The colour flared into her face. “Spiritualism!” Her lips compressed, and seemed even thinner. Her expression vividly suggested her father. “But that is not a fad! Only the thoughtless and the ignorant call it a fad.”
Frothingham’s face became blank. “This is a time to sit tight,” he said to himself. “She’s looking at me as if I were a witch and she were about to burn—no, hang—me.”
“It would be a dreary world, it seems to me,” she went on, her voice low, and a queer light in her softening eyes, “if it were not for the friendship and guidance of those in the world beyond.”
“Really!” His tone might have meant almost anything except the wonder and amusement it concealed.
Her father came to take her home. “We should be glad to see you, Lord Frothingham, at our house,” he said graciously. “I hope you will let Mrs. Staunton bring you.”
“Thank you—I’ll ask her to.”
As he watched Cecilia leave he said to himself, “She’s mad as a hatter—or is it just Boston?”