"Are you afraid of ghosts?"
Before Laline could answer, a thin but silvery voice broke upon the silence, and caused the red-haired girl to start guiltily from her companion's side.
"Go to your room, Clare—I wish to speak to Miss Grahame alone!"
Without a word Clare stole away, leaving Laline tête-à-tête with a lady whom she rightly judged to be "Occult," otherwise Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur.
Standing before the picturesque background of dark-red plush curtains which draped the folding-doors through which she had entered, Mrs. Vandeleur appeared to Laline one of the most picturesque figures she had ever seen. Rather under the medium height, and of extreme thinness and fragility, she looked more like a spirit than a woman, an effect heightened by her powdered hair, dressed loosely and high upon her head, her piercing, dark eyes, ivory-white skin, and the soft silvery-gray draperies swathed round her slender form. In her thin hand she held a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, the handle of which was thickly encrusted with turquoise and garnets in an old-fashioned gold setting, and through these she peered in a bird-like manner at Laline, with her head poised a little on one side.
"What is your name," she asked—"your full name, given you at baptism?"
The terms of the question rather disconcerted Laline, and there was a perceptible hesitation in her voice as she replied—
"I am called Lina Grahame."
"That is not your real name!"