"Mme. Dauvray ordered me to give them to you," replied Helene.
Celia took them hurriedly, picked up a white scarf of tulle, and ran down the stairs. Helene Vauquier listened at the door and heard madame’s voice in feverish anger.
"We have been waiting for you, Celie. You have been an age."
Helene 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.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SEANCE
Helene Vauquier locked the door of the salon upon the inside and placed the key upon the mantel-shelf, as she had always done whenever a seance 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. Adele 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. Celie 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. Adele 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. Adele 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 Helene Vauquier, moreover, assured her.
She took up a length of the thin cord.