him more firmly believe, more immediately look for. CHAPTER XIV For twenty years had Kingston Darnley awaited the call that was to come to him from Isabel. He had made no effort to anticipate, or even to summon, the voice that he desired. It seemed to him better, finer, more loyal, to do nothing, to sit patient until the course of life should bring him again into touch with what he had lost. At the appointed moment the voice would reach him, and he would know it. But till that time should come, his soul revolted against the notion of going out into the devious byways of foolishness to call up the departed with necromancy or any other prevailing fad. For all such illegitimate dealings with the third-rate dead he had the strongest contempt; it would be a profanity to attempt such proceedings in relation to Isabel; wherever she was, she must be above those hireling spirits who go out in attendance on séances and circles. So for many years he maintained his resolution to be patient, and stiffened himself in disdain of cheap and common spiritualistic methods. He had no idea that people of any sense or breeding could find solace in futilities so apparent. Gundred was his standard by whom he judged all other women’s pretensions; and Gundred had, not so much a contempt as a rooted religious horror, immitigable, medieval, of magic, palmistry, psychometry--all the many names beneath which we disguise our curious longing to pry behind the veil. The very notion of such things made Gundred so piously angry that a certain reluctant, stifled belief could be guessed to underlie and inspire her denunciations. Meanwhile, however, her attitude confirmed Kingston in his, and he remained quiescent, until at last he came across Mrs. Mercer-Laporte. Mrs. Mercer-Laporte was dining with Mrs. Mimburn when Kingston and Gundred met her, having accepted their aunt’s invitation as a solemn but displeasing bi-annual duty. Gundred made a point of never evading it; Gundred made a point of never enjoying it. Minne-Adélaïde, however, with the years, had grown less flagrant; but the change made her no less odious than before to Gundred, for her love of the illicit had now turned from matters of the flesh to the darker mysteries of occultism, clairvoyance, ghost-raising. She had taken to frequenting circles, to entertaining phantoms, to wearing weird, shapeless clothes, and collecting round herself a crowd of people famous in the ‘psychic’ world. And of these Mrs. Mercer-Laporte was the fine flower, the most exalted, the most spiritual, the choicest in ways and manners.