at
night's train for Cincinnati, and whether they ever again came East to
live was very doubtful. In a postscript, written crosswise, she said:

"I have been in such a rush ever since I came home that I declare I had
clean forgotten till this moment about my promise to hunt up Mrs.
Legrand's address for you. Very likely you have also forgotten by this
time our talk about her, and if so it will not matter. But it vexes me to
fail in a promise, and, if possible, I will snatch a moment before we
leave to send a note to the friend I spoke of, and ask her to look the
woman up for you."

Instead of being disappointed, Miss Ludington was, on the whole, relieved
to get this letter, and inclined to hope that Mrs. Slater had failed to
find the time to write her friend. In that case this extraordinary
project of visiting a spiritualist medium would quietly fall through,
which was the best thing that could happen.

The fact is, after sleeping on it, she had seen clearly that such a
proceeding for a person of her position and antecedents would not only be
preposterous, but almost disreputable. She was astonished at herself to
think that her feelings could have been so wrought upon as to cause her
seriously to contemplate such a step. All her life she had held the
conviction, which she supposed to be shared by all persons of culture and
respectability, that spiritualism was a low and immoral superstition,
invariably implying fraud in its professors, and folly in its dupes:
something, in fact, quite below the notice of persons of intelligence or
good taste. As for the idea that this medium could show her the spirit of
her former self, or any other real spirit, it was simply imbecile to
entertain it for a moment.

If, however, Miss Ludington was relieved by Mrs. Slater's letter, Paul
was keenly disappointed. His prejudice against spiritualism was by no
means so deeply rooted as hers. In a general way he had always believed
mediums to be frauds, and their shows mere shams, but he had been ready
to allow with Mrs. Slater, that, mixed up in all this fraud, there might
be a very little truth.

His mind admitted a bare possibility that this Mrs. Legrand might be able
to show him the living face and form of his spirit-love. That possibility
once admitted had completely dominated his imagination, and it made
little difference whether it was one chance in a thousand or one in a
million. He was like the victim of the lottery mania, whose a