While the marvellous sight fell, or appeared to fall, upon my eyes, my blood, like Hamlet's, became so masterful that my reason seemed nothing but a blind and timorous guide. No sooner had the sweet vision fled than my reason, like Hamlet's, rose and rejected it. It was not until I became acquainted with the _rationale_ of sympathetic manifestations--it was not till I learnt, by means of that extraordinary book of your father's, which seems to have done its part in turning friend Wilderspin's head, what is the supposed method by which the spiritual world acts upon the material world--acts by the aid of those same natural bonds which keep the stars in their paths--that my blood and my reason became reconciled, and a new light came to me. And I knew that this would be your case. Yes, my dear Aylwin, I knew that when the issues of Life are greatly beyond the common, and when our hearts are torn as yours has been torn, and when our souls are on fire with a flame such as that which I saw was consuming you, the awful possibilities of this universe--of which we, civilised men or savage, know nothing--will come before us, and tease our hearts with strange wild hopes, 'though all the "proofs" of all the logicians should hold them up to scorn.' I am, my dear Aylwin, Your sincere Friend, T. D'ARCY. XVII THE TWO DUKKERIPENS Was the mystery at an end? Was there one point in this story of stories which this letter of D'Arcy's had not cleared up? Yes, indeed there was one. What motive--or rather, what mixture of motives--had impelled Sinfi to play her part in restoring Winifred to me? Her affection for me was, I knew, as strong as my own affection for her. But this I attributed largely to the mysterious movements of the blood of Fenella Stanley which we both shared. In many matters there was a kinship of taste between us, such as did not exist between me and Winnie, who was far from being scornful of conventions, and to whom the little Draconian laws of British 'Society' were not objects of mere amusement, as they were to me and Sinfi. All this I attributed to that 'prepotency of transmission in descent' which I knew to be one of the Romany characteristics. All this I attributed, I say, to the far-reaching influence of Fenella Stanley.