ea first came to her of deceiving you.

"That story of mother's going to Cincinnati was a lie, to prevent your
suspecting that she had anything to do with the business. Mrs. Rhinehart
is an imaginary person. At first, the idea was only to get you interested
in the seances, for the profit of the fees; but when they saw how
entirely deceived you were by my resemblance to the picture, the scheme
of getting me into this house occurred to them.

"Or rather it did not occur to them at all. It was you, Paul, yourself,
who suggested it, when you said that night after the first seance, that
if a medium died in a trance, you believed the materialized spirit could
not dematerialize but would return to earth. But for that the idea would
never have occurred to them.

"It seemed a daring plot, but many things favoured it. I had lived in
Hilton up to within a few years, and knew every stick and stone of the
old as well as the new part of the village. I had wandered all over the
old Ludington homestead time and again. Mother knew as much about Miss
Ludington's early life as she did herself, and could post me on the
subject, and there was my wonderful resemblance to the picture, which, of
itself, would be almost enough to carry me through.

"It was for my sake entirely that they proposed this scheme. My father
and mother may be looked down upon by the world as a very poor kind of
people, but they have always been very good to me. I will not have you
blame them except as you blame me with them. They thought that in this
way I could be rescued from the hard and questionable life which they
were living, and in which they did not wish me to grow up. If the plan
succeeded, and you were deceived and took me here, thinking me the true
Ida, they believed that I would be secured a life of happiness and
luxury. They had seen, too, how you were in love with the true Ida, and
made no question that you would love me and marry me.

"It was that more than all, Paul, that decided me to do it. I had fallen
in love with you that night of the first seance when I stood before you
and you looked at me with such boundless, adoring love. I think it would
have turned almost any girl's head to be looked at in that way. And then,
Paul, you are very handsome.

"I always had a taste for acting. They used to say I would have done well
on the stage, and the idea of playing a role so fine and so bold as this
took my fancy from the start. It was that, Paul, that,