eyes, awaiting her reply.

"Certainly not! Most certainly not! They were obviously cases of
epilepsy and insanity, misinterpreted by an ignorant age."

"No--it's all true, quite literally true. Three times, and for six
months or more each time, I have been possessed by a spirit that cannot
be good. I know it's not. It takes my body, it takes the love of people
I care for, away from me--" Milly's voice broke and she pressed her
handkerchief over her face. "You all think her--But she's bad, and some
day she'll do something wicked--something that will break my heart, and
you'll all insist it was I who did it, and you'll believe I'm a wicked
woman."

Lady Thomson looked very grave.

"Mildred, dear," she said, "try and collect yourself. It is really
wicked of you to give way to such terrible fancies. Would God permit
such a thing to happen to one of His children? We feel sure He would
not."

Milly shook her head, but the struggle with her hysterical sobs kept her
silent. Lady Thomson walked to the window, feeling more "upset" than she
had ever felt in her life. The window was open, but an awning shut out
the view of the street. From the window-boxes, filled with pink
geraniums and white stocks, a sweet, warm scent floated into the room,
and the rattle of the milkman's cart, the chink of his cans, fell upon
Lady Thomson's unheeding ears. So did voices in colloquy, but she did
not particularly note a female one of a thin, chirpy quality, addressing
the parlor-maid with a familiarity probably little appreciated by that
elegantly decorous damsel.

Milly had scarcely mastered her tears and Lady Thomson had just begun to
address her in quiet, firm tones, when Tims burst unannounced into the
room. Her hat was incredibly on one side, and her sallow face almost
crimson with heat, but bright with pleasure at finding herself once more
in Oxford.

"Hullo, old girl!" she cried, blind to the serious scene into which she
was precipitated. "How are you? Now don't kiss me"--throwing herself
into an attitude of violent defence against an embrace not yet
offered--"I'm too hot. Carried my bag myself all the way from the
station and saved the omnibus."

Lady Thomson fixed Tims with a look of more than usually cold
disapproval. Milly proffered a constrained greeting.

"Anything gone wrong?" asked Tims, after a minute, peering at Milly's
tear-stained eyes with her own short-sighted ones.

Milly answered with a forced self-restraint wh