“Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them.  Mark the affection, almost maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred’s eyes.  Listen to the tones of Uncle Robert’s voice when he says, ‘Well, Chris, my boy?’ Watch Mrs. Grantly melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun.

“Take Mr. Barton, there.  You have never seen him before.  Why, you will invite him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone to bed—­you, a mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of power, a man obtuse and stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, trotting at your back.  He will not know he is doing it, but he will be doing it just the same.  Don’t I know, Chris?  Oh, I have watched you, watched you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved you again for it, because you were so delightfully and blindly unaware of what you were doing.”

“I’m almost bursting with vanity from listening to you,” he laughed, passing his arm around her and drawing her against him.

“Yes,” she whispered, “and in this very moment, when you are laughing at all that I have said, you, the feel of you, your soul,—­call it what you will, it is you,—­is calling for all the love that is in me.”

She leaned more closely against him, and sighed as with fatigue.  He breathed a kiss into her hair and held her with firm tenderness.

Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from the Planchette board.

“Come, let us begin,” she said.  “It will soon grow chilly.  Robert, where are those children?”

“Here we are,” Lute called out, disengaging herself.

“Now for a bundle of creeps,” Chris whispered, as they started in.

Lute’s prophecy of the manner in which her lover would be received was realized.  Mrs. Grantly, unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with frigid magnetism, warmed and melted as though of truth she were dew and he sun.  Mr. Barton beamed broadly upon him, and was colossally gracious.  Aunt Mildred greeted him with a glow of fondness and motherly kindness, while Uncle Robert genially and heartily demanded, “Well, Chris, my boy, and what of the riding?”

But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely around her and hastened them to the business in hand.  On the table was a sheet of paper.  On the paper, rifling on three supports, was a small triangular board.  Two of the supports were easily moving casters.  The third support, placed at the apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil.

“Who’s first?” Uncle Robert demanded.

There was a moment’s hesitancy, then Aunt Mildred placed her hand on the board, and said:  “Some one has always to be the fool for the delectation of the rest.”

“Brave woman,” applauded her husband.  “Now, Mrs. Grantly, do your worst.”

“I?” that lady queried.  “I do nothing.  The power, or whatever you care to think it, is outside of me, as it is outside of all of you.  As to what that power is, I will not dare to say.  There is such a power.  I have had evidences of it.  And you will undoubtedly have evidences of it.  Now please be quiet, everybody.  Touch the board very lightly, but firmly, Mrs. Story; but do nothing of your own volition.”