Re-entering the drawing-room to say goodbye, he found the party engaged listening to the contents of a number of sheets of paper closely written in pencil, which were being read to them by Colonel Josiah Smith, who made corrections from time to time. “_Au revoir_, my young brother,” said Madame Riennes, making some mysterious sign before she took his hand in her fat, cold fingers, “you will come again next Sunday, will you not?” “I don’t know,” he answered awkwardly, for he felt afraid of this lady, and did not wish to see her next Sunday. “Oh! but I do, young brother. You will come, because it gives me so much pleasure to see you,” she replied, staring at him with her strange eyes. Then Godfrey knew that he would come because he must. “Why does that lady call me ‘young brother’?” he asked Miss Ogilvy, who accompanied him to the hall. “Oh! because it is a way she has. You may have noticed that she called me ‘sister’.” “I don’t think that I shall call _her_ sister,” he remarked with decision. “She is too alarming.” “Not really when you come to know her, for she has the kindest heart and is wonderfully gifted.” “Gifts which make people tell others that they are going to die are not pleasant, Miss Ogilvy.” She shivered a little. “If her spirit—I mean the truth—comes to her, she must speak it, I suppose. By the way, Godfrey, don’t say anything about this talisman and the story you told of it, at Kleindorf, or in writing home.” “Why not?” “Oh! because people like your dear old Pasteur, and clergymen generally, are so apt to misunderstand. They think that there is only one way of learning things beyond, and that every other must be wrong. Also I am sure that your friend, Isobel Blake, would laugh at you.” “I don’t write to Isobel,” he exclaimed setting his lips. “But you may later,” she said smiling. “At any rate you will promise, won’t you?” “Yes, if you wish it, Miss Ogilvy, though I can’t see what it matters. That kind of nonsense often comes into my head when I touch old things. Isobel says that it is because I have too much imagination.” “Imagination! Ah! what is imagination? Well, goodbye, Godfrey, the carriage will come for you at the same time next Sunday. Perhaps, too, I shall see you before then, as I am going to call upon Madame Boiset.” Then he went, feeling rather uncomfortable, and yet interested, though what it was that interested him he did not quite know. That night he dreamed that Madame Riennes stood by his bed watching him with her burning eyes. It was an unpleasant dream. He kept his word. When the Boiset family, especially Madame, cross-examined him as to the details of his visit to Miss Ogilvy, he merely described the splendours of that opulent establishment and the intellectual character of its guests. Of their mystic attributes he said nothing at all, only adding that Miss Ogilvy proposed to do herself the honour of calling at the Maison Blanche, as the Boisets’ house was called.