“Come, Hélène, be quick,” said Celia. “You know how madame hates to be kept waiting at these times. You might be dressing me to go to meet my lover,” she added, with a blush and a smile at her own pretty reflection in the glass; and a queer look came upon Hélène Vauquier’s face. For it was at creating just this very impression that she aimed.
“Very well, mademoiselle,” said Hélène. And even as she spoke Mme. Dauvray’s voice rang shrill and irritable up the stairs.
“Célie! Célie!”
“Quick, Hélène,” said Celia. For she herself was now anxious to have the séance over and done with.
But Hélène did not hurry. The more irritable Mme. Dauvray became, the more impatient with Mlle. Célie, the less would Mlle. Célie dare to refuse the tests Adèle wished to impose upon her. But that was not all. She took a subtle and ironic pleasure tonight in decking out her victim’s natural loveliness. Her face, her slender throat, her white shoulders, should look their prettiest, her grace of limb and figure should be more alluring than ever before. The same words, indeed, were running through both women’s minds.
“For the last time,” said Celia to herself, thinking of these horrible séances, of which tonight should see the end.
“For the last time,” said Hélène Vauquier too. For the last time she laced the girl’s dress. There would be no more patient and careful service for Mlle. Célie after tonight. But she should have it and to spare tonight. She should be conscious that her beauty had never made so strong an appeal; that she was never so fit for life as at the moment when the end had come. One thing Hélène regretted. She would have liked Celia—Celia, smiling at herself in the glass—to know suddenly what was in store for her! She saw in imagination the colour die from the cheeks, the eyes stare wide with terror.
“Célie! Célie!”
Again the impatient voice rang up the stairs, as Hélène pinned the girl’s hat upon her fair head. Célie sprang up, took a quick step or two towards the door, and stopped in dismay. The swish of her long satin train must betray her. She caught up the dress and tried again. Even so, the rustle of it was heard.
“I shall have to be very careful. You will help me, Hélène?”
“Of course, mademoiselle. I will sit underneath the switch of the light in the salon. If madame, your visitor, makes the experiment too difficult, I will find a way to help you,” said Hélène Vauquier, and as she spoke she handed Celia a long pair of white gloves.
“I shall not want them,” said Celia.
“Mme. Dauvray ordered me to give them to you,” replied Hélène.
Celia took them hurriedly, picked up a white scarf of tulle, and ran down the stairs. Hélène Vauquier listened at the door and heard madame’s voice in feverish anger.
“We have been waiting for you, Célie. You have been an age.”
Hélène Vauquier laughed softly to herself, took out Celia’s white frock from the wardrobe, turned off the lights, and followed her down to the hall. She placed the cloak just outside the door of the salon. Then she carefully turned out all the lights in the hall and in the kitchen and went into the salon. The rest of the house was in darkness. This room was brightly lit; and it had been made ready.
XVIII
The Séance
Hélène Vauquier locked the door of the salon upon the inside and placed the key upon the mantelshelf, as she had always done whenever a séance had been held. The curtains had been loosened at the sides of the arched recess in front of the glass doors, ready to be drawn across. Inside the recess, against one of the pillars which supported the arch, a high stool without a back, taken from the hall, had been placed, and the back legs of the stool had been lashed with cord firmly to the pillar, so that it could not be moved. The round table had been put in position, with three chairs about it. Mme. Dauvray waited impatiently. Celia stood apparently unconcerned, apparently lost to all that was going on. Her eyes saw no one. Adèle looked up at Celia, and laughed maliciously.
“Mademoiselle, I see, is in the very mood to produce the most wonderful phenomena. But it will be better, I think, madame,” she said, turning to Mme. Dauvray, “that Mlle. Célie should put on those gloves which I see she has thrown on to a chair. It will be a little more difficult for mademoiselle to loosen these cords, should she wish to do so.”
The argument silenced Celia. If she refused this condition now she would excite Mme. Dauvray to a terrible suspicion. She drew on her gloves ruefully and slowly, smoothed them over her elbows, and buttoned them. To free her hands with her fingers and wrists already hampered in gloves would not be so easy a task. But there was no escape. Adèle Rossignol was watching her with a satiric smile. Mme. Dauvray was urging her to be quick. Obeying a second order the girl raised her skirt and extended a slim foot in a pale-green silk stocking and a satin slipper to match. Adèle was content. Celia was wearing the shoes she was meant to wear. They were made upon the very same last as those which Celia had just kicked off upstairs. An almost imperceptible nod from Hélène Vauquier, moreover, assured her.
She took up a length of the thin cord.
“Now, how are we to begin?” she said awkwardly. “I think I will ask you, mademoiselle, to put your hands behind you.”
Celia turned her back and crossed her wrists. She stood in her satin frock, with her white arms and shoulders bare, her slender throat supporting her small
