she could hardly have
put it into words. Nine-tenths of it she believed to be fraud--a
matter of wigs and Indian muslin and cross-lights--and the other
tenth, by the most generous estimate, an affair of the dingiest and
foulest of all the backstairs of life. The prophetic outpourings of
Mrs. Stapleton had not altered her opinion.

"Oh! if you feel like that--" went on Laurie.

She turned on him.

"Laurie," she said, "I think it perfectly detestable. I acknowledge I
don't know much about it; but what little I do know is enough, thank
you."

Laurie smiled in a faintly patronizing way.

"Well," he said indulgently, "if you think that, it's not much use
discussing it."

"Indeed it's not," said Maggie, with her nose in the air.

There was not much more to be said; and the sounds of stamping and
whoaing in the stable-yard presently sent the girl indoors in a hurry.

Mrs. Baxter was still mildly querulous during the drive. It appeared
to her, Maggie perceived, a kind of veiled insult that things should
be talked about in her house which did not seem to fit in with her own
scheme of the universe. Mrs. Baxter knew perfectly well that every
soul when it left this world went either to what she called Paradise,
or in extremely exceptional cases, to a place she did not name; and
that these places, each in its own way, entirely absorbed the
attention of its inhabitants. Further, it was established in her view
that all the members of the spiritual world, apart from the unhappy
ones, were a kind of Anglicans, with their minds no doubt enlarged
considerably, but on the original lines.

Tales like this of Cardinal Newman therefore were extremely tiresome
and upsetting.

And Maggie had her theology also; to her also it appeared quite
impossible that Cardinal Newman should frequent the drawing-room of
Mr. Vincent in order to exchange impressions with Mrs. Stapleton; but
she was more elementary in her answer. For her the thing was simply
untrue; and that was the end of it. She found it difficult therefore
to follow her companion's train of thought.

"What was it she said?" demanded Mrs. Baxter presently. "I didn't
understand her ideas about materialism."

"I think she called it materialization," explained Maggie patiently.
"She said that when things were very favorable, and the medium a very
good one, the soul that wanted to communicate could make a kind of
body for itself out of what she called the astral matter of the medi