o metapsychics by an experience connected with the death of the
famous Marquis of Hastings, of horse-racing repute. As a young girl I
lived close to the Mote Park at Maidstone, where his sister, the present
Lady Romney, was then living as Lady Constance Marsham. The Reverend
David Dale Stewart and his wife (he was Vicar of Maidstone, and I made
my home with them for some years after leaving school) were friends of
hers, and she sometimes came to see them in a friendly way in the
morning. On one of these occasions, when Lady Constance had just
returned from paying her brother a visit in a small shooting-box in the
eastern counties (I think), Mrs Stewart remarked that she was afraid the
change had not done Lady Constance much good, as she was looking far
from well. In those days Lady Romney was an exceptionally strong and
healthy young woman.

She said rather impatiently: "Well, the fact is I did a very stupid
thing the other day--I never did such a thing before--I fainted dead
away for the first time in my life."

Asked for the reason of this, she told us that she and her husband and
Lord and Lady Hastings were dining quietly one evening together, two
guests who had been expected not having arrived by the train specified.

Looking up Bradshaw, and finding no other train that could bring them
until quite late at night, the other four sat down to dinner. Soup and
fish had already been discussed, when a carriage was heard driving up to
the door, and they naturally concluded that their guests had discovered
some means of getting across country by another line. Lord Hastings
said:

"Tell Colonel and Mrs ---- that we began dinner, thinking they could not
arrive till much later, but that we are quite alone, and beg they will
join us as soon as possible."

The servant went to the door, prepared with the message given, flung it
open--but no carriage, no horses were there! Everybody had heard it
driving up, nevertheless.

Remembering the old family legend that a carriage and pair is heard
driving up the avenue before the head of the Hastings family dies, Lady
Romney fainted dead away, very much to her own surprise and
mortification; for she was, and doubtless is still, an uncommonly
sensible woman, "quite above all superstitions."

The episode struck me as curious at the time; but the impression passed,
and a few days later I went to pay a visit to friends of mine in
Buckinghamshire. Soon after my arrival I happened to men