“I shall know if any further evil happens to her—then I shall kill Ralph Carriston.”
“But you tell me you have no clew whatever to trace her by. Do talk plainly. Tell me all or nothing.”
Carriston smiled very faintly. “No clew that you, at any rate, will believe in,” he said. “But I know this much, she is a prisoner somewhere. She is unhappy, but not, as yet, ill-treated. Heavens! do you think if I did not know this I should keep my senses for an hour?”
“How can you possibly know it?”
“By that gift—that extra sense or whatever it is—which you deride. I knew it would come to me some day, but I little thought how I should welcome it. I know that in some way I shall find her by it. I tell you I have already seen her three times. I may see her again at any moment when the strange fit comes over me.”
All this fantastic nonsense was spoken so simply and with such an air of conviction that once more my suspicions as to the state of his mind were aroused. In spite of the brave answers which I had given Mr. Ralph Carriston, I felt that common-sense was undeniably on his side.
“Tell me what you mean by your strange fit,” I said, resolved to find out the nature of Carriston’s fancies or hallucinations. “Is it a kind of trance you fall into?”
He seemed loath to give any information on the subject, but I pressed him for an answer.
“Yes,” he said at last. “It must be a kind of trance. An indescribable feeling comes over me. I know that my eyes are fixed on some object—presently that object vanishes, and I see Madeline.”
“How do you see her?”