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. I plainly saw that she was not an unhesitating
follower of her own system, and I even fancied that I could
distinguish the brief moments during which she contrived to believe
in herself, from those long and less happy intervals in which her
own reason was too strong for her.
As for the lady's faith in astrology and magic science, you are not
for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of
intellect. She believed these things in common with those around
her, for she seldom spoke to anybody except crazy old dervishes,
who received her alms, and fostered her extravagancies, and even
when (as on the occasion of my visit) she was brought into contact
with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained
uncontradicted.
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