She sat rigid as a church-spire for a few moments, as if the sight of so much money, even if only in purple letters upon a burnished sky, had transfixed her, and then, after a little hysterical struggling, became as limp as a camp-meeting tent after a thunder-storm; and after a few passes of her long, white and deft fingers over her eyes in a scared way, asked, "Oh, gentlemen, where—where am I?"
"On the boundaries of the spirit-land," gravely replied Bristol, pushing the bottle of liquor to the side of the table.
The woman was certainly exhausted, for she had worked herself into such a state mentally—precisely the same as in all similar demonstrations, whether visions are claimed to be seen, or not—that she was completely enervated physically, and said in a really grateful tone, "Thank you, Mr. Bristol," and, pouring out a large portion of liquor, tossed it off at one gulp, like a well-practised bar-room toper.
"Yes, yes," she continued languidly, "I have a certain promise of eventually being victorious. When the good spirits are with one, there's no cause for fear."
"Not the slightest," affirmed Fox sympathetically.
"But it seems," replied Mrs. Winslow in a discouraged, desolate tone, "as though everybody's hand is raised against me—as though the dreary days pass so slowly—and that I haven't a true friend in the world!"
"My dear Mrs. Winslow," interrupted Bristol in a calm, fatherly, even affectionate tone, "that melancholy's all very fine; but we are your friends, and we will stand by you through thick and thin to the end of the suit. A few fast friends, you know, are better than a thousand sunny-weather friends."
"Oh, yes; oh, yes," returned the woman in a tone of voice that said, "I can't argue this, but I somehow know you are both betraying me," and then, closing her eyes, and clasping her hands tightly together, sang in a weird contralto voice, cracked and unsteady from her excitement and exhaustion, some stanza of an evidently religious nature, the burden of which was:
"I am weary, weary waiting
While the shadows deeper fall;
I am weary, weary waiting
For some holy voice's call!"
Undoubtedly the song, though desecrated by the singer, the place, and the occasion, was a wailing plaint from the depths of the woman's soul, for moments of utter desolation and absolute remorse come to even such as she.