The Kenilworth Advertiser. — 1894-08-11 (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England)

CHAPTER XIII. THE MYSTERY UNSOLVED.  For three days Marie Wintour lay insensible, but when she was at last restored to coneciouimeas It became evident that she would not be able—were she even willing—to assist personally in casting any light on the inquiry in which she would figure as a prisoner charged with attempted murder. Her mind was completely gone, and the eminent specialist called in pronounced it a well-nigh hopeless case. I asked Dr. -- if the blow sinitained in the fall had brought about this result. Pe answered, "it it had anything to do with it, it was very little. The brain has succumbed to the long strain of an almost insuppot table exciterbear, culminating in'the supreme passion and terror of that night. The revulsion of feeling when, intending to murder her rival, she suddenly found herself frustrated, and confronted by, of all no-n, the man she loved, was more than a brain of far coarser (Roe than hers could withstand. And this woman's was a sensitive and highly tier, 1 vons brain. You tell we she was a medium, skid I gather the same from her ravings ; the temperament that makes a visionary will not stand a heavy strain on the passions." 'The hapless woman raved wildly, tee:Mies continually her interview, as Alga Westrovv,witu Jack, and repealing word for word what atm load said in her trance; and this was a eingnlar phenowenon, for when sae awoke she bail mint known what she said. How Wan it that her enind, unhingted, could revert to what, in the full essesaion of her senses,alie did not. know,ntiless she subsequently became aware of what she had said to that strange trance! One cannot judge the-e abnormall constituted beings by ordinary rules. The result of the inquiry that was held was to entirely exonerate me, and Marie Wintour would lave been arrested on a charge .of attempt to murder had not her unhappy state placed her beyond the reach of the law. While she lay ill at the Grange endeavours were made to discover her relations, lint in vain. Either she had none living, or they did not care to conic forward. She was, therefore, so soon as she could be moved, taken to an asylum, and there she still lives, sometitnes dull and apathetic, at others raving wildly, uttering fierce threats against Chiara, and protesting that I belong tk her—that her spirit sought me and found me, gni'. o on. My story is Sold. CMars is my wile now, and lam trying to think of much that happened at the Grange as a hideous nightmare; but those events have left on my mind an ineffaceable impression. One cannot come face to face with problems so vast and so terrible as my experience compelled me to meet, and straightway return to the work bf everyday life as if nothing unusual had happened. I sought Durward Langley,and tried to discover if he could assist me to unravel any part of the mystery. He shook his head. "The more we know of these things," he said—paraphrasing Newton's famous words—" the less we find we know. Do I think, you ask, whether this woman's spirit if it was her spirit was conscious, when it haunted you, of your personality? I cannot tell. She- might enlighten us, but nothing she could say now would be of any value. That she possessed occult power, and in a very remarkable degree, I have no doubt whatever. She was no impostor: her collapse is due to the entire subservience of her moral nature to one absorbing passion: but for that, she might have been able to throw light on many of the dark places of occult science." So it ended; the mystery remains a mystery. One may frame a thousand questions from this history; can one satisfactory answer be given! One may hazard a hundred conjectures; can they result in one solution? This, at least, should be clear to anyone not wilfully obtuse to all but preconceived opinions—that there are elements beyond the reach of reason ; and so much granted, much is gained. The supernatural does not imply the impossible. After all, it is the sceptic's argument that nothing can exist save what we can compass within the hard and fast rules of corollary from a predetermined premiss. Who made Matter a god and Reason his prophet? Who gave thia hnite world of men authority to set a limit to Infinite power?