Clare made tea, and hovered near him as much as possible. Not once did Mr. Armstrong allude to his meeting with the secretary; but he questioned Mrs. Vandeleur closely as to the properties of the crystal which he had seen fall from Laline's hands when he entered the room.
"The story is that only certain special temperaments can discover anything in it, isn't it?" he asked, while he held the ball in his hands and examined it carefully.
"It is a gift," said Mrs. Vandeleur—"a gift given to few. Happily I have discovered a young girl whose mind is so finely tempered that in time she may go very far, very far indeed, in the study of the occult."
"Indeed! May I ask how you came across her?"
"Outsiders would tell you by accident; but my creed does not admit of accident. I put certain words in a public print, and directed them to one particular type of mind. I wanted that especial spirit; I appealed to that, and it came to me as surely as a needle comes to a magnet. That was all."
"But you had heaps and heaps of unsuitable replies as well, aunt," put in Clare, sweetly.
It was by such remarks as this that she daily alienated her aunt's liking more completely; but for reasons of her own Clare did not wish the conversation to turn upon Laline.
"They do not count," said Mrs. Vandeleur, loftily, though with a shade of annoyance on her brow. "The world will always be composed of the two or three who understand and the millions who do not. Suffice it that I found the temperament I required—a creature of perfect purity and truth, unsullied by thoughts of love or money."
"'Her soul was pure and true;
The good stars met in her horoscope,
Made her of spirit, fire, and dew,'"
quoted Wallace Armstrong, looking steadily in the fire, as though he saw some picture there—a picture, it might be, of a tall and slender maiden, in straight white draperies, with her sweet face lowered and the light making an aureole of her hair.