"I can think of no way out of it except the one," and he looked round to the Commissaire and to Ricardo as though he would inquire of them how many ways they had discovered. "I can think of no escape except that a message in writing should flutter down from the spirit appealed to saying frankly," and Hanaud shrugged his shoulders, "'I do not know.'" "Oh no no, monsieur," replied Helene Vauquier in pity for Hanaud's misconception, "I see that you are not in the habit of attending seances. It would never do for a spirit to admit that it did not know. At once its authority would be gone, and with it Mlle. Celie's as well. But on the other hand, for inscrutable reasons the spirit might not be allowed to answer." "I understand," said Hanaud, meekly accepting the correction. "The spirit might reply that it was forbidden to answer, but never that it did not know." "No, never that," said Helene. So it seemed that Hanaud must look elsewhere for the explanation of that sentence. "I do not know," Helene continued: "Oh, Mlle. Celie--it was not easy to baffle her, I can tell you. She carried a lace scarf which she could drape about her head, and in a moment she would be, in the dim light, an old, old woman, with a voice so altered that no one could know it. Indeed, you said rightly, monsieur--she was clever." To all who listened Helene Vauquier's story carried its conviction. Mme. Dauvray rose vividly before their minds as a living woman. Celie's trickeries were so glibly described that they could hardly have been invented, and certainly not by this poor peasant-woman whose lips so bravely struggled with Medici, and Montespan, and the names of the other great ladies. How, indeed, should she know of them at all? She could never have had the inspiration to concoct the most convincing item of her story--the queer craze of Mme. Dauvray for an interview with Mme. de Montespan. These details were assuredly the truth. Ricardo, indeed, knew them to be true. Had he not himself seen the girl in her black velvet dress shut up in a cabinet, and a great lady of the past dimly appear in the darkness? Moreover, Helene Vauquier's jealousy was so natural and inevitable a thing. Her confession of it corroborated all her story. "Well, then," said Hanaud, "we come to last night. There was a seance held in the salon last night." "No, monsieur," said Vauquier, shaking her head; "there was no seance last night." "But already you have said--" interrupted the Commissaire; and Hanaud held up his hand. "Let her speak, my friend." "Yes, monsieur shall hear," said Vauquier.