"Yes," continued Miss Fleming, her eyes upon him, "Jane is pretty. Your zeal is excusable." The road was muddy at this point, and she passed on in front of them, picking her steps.
"Damn it!" said the judge, "they're all alike! No woman can be just to a pretty face. I thought this girl had sense enough to lift her above such petty jealousy."
"She is not jealous," said Waring, looking critically at her back as he arranged his thin tow-colored moustache. "She is an Arab among her own sex. It's a common type in this part of the country. She fraternizes with men, horses and Nature, and sneers at other women as she would at artificial flowers and perfumery. I don't know Miss Fleming, but I know her class very well."
The Virginian, whose blood revolted at this censure of a lady, rushed to the rescue: "She's honest, at any rate. No mean feminine tricks about her. She's offensively truthful. And, after all, she's right: Swendon is a good-for-nothing, a well-born tramp; and Jane is hardly a subject for pity. She's a remarkably healthy girl; a little dull, but with more staying power in her than belongs to a dozen of those morbid, strong-minded women of yours in the North. I suppose I do let my sympathy run away with me."
They joined Cornelia and entered the broken gate. The door of the house swung open at a touch. Within were bare halls and rooms covered with dust, the floors of which creaked drearily under their tread. Following the sound of stifled voices, they went up to a large upper chamber. The walls of this room were stained almost black; a thick carpet deadened the floor; the solid wooden shutters were barred and heavily curtained. They made their way to the farther end of the room, a little apart from a group of dark figures who talked together in whispers. Miss Fleming noticed a nervous trepidation in the manner of both men, and instantly became grave, as though she too were more deeply moved than she cared to show.
The whispers ceased, and the silence was growing oppressive when steps were heard upon the stairs.
"Hoh!" puffed the judge. "Here is Laidley at last."
CHAPTER II.
It was not Laidley who entered, but Mrs. Combe, then the most-famous clairvoyant in the United States. According to statements of men both shrewd and honest she had lately succeeded in bringing the dead back to them in actual bodily presence. The voice was heard, then the spirit slowly grew into matter beside them. They could feel and see its warm flesh, its hair and clothing, and even while they held it it melted again into the impalpable air, and was gone. The account was attested by persons of such integrity and prominence as to command attention from scientific men. They knew, of course, that it was a trick, but the trick must be so well managed as to be worth the trouble of exposure. Hence, Mrs. Combe upon her entrance was received with silent, keen attention.
She was a tall pillar-like woman, with some heavy drapery of black velvet or cloth about her: there were massive coils of coarse black hair, dead narrow eyes of the same color, a closely-shut jaw: no point of light in the figure, but a rope of unburnished gold about her neck. She stood with her hands dropped at her sides, immovable, while her husband, a greasy little manikin with a Jewish face, turned on the light and waved the attention of the audience to her: "This is Miriam Combe, the first person since the Witch of Endor who has succeeded in materializing the shpirits of the dead. Our meeting here to-day is under peculiar shircumstances. A zhentleman unknown to me and Mrs. Combe, but who, I am told, is near death, desires to recall the shpirit of a dead friend. Zhentlemans will reconize the fact that the thing we propose to do depends upon the states of minds and matters about us. If these elements are disturbed by unbelief or by too much light or noise when the soul shtruggling to return wants silence and darkness, why—it cannot make for itself a body—dat's all."