"And now he raps no longer?"
"Oh yes, he still raps," Mère Gontran replied, "but much more faintly. But there again, he's already moved to three different planes since his death. Hush! What's that?"
She stared into the darkest corner of the dining-room.
"Is that you, Gontran?"
"I think it was one of the birds," Sylvia said.
Mère Gontran waved her hand for silence.
"Gontran! Is that you? Where have you been all day? This is a friend of mine who's staying here. You'll like her very much when you know her. Gontran! I want to talk to you after dinner. Now mind, don't forget. I'm glad you've got back. I want you to make some inquiries in England to-morrow."
Sylvia was distinctly aware of a deep-seated amusement all the time at Mère Gontran's matter-of-fact way of dealing with her husband's spirit, and she could never make up her mind how with her sense of amusement could exist simultaneously a credulity that led her to hear at the conclusion of Mère Gontran's last speech three loud raps upon the air of the room.
"He's got over last night," said Mère Gontran in a satisfied voice. "But there again, he always had a kind nature at bottom. Three nice cheerful raps like that always mean he's going to give up his evening to me."
Sylvia's first instinct was to find in what way Mère Gontran had tricked her into hearing those three raps; something in the seer's true gaze forbade the notion of trickery, and a shiver roused by the inexplicable, the shiver that makes a dog run away from an open umbrella blown across a lawn, slipped through her being.