Father Rooney sighed. Too well he knew the self-sacrifice that was the dominant note in Clare’s nature.

“I cannot attend such a meeting, my child, as you know. But—I think I shall remain. I can pray for you and yours—it may well be that God sent me here for just that tonight—when you may need spiritual help more than ever in your lives before.”

He rose to greet the doctor and Ned, who had been walking in the grounds.

Ned had not entered the house as yet, fearing a repetition of the terrible scene that had taken place on the ill-fated day of the wedding. For although he had been feeling himself almost entirely free from his obsession since he had kept away from Margaret, how could he know when it might return in force?

“Coming in?” he asked the priest.

“I will sit out here,” observed Father Rooney. “Here I can watch the stars.”

Mrs. Campbell came up the bricked path at this juncture, and the whole party, with the exception of the good priest, went indoors.

Margaret was sitting on the divan in the front room. As Ned entered, she rose to her feet and put out both hands, while tears sprang to her eyes and relied piteously down her cheeks.

“My poor Ned, can you ever forgive me?” she murmured brokenly.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he whispered. “Oh, Margie, let us hope that tonight may open a way for us out of the tangle that seems to have been made of our happiness.”

Mrs. Campbell interposed, with her usual briskness.

“Better for you to keep your exchanges of affection for a later moment,” she said decidedly. “I sympathize with you, but every moment you are enraging yet more the entity who has proved powerful enough to have made a fine tangle of your affairs. Dr. Sloane, will you and Mr. Wentworth arrange the chairs so that we can sit in a circle?”

She busied herself with the preliminary arrangements for the seance, her every movement followed closely by the lame girl.

Clare sat apart from the rest, hands folded tightly in her lap, eyes dark with melancholy. When everything had been arranged to her satisfaction, the Scotchwoman indicated to each their places in the circle. She seated Ned at her left, Clare at her right; Dr. Sloane sat on the other side of the lame girl, and Margaret—half glad, half afraid—between lover and father.

The lights were turned out. Only a small night lamp, its tiny wick floating on the oil, stood upon the table at the other end of the room. In that flickering and barely discernible light, the faces of the sitters flashed into and out of sight at every draft of air that floated in at the garden window.