She asked, "Is so and so present?" (I do not recall the name.) "Yes," was answered; and she asked, "What shall I do with these dear children?" The reply came, "You have done well by them so far." They were pretty and sweet-mannered children, evidently under good training. She said they were not her own, and that they were being brought up at a superior seminary in Albany, and that on coming of age they would inherit a good property. She turned to the children and said, "Your father and mother are here." "Oh! aunty (clinging to her), what do they say?" "They say you must continue at school." (The children loved her, and had wanted to come home to her.) The Spirits then rapped out, "We watch over you hourly. When you pray we always listen to your prayers." There was weeping and sobbing between the children and their "Aunty." Some questions then passed respecting their property and minor matters. I afterward learned from my good friend, Dr. Wilson, who knew all about them, that the father, after the death of the mother, had fallen into relations with my visitor (who, to me, was as yet only "the rich lady"), and then, when he found his end approaching (from consumption), had given her his directions about his children, knowing her heart to be good, and reliable for conformity to them. While this sitting was going on an interruption occurred, which eventually led up to such consequences that I must introduce it. A French woman, an importer of laces and a pedler of them, was announced by Susie, who knew that I had some business with her about the purchase of some of her goods, and I had to give her a few minutes. She was a keen and artful woman, and having noticed the style of the customary carriages at my door, she asked me if I could not introduce her to some of my friends, to whom she might sell some of her wares. I yielded to her request (such women are sometimes irresistible), and the result was that, on my showing my own lace to my elegant visitors, they examined the store in her box, and two of them engaged sets of lace from her. Through her acquaintance thus formed with "the rich lady," at whose house she had to deliver her laces, she learned who she was, and it was easy in New York then for such a woman to learn all about her. It will be seen below that the consequences were serious for my poor visitor, "the rich lady." This French lace dealer had heard about the "manifestations" at my house, and even knew something about such things in France, and in her visits to that house, to me unknown, as was equally the name of its mistress, she took on herself the character of a clairvoyant medium, and played upon them plenty of her cunning tricks, such as pretended entrancement, etc., for which perhaps a door may have been opened through the genuine experience they had had with me.