“Why, Moione,” said Manton quickly, taking her hand, as he shook Elna off, “what is the matter? what is all this?”
“She seems to be in a fit of some sort. We missed her, and after looking all over the house, found her lying on the bed in your room, without motion or breath. We have not been able to wake her since, and did not know what to do until you came.”
“Oh, come! do come!” screamed the horrified Elna. “Save my poor mother! save her! save her! You must save her! I shall die!”
Manton, who immediately felt his conscience sting him, assured the girls that it was merely a mesmeric sleep, from which he would relieve her in a few minutes. He then rushed up-stairs, accompanied by them, and found her, indeed, in precisely the same attitude and apparent condition in which he had left her. After a few of the usual reverse passes for removing the magnetic influence, she slowly opened her eyes, while the blood returned to her face. Starting up and staring about with a bewildered look, she uttered merely an exclamation of surprise, and then, after rubbing her eyes, quickly asked the poor child, Elna, who had thrown herself sobbing wildly on her breast—
“Why, you foolish girl, what’s the matter now?”
“Mother, dear mother, we thought you were dead!”
And now came an explanation, so far as the thoroughly repentant Manton was disposed to make it, of the scene we have just described; the amount of which was, that she had come into his room in a clairvoyant state, and, being called out suddenly, he had left it for an hour or two, forgetting to make any explanation to the family, and without having relieved her, as he should have done, before going, by using the necessary reverse passes.
The incredulity of Manton had never before received so severe a shock; and it was a long time before his conscience would forgive him, for what now seemed his brutal suspicion. Alas, poor Manton! had he only possessed, for a little while after he left that room, the invisible cap of the “Devil on two sticks,” he would have been most essentially enlightened as to something of the art and mystery of Clairvoyance.
As soon as the front-door had slammed behind him, he would have seen that woman spring to her feet, and, with lips and whole frame quivering with rage, glide from the room, muttering to herself; and when she entered her own room, which could be reached through an empty bath-room, he would have heard several low, peculiar raps upon the partition-wall which separated her own from the room of her daughter. These raps were repeated, at intervals, until a single tap at her door responded, and in another moment the girl Elna glided in on tiptoe. The conference between them was carried on in a low, rapid, business-like tone, while every half-minute the girl thrust her head from the window, to watch as for some one coming.
After a few moments thus spent, the child left the room, with an intelligent nod, in answer to the repeated injunction not to leave the window of her own room until she saw him coming, far up the street—and then—!