Many instances had arisen in which there had been a struggle for the mastery between them, and in every case not only had Austin had his own way but she had been compelled to acknowledge to herself that the wisdom had been on his side and not on hers.

It was not so much that his reasoning powers were exceptionally acute as that he seemed to have a mysterious instinct, a sort of sub-conscious intuition, that never led him astray.

And then there were those baffling, inexplicable premonitions that on three occasions had intervened to prevent some great disaster.

The thought of these made her very pensive, and now that the vicar had set her mind at rest upon the abstract theory of invisible protectors she felt that she could harbour speculations about them without danger to her soul's welfare.
That the power at work could scarcely emanate from the devil was now clear even to her, timid and narrow-minded as she was.

Still, with that illogical shrinking from any tangible proof that her creed was true that is so characteristic of the orthodox, the whole thing gave her rather an uncomfortable sensation, and she would vastly have preferred to believe in spiritual or angelic ministrations as a pious opinion or casual article of faith than to have it brought home to her in the guise of knocks and raps.