“Well? What further?”
“I have nothing further. We know that antagonistic spheres exist.”
“True, true.” The man seemed relieved. “She has compared me to a serpent. But I know my own heart. Evil, be thou far from me! Come, angelic purity! As we draw nearer the invisible world we grow more ethereal, and the coarseness of depraved nature is dissipated in the fire of divine affinities. To the pure all things——”
The ringing of the door-bell again interrupted their pleasant communion, and in a few moments they were joined by two visitors,—females,—who met Dyer and Mrs. Weir in a manner that showed them to be on terms of close familiarity.
In the mean time the woman Fordham had retired with the child to one of the chambers above, her mind deeply disturbed by the unexpected incident of Adele’s opposition to the necromantic rites about being instituted,—so much disturbed that she was unable to prolong the spell she wished to throw over the consciousness of the little girl, who momently became more and more distressingly alive to the strangeness of her position.
“Oh, ma’am,” she said, in pleading tones, as the woman shut the door on entering the chamber, “won’t you take me home? Mother is crying for me. I heard her crying all last night. Oh, dear! I do want to go home to my mother!”
“Don’t fret yourself, child!” replied the woman, a little harshly. “You shall go home.”
“Take me home now, won’t you? I don’t like to be here. You promised me yesterday that I should go home before night. Oh, ma’am, do take me home now!”
The little clasped hands were raised pleadingly; the husky voice quivered; the pale face had in it a look of fear and distress that would have melted any heart not made hard, by selfish passions, as the nether millstone.
“You shall go home, dear,” said the woman, softening her voice and assuming an affectionate manner. “You shall see your mother to-night.”