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 to-night. 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, that she would not bring her heart into the task. "Suppose I failed to-night because I could not force myself to wish not to fail!" she thought, and she steeled herself against the thought. To-night she must not fail. For apart altogether from Mme. Dauvray's happiness, her own, it seemed, was at stake too.
"It must be from my lips that Harry learns what I have been," she said to herself, and with the resolve she strengthened herself.
"I will wear what you please," she said, with a smile. "I only wish Mme. Rossignol to be satisfied."