e. Dauvray was gazing at her with a
perplexed frown and some return of her suspicion showing in her eyes.
Adele Tace was not content to leave the subject there.

"Perhaps," she said, with a smile, "Mlle. Celie dresses in that way for
a seance?"

"Madame shall see tonight," Celia stammered, and Camille Dauvray rather
sternly repeated her words.

"Yes, Adele shall see tonight. I myself will decide what you shall
wear, Celie."

Adele Tace casually suggested the kind of dress which she would prefer.

"Something light in colour with a train, something which will hiss and
whisper if mademoiselle moves about the room--yes, and I think one of
mademoiselle's big hats," she said. "We will have mademoiselle as
modern as possible, so that, when the great ladies of the past appear
in the coiffure of their day, we may be sure it is not Mlle. Celie who
represents them."

"I will speak to Helene," said Mme. Dauvray, and Adele Tace was content.

There was a particular new dress of which she knew, and it was very
desirable that Mlle. Celie should wear it tonight. For one thing, if
Celia wore it, it would help the theory that she had put it on because
she expected that night a lover; for another, with that dress there
went a pair of satin slippers which had just come home from a shoemaker
at Aix, and which would leave upon soft mould precisely the same
imprints as the grey suede shoes which the girl was wearing now.

Celia was not greatly disconcerted by Mme. Rossignol's precautions. She
would have to be a little more careful, and Mme. de Montespan would be
a little longer in responding to the call of Mme. Dauvray than most of
the other dead ladies of the past had been. But that was all. She was,
however, really troubled in another way. All through dinner, at every
word of the conversation, she had felt her reluctance towards this
seance swelling into a positive disgust. More than once she had felt
driven by some uncontrollable power to rise up at the table and cry out
to Adele:

"You are right! It IS trickery. There is no truth in it."

But she had mastered herself. For opposite to her sat her patroness,
her good friend, the woman who had saved her. The flush upon Mme.
Dauvray's cheeks and the agitation of her manner warned Celia how much
hung upon the success of this last seance. How much for both of them!

And in the fullness of that knowledge a great fear assailed her. She
began to be afraid, so strong was her reluctance,