| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: overhear what they may say. I have used that trap for a quarter of
a century, and I never saw one more suitable for travel. You shall
test it shortly. We are going to drive through the heart of
England; and as we go I'll tell you what I was speaking of last
night. Our route is to be by Salisbury, Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham,
Worcester, Stafford; and so home."
Adam remained silent a few minutes, during which he seemed all eyes,
for he perpetually ranged the whole circle of the horizon.
"Has our journey to-day, sir," he asked, "any special relation to
what you said last night that you wanted to tell me?"
"Not directly; but indirectly, everything."
Lair of the White Worm |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: The twain made terms. They haggled like any pair of traders out of
Jewry, but in the end it was settled - by a bond duly engrossed and
sealed - that on the day that Sir Rowland married Ruth he should make
over to her brother certain values that amounted to perhaps a quarter
of her possessions. There was no cause to think that Ruth would be
greatly opposed to this - not that that consideration would have
weighed with Richard.
But now that all essentials were so satisfactorily determined a vexation
was offered Westmacott by the circumstance that his sister seemed nowise
taken with Sir Rowland. She suffered him because he was her brother's
friend; on that account she even honoured him with some measure of her
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