't know that you hid me in your bedroom."

The Sibyl laid her dry, fleshless hand on my shoulder, and forced me
roughly back into the chair from which I had just risen.

"Boy!" she said, looking through and through me with her fierce black
eyes. "Do you dare suppose that I ever did anything that I was ashamed
of? Do you think I am ashamed of what I have done now? Wait there. Your
mother may mistake me too. I shall write to your mother."

She put on her great round spectacles with tortoise-shell rims and sat
down to her letter. Whenever her thoughts flagged, whenever she was at a
loss for an expression, she looked over her shoulder, as if some visible
creature were stationed behind her, watching what she wrote; consulted
the spirit of her husband, exactly as she might have consulted a living
man; smiled softly to herself, and went on with her writing.

"There!" she said, handing me the completed letter with an imperial
gesture of indulgence. "_His_ mind and _my_ mind are written there. Go,
boy. I pardon you. Give my letter to your mother."

So she always spoke, with the same formal and measured dignity of manner
and language.

I gave the letter to my mother. We read it, and marveled over it
together. Thus, counseled by the ever-present spirit of her husband,
Dame Dermody wrote:

"MADAM--I have taken what you may be inclined to think a great liberty.
I have assisted your son George in setting his uncle's authority at
defiance. I have encouraged your son George in his resolution to be
true, in time and in eternity, to my grandchild, Mary Dermody.

"It is due to you and to me that I should tell you with what motive I
have acted in doing these things.

"I hold the belief that all love that is true is foreordained and
consecrated in heaven. Spirits destined to be united in the better world
are divinely commissioned to discover each other and to begin their
union in this world. The only happy marriages are those in which the two
destined spirits have succeeded in meeting one another in this sphere of
life.

"When the kindred spirits have once met, no human power can really part
them. Sooner or later, they must, by divine law, find each other again
and become united spirits once more. Worldly wisdom may force them into
widely different ways of life; worldly wisdom may delude them, or may
make them delude themselves, into contracting an earthly and a fallible
union. It matters nothing. The time will certainly come w