Dinner over, I felt still so unaccountably wretched that I determined to give up the evening party, and write my excuses. Mrs Peters did her best to combat this decision, fearing that her kind benefactress might be disappointed, and also urging that the evening's enjoyment would cheer me up. But finding me inexorable, she then said: "Well, if you have quite determined not to go, shall I come into your sitting-room and see if we can get any explanation of your curious feeling of depression?"
I closed with this suggestion, knowing Mrs Peters to be a really remarkable sensitive.
So we sat in the dark for a few minutes; and then I heard a soft frou-frou on Mrs Peters' silk gown, and knew she was tracing out words with her hand in a fashion of her own.
"It is a spirit that young lady brought with her," she announced at length. "The spirit has remained here with you, and is worried about this marriage you spoke of. She wants you to try and break it off. She seems to have been nearly related to the lady, or perhaps a godmother; anyway, she takes great interest in her."
"Will she give a name?" I asked.
"Eliza is all I get," Mrs Peters replied.
It then occurred to me that my young friend's name was Eliza, and that she had been so named after a great-aunt, to the best of my recollection; but as she was invariably called Elsa, by friends and relations alike, it was only by chance that I remembered hearing her teased about her far less romantic baptismal name.
I asked if no surname could be given, thinking at the moment that it would be Waverly—the family name; but my thought was evidently not transferred to Mrs Peters, who said she could not get the name accurately, but that it was certainly not Waverly. I found later that the Great-Aunt Eliza had a name entirely different from that of her descendants.
Nothing further happened on this occasion, except that I sent a message to "Great-Aunt Eliza" to say that nothing would induce me to take the responsibility of trying to break off any marriage, either by the advice of people in this sphere or in any other sphere. In this case I should have had neither the authority nor the influence to make any such unwise attempt.
Sunday came round in due course, and brought the bride's younger sister, then a girl of twenty-four or twenty-five. We discussed the usual midday Sunday dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Mrs Peters sitting at the head of the table, I on her right hand, and Carrie Waverly next to me.