'You saw nothing else?' said
Griff. 'I thought I heard you break out as Clarence did, just
before my father opened the door.'
'Perhaps I did so. I had the sense strongly on me of some being in
grievous distress very near me.'
'And you should have power over it,' suggested Emily.
'I am afraid,' he said, 'that more thorough conviction and
comprehension are needed before I could address the thing with
authority. I should like to have stayed longer and heard the
conclusion.'
For Mr. Stafford had grown impatient and weary, and my father having
satisfied himself that there was something to be detected, would not
remain to the end, and not only carried his companions off, but
locked the doors, perhaps expecting to imprison some agent in a
trick, and find him in the morning.
Indeed Clarence had a dim remembrance of having been half wakened by
some one looking in on him in the night, when he was sleeping
heavily after his cold and the previous night's disturbance, and we
suspected, though we would not say, that our father might have
wished to ascertain that he had no share in producing these
appearances. He was, however, fully acquitted of all wilful
deception in the case, and he was not surprised, though he was
disappointed, that his vision of the lady was supposed to be the
consequence of excited imagination.
'I can't help it,' he said to me in private.
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