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Page 13
"Do you think I shall let you go alone?" replied Miss Ludington, in a
voice which she steadied with difficulty. "Am I not as much concerned as
you are, Paul?"
"Where does this Mrs. Legrand live?" Paul asked Mrs. Slater.
"I really can't tell you that, Mr. De Riemer," she said. "It was sometime
ago that I attended the seance I spoke of, and all I recall is that it
was somewhere in the lower part of the city, on the east side of the
Broadway, if I am not mistaken."
"Perhaps you could ascertain her address from the friend of whom you
spoke, if it would not be too much trouble?" suggested Miss Ludington.
"I might do that," assented Mrs. Slater. "If she still goes to the
seances she would know it. But these mediums don't generally stay long in
one place, and it is quite possible that this Mrs. Legrand may not be in
the city now, But if I can get her address for you I will. And now, my
dear, as I am rather tired after our walk about the village, and probably
you are too, will I go to my room."
CHAPTER V.
Mrs. Slater went away the next morning. On the following day but one Miss
Ludington received a letter from her. She told her friend how glad she
was that she had not postponed her visit to her, for if she had set it
for a single day later she could not have made it at all. When she
returned home she found that her husband had received an offer of a
lucrative business position in Cincinnati, contingent on his immediate
removal there.
They had been in a whirl of packing ever since, and were to take that
night's train for Cincinnati, and whether they ever again came East to
live was very doubtful. In a postscript, written crosswise, she said:
"I have been in such a rush ever since I came home that I declare I had
clean forgotten till this moment about my promise to hunt up Mrs.
Legrand's address for you. Very likely you have also forgotten by this
time our talk about her, and if so it will not matter. But it vexes me to
fail in a promise, and, if possible, I will snatch a moment before we
leave to send a note to the friend I spoke of, and ask her to look the
woman up for you."
Instead of being disappointed, Miss Ludington was, on the whole, relieved
to get this letter, and inclined to hope that Mrs. Slater had failed to
find the time to write her friend. In that case this extraordinary
project of visiting a spiritualist medium would quietly fall through,
which was the best thing that could happen.
The fact is, after sleeping on it, she had seen clearly that such a
proceeding for a person of her position and antecedents would not only be
preposterous, but almost disreputable. She was astonished at herself to
think that her feelings could have been so wrought upon as to cause her
seriously to contemplate such a step. All her life she had held the
conviction, which she supposed to be shared by all persons of culture and
respectability, that spiritualism was a low and immoral superstition,
invariably implying fraud in its professors, and folly in its dupes:
something, in fact, quite below the notice of persons of intelligence or
good taste. As for the idea that this medium could show her the spirit of
her former self, or any other real spirit, it was simply imbecile to
entertain it for a moment.
If, however, Miss Ludington was relieved by Mrs. Slater's letter, Paul
was keenly disappointed. His prejudice against spiritualism was by no
means so deeply rooted as hers. In a general way he had always believed
mediums to be frauds, and their shows mere shams, but he had been ready
to allow with Mrs. Slater, that, mixed up in all this fraud, there might
be a very little truth.
His mind admitted a bare possibility that this Mrs. Legrand might be able
to show him the living face and form of his spirit-love. That possibility
once admitted had completely dominated his imagination, and it made
little difference whether it was one chance in a thousand or one in a
million. He was like the victim of the lottery mania, whose absorption in
contemplating the possibility of drawing the prize renders him quite
oblivious of the nine hundred and ninety-nine blank tickets.
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