ession, and also a certain amount of
nervous irritability, which other sensitives will understand, and which
often precedes some psychic happening. Just after we had finished
dinner, it struck me suddenly, and _for the first time_, that my
discomfort might be connected with my afternoon visit. This young man's
mother might be wishing to impress me in some way! I found that this was
the fact, but felt unequal to going further into the matter that night.

I promised to listen to anything she might wish to say next morning, and
having given this promise, all unpleasant and disturbing influences
disappeared, and I had a good night's rest. Next morning, after
breakfast, my hostess said very practically:

"Now do get this matter off your mind at once, or you will be worried
about it all day. I am going to order dinner, and shall then be in the
drawing-room, so you can have this room entirely to yourself."

I sat down, and a very beautiful message was given to me by the friend
of my girlhood.

She was evidently very much perturbed and very anxious about something
connected with her youngest son, whom I had met for the first time two
days previously, and about whose affairs, I need scarcely say, I was in
a state of profound ignorance. The little mother was anxious not to
"give him away," nor betray confidences, and so her words were very
guarded. There was evidently nothing in the least dishonourable or in
any way _unworthy_ of her son in question. I gathered, rather, that he
might be contemplating some step which she, from her wider outlook,
considered undesirable and inexpedient; possibly even disastrous in the
future.

It was no business of mine, and I make it a point of honour not to "try
to guess" more than I am told, and to forget what I _am_ told as soon as
possible, where the affairs of other people are involved.

This is, fortunately, easy for me as a rule, but in this case one
sentence remains even now ringing in my ears, and if the son ever comes
across this record I hope he will forgive my reproducing his mother's
last beautiful words to me:

"_Tell my darling boy that life is so solemn and true love so sacred a
thing. Tell him to be very, very sure, lest he lose the substance in
pursuing the shadow._"

The first sentence is given verbatim. In the second my memory may be
producing the sense without the exact wording, but I have no doubt at
all that my words practically convey what the mother wished me to "t