es, with a pulley and a counter-weight, at a touch of a finger, and
the person who was to appear, unless it was a part that the medium
herself could take, descended in an instant by letting down a short light
ladder, wrapped in cloth, so as to make no sound. The draught of air just
before the appearance, which Miss Ludington had spoken of in her talks
with me, was something that we never thought of, and was caused, I
suppose, by the drawing of the air up through the raised ceiling.

"It was all so easy, so easy; we need not have taken half the precautions
we did; you were so absolutely convinced from the first moment that I was
the Ida of the picture. From the time I came home with you that night
till now there has been no question of my proving who I was, but only of
Miss Ludington's proving, and of your proving, to me, that you were the
persons you claimed to be. It was not whether I was related to her, but
only that she was related to me, which Miss Ludington thought in any need
of demonstration.

"And as for you, Paul, it is not your fault that I was not your wife
weeks ago.

"And so I should have been, and Miss Ludington's heir besides, but for
two particulars in which our plot was fatally defective. It provided for
all contingencies, but made no allowance for the possibilities that I
might prove capable of gratitude towards Miss Ludington, and that I might
fall in love with you. Both these things have happened to me, and there
is no choice left me but to fly in the night. Of course I had expected
you to fall in love with me, and had fancied you so much, after seeing
you the first time, as to feel that it would be very fine to have you for
a lover, and even for a husband. But that was not really love at all. I
think if you could understand even a little what dismay came over me when
I first realized that my heart was yours, you would almost pity me. After
that, to deceive you was torture to me, and yet, to tell you the truth
would have been to make you loathe me like a snake. Oh, Paul! think of
what I have suffered these past weeks, and pity me a little!

"You will understand now why it was that I could not bear to have the
circumstances of the fraud we had practised on you alluded to in my
presence, and why, after the first few days, I never spoke of them
myself.

"When father, whom you know as Dr. Hull, came that day to see how the
plot was succeeding, I thought I should die with shame. He tried to catch
my