The rumor spread thence
into a wider circle. Those who knew old Moodie, as he was now called,
used often to jeer him, at the very street-corners, about his
daughter's gift of second-sight and prophecy. It was a period when
science (though mostly through its empirical professors) was bringing
forward, anew, a hoard of facts and imperfect theories, that had
partially won credence in elder times, but which modern scepticism
had swept away as rubbish. These things were now tossed up again,
out of the surging ocean of human thought and experience. The story
of Priscilla's preternatural manifestations, therefore, attracted a
kind of notice of which it would have been deemed wholly unworthy a
few years earlier. One day a gentleman ascended the creaking
staircase, and inquired which was old Moodie's chamber door. And,
several times, he came again. He was a marvellously handsome man,--
still youthful, too, and fashionably dressed. Except that
Priscilla, in those days, had no beauty, and, in the languor of her
existence, had not yet blossomed into womanhood, there would have
been rich food for scandal in these visits; for the girl was
unquestionably their sole object, although her father was supposed
always to be present. But, it must likewise be added, there was
something about Priscilla that calumny could not meddle with; and
thus far was she privileged, either by the preponderance of what was
spiritual, or the thin and watery blood that left her cheek so pallid.
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