“And you don’t think it’s influenza?” put in Maggie swiftly, laying a cool hand on the old lady’s.
She maintained it was not. It was just a little chill, such as she had had this time last year: and it became necessary to rouse herself a little to enumerate the symptoms. By the time she had done, Maggie’s attention had begun to wander again: the old lady had never known her so unsympathetic before, and said so with gentle peevishness.
Maggie kissed her quickly.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” she said. “I was just thinking of something. Sleep well; and don’t get up in the morning.”
Then she left her to a spoonful of soup, a little volaille , a custard, some fruit, her spiritual book and contentment.
Downstairs she dined alone in the green-hung dining room; and she revolved for the twentieth time the thoughts that had been continuously with her since midday, moving before her like a kaleidoscope, incessantly changing their relations, their shapes, and their suggestions. These tended to form themselves into two main alternative classes. Either Mr. Cathcart was a harmless fanatic, or he was unusually sharp. But these again had almost endless subdivisions, for at present she had no idea of what was really in his mind—as to what his hints meant. Either this curious old gentleman with shrewd, humorous eyes was entirely wrong, and Laurie was just suffering from a nervous strain, not severe enough to hinder him from reading law in Mr. Morton’s chambers; and this was all the substratum of Mr. Cathcart’s mysteries: or else Mr. Cathcart was right, and Laurie was in the presence of some danger called insanity which Mr. Cathcart interpreted in some strange fashion she could not understand. And beneath all this again moved the further questions as to what Spiritualism really was—what it professed to be, or mere superstitious nonsense, or something else.