“Pardon me if I state here something which is not positively in the line of facts; rather, perhaps, in that of imagination,” said Madame Carimon, looking up. “Lavinia had gradually acquired a most painful dread of Captain Fennel. She had dreams which she could only believe came to warn her against him, in which he appeared to be threatening her with some evil that she could not escape from. Once or twice—and this I cannot in any way account for—she saw him in the house when he was not in it, not even at Sainteville——”
“What! saw his apparition?” cried Featherston. “When the man was living! Come, come, Mary, that is going too far!”
“Quelle drôle d’idée!” exclaimed the little doctor.
“He appeared to her twice, she told me,” continued Mary Carimon. “She had been spending the evening out each time; had come into the house, this house, closing the street-door behind her. When she lighted a candle at the slab, she saw him standing just inside the door, gazing at her with the same dreadful aspect that she saw afterwards in her dreams. You may laugh, George; Monsieur Dupuis, I think you are already laughing; but I fully believe that she saw what she said she did, and dreamt what she did dream.”
“But it could not have been the man’s apparition when he was not dead; and it could not have been the man himself when he was not at Sainteville,” contended Featherston.
“And I believe that it all meant one of those mysterious warnings which are vouchsafed us from our spiritual guardians in the unseen world,” added Madame Carimon, independently pursuing her argument. “And that it came to Lavinia to warn her to escape from this evil house.”
“And she did not do it,” remarked David Preen. “She was not quick enough. Well, let us go on.”
“As Lavinia came out of church, Charles Palliser ran after her to ask her to go home to dine with him and his aunt,” resumed Madame Carimon. “If she had only accepted it! The dinner here was a very simple one, and they all partook of it, including Flore——”
“And it was Flore who cooked and served it?” interrupted David Preen, looking at her.
“Mais oui, monsieur. The tart excepted; that was frangipane, and did come from the pastrycook,” added Flore, plunging into English. “Then I had my own dinner, and I had of every dish; and I drank of the wine. Miss Lavinia would give me a glass of wine on the Sunday, and she poured it out for me herself that day from the bottle of Bordeaux on their own table. Nothing was the matter with any of all that. The one thing I did not have of was the liqueur.”