ss ye
hae made! 'Tis sinful to gie sic trouble an' waste . . . " And so she
went on. I was glad to hear the tirade, which was only what a good
housewife, outraged in her sentiments of order, would have made. I
listened in patience--with pleasure when I thought of what she would have
thought (and said) had she known the real facts. I was well pleased to
have got off so easily.

RUPERT'S JOURNAL--_Continued_.

_April_ 10, 1907.

For some days after what I call "the episode" I was in a strange
condition of mind. I did not take anyone--not even Aunt Janet--into
confidence. Even she dear, and open-hearted and liberal-minded as she
is, might not have understood well enough to be just and tolerant; and I
did not care to hear any adverse comment on my strange visitor. Somehow
I could not bear the thought of anyone finding fault with her or in her,
though, strangely enough, I was eternally defending her to myself; for,
despite my wishes, embarrassing thoughts _would_ come again and again,
and again in all sorts and variants of queries difficult to answer. I
found myself defending her, sometimes as a woman hard pressed by
spiritual fear and physical suffering, sometimes as not being amenable to
laws that govern the Living. Indeed, I could not make up my mind whether
I looked on her as a living human being or as one with some strange
existence in another world, and having only a chance foothold in our own.
In such doubt imagination began to work, and thoughts of evil, of danger,
of doubt, even of fear, began to crowd on me with such persistence and in
such varied forms that I found my instinct of reticence growing into a
settled purpose. The value of this instinctive precaution was promptly
shown by Aunt Janet's state of mind, with consequent revelation of it.
She became full of gloomy prognostications and what I thought were morbid
fears. For the first time in my life I discovered that Aunt Janet had
nerves! I had long had a secret belief that she was gifted, to some
degree at any rate, with Second Sight, which quality, or whatever it is,
skilled in the powers if not the lore of superstition, manages to keep at
stretch not only the mind of its immediate pathic, but of others relevant
to it. Perhaps this natural quality had received a fresh impetus from
the arrival of some cases of her books sent on by Sir Colin. She
appeared to read and reread these w