Mrs. Lambert assented timidly, with a quick glance towards Simeon, who was garrulously declaiming to Britt concerning the wonders of another painting by the Swedish cook. Pratt, seeing the women rise, approached. "Where are you going?" he asked, with a note of impatience in his voice. "To my room," answered Viola, firmly, and led the way up-stairs in silence; but when they were beyond earshot in the hall above she bitterly exclaimed: "He spies on everything I do. He will hardly let me out of his sight. I am beginning to hate him, he has so little sense of decency." "Viola!" warned the mother. "I don't care," retorted the girl, defiantly. "Why do we endure him--we are not dependent on him. He treats us precisely as if he owned us, and I'm tired of it. I wish papa would come on and take us home." "He may be a bore, but he houses you like royalty," Kate remarked, as she glanced about the suite which Viola and her mother occupied. It formed the entire eastern end of the third floor of the house, and the decorations were Empire throughout, with stately canopied beds and a most luxurious bath-room. "Oh yes, it's beautiful; but I would rather be this minute in our little log-cabin in the West," answered the girl, with wistful sadness. "Oh, these warm days make me homesick. When I was there I hated it, now I long to get back. I seem five years older--this winter has been terribly long to me." "Well, now, lock the door," exclaimed Kate, excitedly, "and tell me all about yourself. Start at the very beginning. Dr. Britt has told me something, but I want to know everything. When did you first know you had this power? That's the first question." Mrs. Lambert began in the tone of one retelling an old story. "Up till the day my little son Walter died, Viola was just like any other girl of her age--healthy and pretty--a very pretty child." "I can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl. "My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think you ought to tell Mr. McLane'--that was our minister--'what you are doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too--one or the other ought to be given up.' He said--I remember his exact words: 'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say he is going to manifest himself soon--here in our own home.' I remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to manifest. That very night things began." Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"