

"Should you care to add the case to your annals, my dear Watson,"
said Holmes that evening, "it can only be as an example of that
temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be
exposed. Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest
is he who can recognize and repair them. To this modified credit
I may, perhaps, make some claim. My night was haunted by the
thought that somewhere a clue, a strange sentence, a curious
observation, had come under my notice and had been too easily
dismissed. Then, suddenly, in the gray of the morning, the words
came back to me. It was the remark of the undertaker's wife, as
reported by Philip Green. She had said, 'It should be there