A rap at the door was the signal for Edith's departure, with
the words on her tongue that she knew the doctor's knock. I was now, I
thought, to be left to myself; nor was I displeased, for I wanted a
lounge and a meditation; though of the latter I could not see that I
could make much, if any, more than confirming myself against all
preternaturals as agents on earth, however certain their existence may
be beyond the mystic veil that divides the two worlds. I had known
Graeme's crime and Gourlay's self-murder; but the crime was a trick
among blacklegs, and the suicide was the madness of a gambler, who had
risked his money and was ruined at the moment he wanted to ruin another.
Surely Heaven had something else to do with its retributive lightnings
than employ them, in subversion of all natural laws, in a cause so
inferior in turpitude to others that every hour pass into oblivion, with
more of a mark of natural, and less or none of supernatural
chastisement. I thought I might be contented with such a view of these
prodigies as might quickly consign them to the limbo of men's
machinations; yet somehow or other--perhaps the Burgundy bottle, if it
could have spoken, like that of Asmodeus, might have helped the
solution--I got dreamy, and of course foolish, raising objections
against my own conclusions, and instituting an _alter ego_ to argue
against myself for Graeme's theory.
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