MRS. WINSLOW was quite crushed by her failure to evade service of the notice to take evidence in just those sections of the country where she had been too well known for her present good, and for a few days seemed to be in that peculiar mental condition where one may be easily led, or driven, into committing a desperate act for mere relief from a too great conflict of emotions.
She flitted about the city in a state of great unrest for a little time, not being able to dispossess her mind of the fear or feeling of being pursued; stealing into the houses of those of like belief, and with an air of great secrecy insisting that they should give her refuge and protection from Lyon's minions, who, she claimed—and perhaps had come to believe—would yet in some way do her bodily harm; mysteriously gliding about the Arcade and in the vicinity of his house, as if expecting by some occult power to be able to divine what might be the rich man's plans concerning her; and like the very evil thing that she was, hiding in uncanny places, scared at her own voice or footsteps, until the spell had left her.
About this time New York city dailies, and many of the newspapers of large circulation throughout the interior of the State, were publishing the following advertisement:
"Immense Success!—Miss Evalena Gray, the celebrated Spiritual Physical Medium, lately from the Queen's Drawing-room, Hanover Square, London, also Crystal Palace, Sydenham, and assisted by Mlle. Willie Leveraux, from Paris, will give one of her marvellous seances this evening at her elegant parlors, No. 19 West Twenty-first street, opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at 7:30 P.M."
New York city knew Miss Evalena Gray as a new aspirant to the honors and emoluments derived from her ability to do mysterious things very gracefully. She was as beautiful a woman as had ever come into New York on this kind of business, and those who considered her a true medium were in ecstasies over the magnificent contortions and superb evolutions which her "great spiritual power" enabled her to execute with bewildering rapidity, while disbelievers in the source of these phenomena originating in celestial spheres could not resist her fascinating powers; and the consequence was that her adroitness and beauty had created a great sensation, so much so in fact that respectable people had begun arguing about her, which answered just the purpose sought.
New York also knew her as a woman so full of soul—that latter-day substitute for brains and personal purity—as to have readily confused and silenced great throngs in Europe wherever she had appeared; and she had invariably challenged investigation, and that, too, with as much audacity as success, which had in every instance been wonderfully marked and complete.
Mrs. Winslow knew her as a little sprite she had met three years before at Chardon, Ohio, a pleasant little village of about 3,000 inhabitants, twelve miles south of Painesville, where Mrs. Winslow had been giving seances. Miss Gray was then just starting in her Spiritualistic career, and Mrs. Winslow, seeing her aptitude and general fascinating qualities, endeavored to persuade her to accompany her.
Miss Gray evidently believed in her own powers, at least had considered the proposition unfavorably; but the two had become warm friends, and Mrs. Winslow had cheerfully imparted to the demure novitiate all her supply of manifestations, which she had rapidly acquired, and the two had parted with the promise to meet again at the very first opportunity, each drifting away to fulfil her traitorous course against society and blasphemous satire upon respectability.
So, Mrs. Winslow, being in that condition of mind wherein its possessor must have some person's confidence, saw this advertisement, and feeling sure that Miss Evalena Gray had been in clover, concluded that she could go to her for rest and consolation; accordingly, she threw off the clouds which had seemed to settle upon her, gathered her baggage together from various secret places where it had been deposited, took rooms at the National Hotel for a few days in quite a rational manner, and after a week of perfect rest and physical care, which told wonderfully in her favor, in connection with her great recuperative powers, and having provided a wardrobe of no mean character, left Rochester for New York as handsome and attractive a woman as one would meet in a day's journey.
I was apprised of her departure by telegraph, and had a spry little operative at the Hudson River depot at Thirty-first street, ready to play the lackey to her. She at once proceeded in a carriage to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where she secured fine apartments overlooking the entrance to Miss Evalena Gray's elegant parlors at No. 19 West Twenty-first street; and although I had no previous information as to what called Mrs. Winslow to New York, I was for several reasons satisfied that it was for the purpose of communicating with Miss Gray, and at once took measures for securing the substance of the interview.