The hint now made sure of, she heightened it to make him forget that he himself had given the clue. "I get a feeling of worry, and what you might call a misunderstanding. You didn’t quite get along with each other and it made a good deal of trouble for you. You was what I might call put out, you understand? She’s in the spirit now, ain’t she?" "Yes; she died a good many years ago." Madam Spoll returned to her first fish and began to reel in. "Your wife’s passed out, too, and Luella tells me she’s here now. She says Grace was worried, too. But she’s happy now and wants you to be. You was a young man then, and yet you have never got over it. You wasn’t rightly understood, was you?" Mr. Payson shook his head again. He was listening attentively. "But it wan’t your fault, do you understand? It was something that couldn’t be helped. And sometimes when you think of this other lady you say to yourself, ’If she only knew! If she only knew!’" "Yes, I wish she did. It really wasn’t my fault." Madam Spoll cast more bait into the pool. "Now, would her given name be Mary, or something like that?" "No—it was an uncommon name." The medium persisted stubbornly. "That’s queer. I get the name of Mary very plain." "My mother’s name was Mary; perhaps you mean her?" "It might be your mother, and yet it seems like it was a younger woman. Now, this lady I spoke of had dark hair, didn’t she? or you might call it medium—sort of half-way between light and dark." "No; she had white hair." Another fish was on the hook. Madam Spoll had got what she wanted. This admission of Mr. Payson’s, coupled with the fact Granthope had discovered, that Clytie had visited the crazy woman, identified the old man’s first love, she thought, effectually. She kept this for subsequent use, however. It would not do, as Vixley had said, to go too fast. "Then this Mary must be some one else," she said. "You may not recognize her now, but you probably will. I can’t do your thinking for you, you know. It may possibly be that you’ll meet her some day; at any rate, my guides tell me you must be careful and don’t sign no papers for Mary. I don’t know whether she’s in the spirit or not. You may understand it and you may not. All I can do is to give you what I get." Madam Spoll now became absorbed in a sort of reverie. When at last she emerged it was with this: "I see your mother and your wife now, and I get the words, ’It’s a pity Oliver couldn’t marry her.’ I don’t know what they mean at all." "I understand. I was intending to marry another woman, the one you spoke of just now, but something prevented." "That must be it. My guide tells me that something dreadful happened, and it was what you might call hushed up and you separated from her." "It was not my fault." "I get a little child, too"—Mr. Payson grew still more absorbed. The medium noticed his instant reaction in eyes, mouth and hands. On the strength of that evidence, she took the risk of saying: