Celia sat with a face which WOULD grow red. She did not look, but none the less she was aware that Mme. Dauvray was gazing at her with a perplexed frown and some return of her suspicion showing in her eyes. Adele Tace was not content to leave the subject there.
"Perhaps," she said, with a smile, "Mlle. Celie dresses in that way for a seance?"
"Madame shall see tonight," Celia stammered, and Camille Dauvray rather sternly repeated her words.
"Yes, Adele shall see tonight. I myself will decide what you shall wear, Celie."
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 tonight. 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."