She had come out not long before from All Saints’; she had listened to an excellent though unexciting sermon and some extremely beautiful singing; and even now, saturated with that atmosphere and with the soothing physical air in which she walked, her anxieties seemed less acute.  There were enough of her acquaintances, too, in groups here and there—­she had to bow and smile sufficiently often—­to prevent these anxieties from reasserting themselves too forcibly.  And it may be supposed that not a creature who observed her, in her exceedingly graceful hat and mantle, with her fair head a little on one side, and her gold-rimmed pince-nez delicately gleaming in the sunlight, had the very faintest suspicion that she had any anxieties at all.

Yet she felt strangely unwilling even to go home.

The men were to set about clearing the drawing-room while she was at church; and somehow the thought that it would be done when she got home, that the temple would, so to speak, be cleared for sacrifice, was a distasteful one.

She did not quite know when the change had begun; in fact, she was scarcely yet aware that there was a change at all.  Upon one point only her attention fixed itself, and that was the increasing desire she felt that Laurie Baxter should go no further in his researches under her auspices.

Up to within a few weeks ago she had been all ardor.  It had seemed to her, as has been said, that the apparent results of spiritualism were all to the good, that they were in no point contrary to the religion she happened to believe—­in fact, that they made real, as does an actual tree in the foreground of a panorama, the rather misty sky and hills of Christianity.  She had even called them very “teaching.”

It was about eighteen months since she had first taken this up under the onslaught of Mrs. Stapleton’s enthusiasm; but things had not been as satisfactory as she wished, until Mr. Vincent had appeared.  Then indeed matters had moved forward; she had seen extraordinary things, and the effect of them had been doubled by the medium’s obvious honesty and his strong personality.  He was to her as a resolute priest to a timid penitent; he had led her forward, supported by his own conviction and his extremely steady will, until she had begun to feel at home in this amazing new world, and eager to make proselytes.

Then Laurie had appeared, and almost immediately a dread had seized her that she could neither explain nor understand.  She had attempted a little tentative conversation on the point with dearest Maud, but dearest Maud had appeared so entirely incapable of understanding her scruples that she had said no more.  But her inexplicable anxiety had already reached such a point that she had determined to say a word to Laurie on the subject.  This had been done, without avail; and now a new step forward was to be made.

* * * * *

As to of what this step consisted she was perfectly aware.