sensitive organization when
asleep or thinking on some one with whom they are in a high state of
sympathy, and doubtless indicates some occult communication. But, as
it chanced, it had never before visited Angela in this form, and she
abandoned herself to its influence with delight. It thrilled her
through and through.

How long she sat thus she could not tell, but presently the
communication, whatever it was, stopped as suddenly as though the
connecting link had been severed. The currents directed by her will
would no longer do her bidding; they could not find their object, or,
frighted by some adverse influence, recoiled in confusion on her
brain. Several times she tried to renew this subtle intercourse that
was so palpable and real, and yet so different from anything else in
the world, but failed. Then she rose, feeling very tired, for those
who thus draw upon the vital energies must pay the penalty of
exhaustion. She took her Bible and read her nightly chapter, and then
undressed and said her prayers, praying with unusual earnestness that
it might please the Almighty in His wisdom to take her to where her
lover was. Her prayers done, she rose, put on a white dressing
wrapper, and, seating herself before the glass, unloosed her hair.
Then she began to brush it, pausing presently to think how Arthur had
admired its colour and the ripples on it. She had been much more
careful of her hair since then, and smiled sadly to herself at her
folly for being so.

Thinking thus, she fell into a reverie, and sat so still that a great
grey rat came noiselessly out of his hole in a corner of the room,
and, advancing into the circle of light round the dressing-table, sat
up on his hind legs to see if he was alone. Suddenly he turned and
scuttled back to his hole in evident alarm, and at the same second
Angela thought that she heard a sound of a different character from
those she was accustomed to in the old house--a sound like the
creaking of a boot. It passed, however, but left an indefinable dread
creeping over her, and chilling the blood in her veins. She began to
expect something, she knew not what, and was fascinated by the
expectation. She would have risen to lock the door, but all strength
seemed to have left her; she was paralysed by the near sense of evil.
Then came a silence as intense as it was lonely.

It was a ghastly moment.

Her back was towards the doorway, for her dressing-table was
immediately opposite the d