"No--not unwell--but I am absolutely miserable, and cannot imagine why."

"Then you have not had bad news?" was the next remark. "I feared you
must have had, seeing you so silent and not able to eat anything."

In answer to this I said that I had not even the excuse of hearing of
other people's misfortunes, for a young lady had been calling upon me
that afternoon, who was about to make what the world calls a very
successful marriage. I did not, however, mention her name, as Mrs Peters
knew none of my friends.

Dinner over, I felt still so unaccountably wretched that I determined to
give up the evening party, and write my excuses. Mrs Peters did her best
to combat this decision, fearing that her kind benefactress might be
disappointed, and also urging that the evening's enjoyment would cheer
me up. But finding me inexorable, she then said: "Well, if you have
quite determined not to go, shall I come into your sitting-room and see
if we can get any explanation of your curious feeling of depression?"

I closed with this suggestion, knowing Mrs Peters to be a really
remarkable sensitive.

So we sat in the dark for a few minutes; and then I heard a soft
_frou-frou_ on Mrs Peters' silk gown, and knew she was tracing out words
with her hand in a fashion of her own.

"It is a spirit that young lady brought with her," she announced at
length. "The spirit has remained here with _you_, and is worried about
this marriage you spoke of. She wants you to try and break it off. She
seems to have been nearly related to the lady, or perhaps a godmother;
anyway, she takes great interest in her."

"Will she give a name?" I asked.

"ELIZA is all I get," Mrs Peters replied.

It then occurred to me that my young friend's name _was_ Eliza, and
that she had been so named after a great-aunt, to the best of my
recollection; but as she was invariably called Elsa, by friends and
relations alike, it was only by chance that I remembered hearing her
teased about her far less romantic baptismal name.

I asked if no surname could be given, thinking at the moment that it
would be Waverly--the family name; but my thought was evidently not
transferred to Mrs Peters, who said she could not get the name
accurately, but that it was certainly _not_ Waverly. I found later that
the Great-Aunt Eliza had a name entirely different from that of her
descendants.

Nothing further happened on this occasion, except that I sent a message
to "Great-Aunt Eliza"