As Barnabas was telling Ben that Ben would be giving him peace by staking him, I wondered how an actor puts himself in the frame of mind of a vampire asking to be staked. I don't have the answer, which may conceivably be the reason why Jonathan Frid is an actor and I am not.
I had no trouble, however, imagining myself as Ben, as he was trying to persuade Barnabas not to go see Josette, and I felt great sympathy for him. Barnabas's mental state was such that he should not have been allowed to make a decision like that, but Ben was helpless to stop him.
I suppose Natalie was lying when she said she read her own death in the Tarot cards, but I'm not 100% sure. In this period of Dark Shadows, the writers didn't miss an opportunity to milk such a thing for drama, so if Natalie had been telling the truth, surely we would have seen her gasping as she saw the layout of the cards - but on the other hand, I don't think of Natalie as being as good a liar as she apparently was today. And if she was lying, then why did she come into Josette's room? Barnabas didn't make a sound. If you lie about the Tarot cards, will you have seven years of bad luck? Oh, well, that last point may be irrelevant. With Angelique around, any further bad luck would be completely superfluous.