"In her hypnotic condition she was able to answer my questions, and I felt satisfied that when she recovered, she would be able clearly to recall the past.
"Once more I laid my hand over her eyes, and bade her sleep, it being easier and safer to recall the patient to a natural condition, from a state of placid, rather than active, mesmerism. But on trying to rouse her, I was again destined to failure. It was impossible to bring her back to consciousness, or even to influence her now in any way. She lay in one of those cataleptic trances, which no power then known could break, and which form the chief danger connected with all such experiments. Even now, though I should have little difficulty in dealing with a case of this kind, I should be loath, except in emergency, or where the life of the body was endangered, to recall the spirit which is for the time free from its bodily trammels. But in those days I was unable to do so.
"At length alarmed, I took her in my arms and carried her to the little fishing village, where with some difficulty I managed to find a vehicle to drive back to Heather Lodge. It is not necessary for me to go into the details of the two anxious days which followed. During this time all the efforts, not only of the local doctor, but of two consulting physicians, had no effect in rousing Vera from her unnatural sleep. On the third day, however, she awoke, and seemed little the worse for her experience.
"Mr. Soudin had, in the meantime, returned in a state of the greatest despondency, and as soon as the news of his daughter's recovery had relieved my mind of an anxiety, which had made it impossible for me to think of other matters, I had a long talk with him.
"His pride and reserve were broken, and I was relieved to find that he intended to make a full confession of his present monetary difficulties. In Liverpool his worst fears were realized. Not only had he seen Vera's signature, but the registrar had told him that as far as it was possible to judge, his daughter acted without the slightest constraint, and had seemed perfectly reasonable and collected. 'She had given her age as twenty-one, on oath, and had answered all his questions rationally. A solicitor, when consulted, had given Mr. Soudin little hope of the marriage being annulled, and had warned him that while the action would probably lead to no good, it might possibly end in his daughter and son-in-law being arrested for perjury. If, however, he continued, she possessed means of her own, it might be wise to make an application to have this money settled upon her.