Mrs. Rhinehart hoped that the following evening would be
convenient for Miss Ludington. She had assumed the responsibility of
making the engagement positive, as she might have failed in securing a
seance altogether had she waited to communicate with Miss Ludington.
Hoping that "the conditions would be favourable," she remained, &c. &c.

When Miss Ludington had read this letter to Paul, she intimated, though
rather faintly, that it was still not too late to withdraw from the
enterprise; they could send Mrs. Legrand her fee, say that it was not
convenient for them to come on the evening fixed, and so let the matter
drop. Paul stared at her in astonishment, and said that, if she did not
feel like going, he would go alone, as he had at first proposed. Upon
this Miss Ludington once more declared that they would go together, and
said nothing further about sacrificing the appointment.

The fact is she did not really wish to sacrifice it. She was experiencing
a revulsion of feeling; Mrs. Rhinehart's letter had affected her almost
as strongly as Mrs. Slater's talk. The fact that Mrs. Legrand had at once
seen the reasonableness and probability of the belief in the immortality
of past selves made it difficult for Miss Ludington to think of her as a
mere vulgar impostor. The vague hint of the medium's as to strange
experiences with the spirit world, confirmatory of this belief, appealed
to her imagination in a powerful manner. Of what description might the
mysterious monitions be, which, coming to this woman in the dim
between-world where she groped, had prepared her to accept as true, on
its first statement, a belief that to others seemed so hard to credit?
What clutchings of spirit fingers in the dark! What moanings of souls
whom no one recognised!

The confidence which Mrs. Legrand had expressed that the seance would
prove a success affected Miss Ludington very powerfully. It impressed her
as the judgment of an expert; it compelled her to recognize not only as
possible, but even as probable, that, on the evening of the following
day, she should behold the beautiful girl whom once, so many years
before, she had called herself; for so at best would words express this
wonder.

With a trembling ecstasy, which in vain she tried to reason down, she
began to prepare herself for the presence of one fresh from the face of
God and the awful precincts of eternity.

As for Paul, there was no conflict of feeling with prejudice in his ca