lifting from her head a long white veil of my mother's. My father
accidentally saw this photograph, and was so taken with it that he
adorned the title-page of the third edition of _The Veiled Queen_
with a small woodcut of it.

These vagaries of my father's had an influence upon my destiny of the
most tragic, yet of the most fantastic kind.

He had the reputation, I believe, of being one of the most learned
mystics of his time. He was a fair Hebrew scholar, and also had a
knowledge of Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. His passion for philology
was deep-rooted. He was a no less ardent numismatist. Moreover, he
was deeply versed in amulet-lore. He wrote a treatise upon 'amulets'
and their inscriptions. All this was after the death of his first
wife. He had a large collection of amulets, Gnostic gems, and
abraxas stones. That he really believed in the virtue of amulets will
be pretty clearly seen as my narrative proceeds. Indeed, the subject
of amulets and love-tokens became a mania with him. After his death
it was said that his collection of amulets, Egyptian, Gnostic, and
other, was rarer, and his collection of St. Helena coins larger,
than any other collection in England.

Though my mother did not know of the spiritualistic orgies in
Switzerland, she knew that my father was a spiritualist. And this
vexed her, not only because she conceived it to be visionary folly,
but because it was 'low.' She knew that it led him to join a
newly-formed band of Latter-Day mystics which had been organised at
Raxton, but luckily she did not know that through them he believed
himself to be holding communication with his first wife. The members
of this body were tradespeople of the town, and I quite think that in