"Really,"
Said She, When I Had Taken My Seat And My Pipe, "We Were Together
For Hours Last Night, And
Still I have heard nothing at all of my
old friends; now DO tell me something of your dear mother
And her
sister; I never knew your father - it was after I left Burton
Pynsent that your mother married." I began to make slow answer,
but my questioner soon went off again to topics more sublime, so
that this second interview, which lasted two or three hours, was
occupied by the same sort of varied discourse as that which I have
been describing.
In the course of the afternoon the captain of an English man-of-war
arrived at Djoun, and her ladyship determined to receive him for
the same reason as that which had induced her to allow my visit,
namely, an early intimacy with his family. I and the new visitor,
who was a pleasant, amusing person, dined together, and we were
afterwards invited to the presence of my lady, with whom we sat
smoking and talking till midnight. The conversation turned
chiefly, I think, upon magical science. I had determined to be off
at an early hour the next morning, and so at the end of this
interview I bade my lady farewell. With her parting words she once
more advised me to abandon Europe and seek my reward in the East,
and she urged me too to give the like counsels to my father, and
tell him that "SHE HAD SAID IT."
Lady Hester's unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom
was, no doubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride most
perilously akin to madness, but I am quite sure that the mind of
the woman was too strong to be thoroughly overcome by even this
potent feeling.
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