At the Villa Rose

I felt that I was disloyal to Harry. My nerves were all tingling. I was not nice that night at all,” she added quaintly. “But at dinner I determined that if I met Harry after dinner, as I was sure to do, I would tell him the whole truth about myself. However, when I did meet him I was frightened. I knew how stern he could suddenly look. I dreaded what he would think. I was too afraid that I should lose him. No, I could not speak; I had not the courage. That made me still more angry with myself, and so I⁠—I quarrelled at once with Harry. He was surprised; but it was natural, wasn’t it? What else should one do under such circumstances, except quarrel with the man one loved? Yes, I really quarrelled with him, and said things which I thought and hoped would hurt. Then I ran away from him lest I should break down and cry. I went to the tables and lost at once all the money I had except one note of five louis. But that did not console me. And I ran out into the garden, very unhappy. There I behaved like a child, and Mr. Ricardo saw me. But it was not the little money I had lost which troubled me; no, it was the thought of what a coward I was. Afterwards Harry and I made it up, and I thought, like the little fool I was, that he wanted to ask me to marry him. But I would not let him that night. Oh! I wanted him to ask me⁠—I was longing for him to ask me⁠—but not that night. Somehow I felt that the séance and the tricks must be all over and done with before I could listen or answer.”

The quiet and simple confession touched the magistrate who listened to it with profound pity. He shaded his eyes with his hand. The girl’s sense of her unworthiness, the love she had given so unstintingly to Harry Wethermill, the deep pride she had felt in the delusion that he loved her too, had in it an irony too bitter. But he was aroused to anger against the man.

“Go on, mademoiselle,” he said. But in spite of himself his voice trembled.

“So I arranged with him that we should meet on Wednesday, as Mr. Ricardo heard.”

“You told him that you would ‘want him’ on Wednesday,” said the Judge quoting Mr. Ricardo’s words.

“Yes,” replied Celia. “I meant that the last word of all these deceptions would have been spoken. I should be free to hear what he had to say to me. You see, monsieur, I was so sure that I knew what it was he had to say to me⁠—” and her voice broke upon the words. She recovered herself with an effort. “Then I went home with Mme. Dauvray.”

On the morning of Tuesday, however, there came a letter from Adèle Tacé, of which no trace was afterwards discovered. The letter invited Mme. Dauvray and Celia to come out to Annecy and dine with her at an hotel there. They could then return together to Aix. The proposal fitted well with Mme. Dauvray’s inclinations. She was in a feverish mood of excitement.

“Yes, it will be better that we dine quietly together in a place where there is no noise and no crowd, and where no one knows us,” she said; and she looked up the timetable. “There is a train back which reaches Aix at nine o’clock,” she said, “so we need not spoil Servettaz’ holiday.”

“His parents will be expecting him,” Hélène Vauquier added.

Accordingly Servettaz left for Chambéry by the 1:50 train from Aix; and later on in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and Celia went by train to Annecy. In the one woman’s mind was the queer longing that “she” should appear and speak tonight; in the girl’s there was a wish passionate as a cry. “This shall be the last time,” she said to herself again and again⁠—“the very last.”

Meanwhile, Hélène Vauquier, it must be held, burnt carefully Adèle Tacés letter. She was left in the Villa Rose with the charwoman to keep her company. The charwoman bore testimony that Hélène Vauquier certainly did burn a letter in the kitchen-stove, and that after she had burned it she sat for a long time rocking herself in a chair, with a smile of great pleasure upon her face, and now and then moistening her lips with her tongue. But Hélène Vauquier kept her mouth sealed.

XVII

The Afternoon of Tuesday

Mme. Dauvray and Celia found Adèle Rossignol, to give Adèle Tacé the name which she assumed, waiting for them impatiently in the garden of an hotel at Annecy, on the Promenade du Paquier. She was a tall, lithe woman, and she was dressed, by the purse and wish of Hélène Vauquier, in a robe and a long coat of sapphire velvet, which toned down the coarseness of her good looks and lent something of elegance to her figure.

“So it is mademoiselle,” Adèle began, with a smile of raillery, “who is so remarkably clever.”

“Clever?” answered Celia, looking straight at Adèle, as though through her she saw mysteries beyond. She took up her part at once. Since for the last time it had got to be played, there must be no fault in the playing. For her own sake, for the sake of Mme. Dauvray’s happiness, she must carry it off tonight with success. The suspicions of Adèle Rossignol must obtain no verification. She spoke in a quiet and most serious voice. “Under spirit-control no one is clever. One does the bidding of the spirit which controls.”

“Perfectly,” said Adèle in a malicious tone. “I only hope you will see to it, mademoiselle, that some amusing spirits control you this evening and appear before us.”

“I am only the living gate by which the spirit forms pass from the realm of mind into the world of matter,” Celia replied.

“Quite