the pleasure of giving me my first impressions of it,"
said Montague, with a laugh.

"Well," said she, "they had table-tipping--and it was the most uncanny
thing to see the table go jumping about the room! And then there were
raps--and one can't imagine how strange it was to see people who really
believed they were getting messages from ghosts. It positively made my
flesh creep. And then this woman--Madame Somebody-or-other--went into a
trance--ugh! Afterward I talked with one of the men, and he told me
about how his father had appeared to him in the night and told him he
had just been drowned at sea. Have you ever heard of such a thing?"

"We have such a tradition in our family," said he.

"Every family seems to have," said Mrs. Winnie. "But, dear me, it made
me so uncomfortable--I lay awake all night expecting to see my own
father. He had the asthma, you know; and I kept fancying I heard him
breathing."

They had risen and were strolling into the conservatory; and she
glanced at the man in armour. "I got to fancying that his ghost might
come to see me," she said. "I don't think I shall attend any more
seances. My husband was told that I promised them some money, and he
was furious--he's afraid it'll get into the papers." And Montague shook
with inward laughter, picturing what a time the aristocratic and
stately old banker must have, trying to keep his wife out of the papers!

Mrs. Winnie turned on the lights in the fountain, and sat by the edge,
gazing at her fish. Montague was half expecting her to inquire whether
he thought that they had ghosts; but she spared him this, going off on
another line.

"I asked Dr. Parry about it," she said. "Have you met him?"

Dr. Parry was the rector of St. Cecilia's, the fashionable Fifth Avenue
church which most of Montague's acquaintances attended. "I haven't been
in the city over Sunday yet," he answered. "But Alice has met him."

"You must go with me some time," said she. "But about the ghosts--"

"What did he say?"

"He seemed to be shy of them," laughed Mrs. Winnie. "He said it had a
tendency to lead one into dangerous fields. But oh! I forgot--I asked
my swami also, and it didn't startle him. They are used to ghosts; they
believe that souls keep coming back to earth, you know. I think if it
was his ghost, I wouldn't mind seeing it--for he has such beautiful
eyes. He gave me a book of Hindu legends--and there was such a sweet
story about a young princess who loved i