“I do not know,” said Mr. Dempster, shaking his head.  “Till I saw these wonderful manifestations, I had no clear or satisfactory feeling of it, and now I have.  The evidence is first hand from the departed spirits themselves, and their revelations are consistent with our highest ideas of the goodness of God, and of the eternal nature of love.”

“‘That which is seen is not faith,’ St. Paul says, and the very minuteness of your information would lead me to doubt its genuineness,” said Francis.  “I do not think it was intended that we should have such assurance; but that we should have a large faith in a God who will do well for us hereafter as he has done well for us here.  But though I may not feel the need of such assurance, I do not deny that others may.  There is much that is very remarkable about these spiritual manifestations;—­whether it is mesmerism, or delusion, or positive fraud, I think it is a remarkable instance of the questioning spirit of the day, unsatisfied with old creeds and desirous of reconstructing some new belief.”

“I should like you to come to a seance” said Mr. Dempster, glad to find some one who was disposed to inquire on the subject.  He had only recently become a convert, and was very anxious to induce others to think with him.  “I am quite sure that you will see something that will impress you with the reality of the manifestations.”

“I should like to go too,” said Mrs. Phillips.

“I certainly should not,” said Harriett.  “I think these things are quite wicked,”

“These questions have never given me any trouble,” said Mr. Phillips, “and to my mind, Mr. Dempster, the revelations, such as I have heard at least, are very puerile and contemptible; but that there must be a singular excitement attending even an imaginary conversation with the dead I can easily believe, and I do not care for exposing myself to it.”

“Nor I,” said Brandon; “as Miss Alice says, I have got my own idea of heaven, and I am satisfied with it.  I think we are not intended to know all the particulars.”

Why did Brandon, in giving no original opinion of his own (poor fellow, he was incapable of that), give Elsie’s argument in preference to hers?  Miss Phillips felt still more inclined to be agreeable to Mr. Hogarth from this slight to herself, and began to think that an inquiring spirit, in a man at least, was more admirable than Brandon’s lazy satisfaction with things as they are at present.

Mr. Dempster’s eagerness after a possible convert was only to be satisfied by Francis making an appointment with him to attend a seance on the following evening in his own house.  And then the conversation changed to politics—­English, foreign, and colonial—­in which Francis and his cousins were much interested.