The Mardens got to Wilson’s before me.  In fact, I was one of the last to arrive and found the room crowded.  I had hardly time to say a word to Mrs. Marden and to Agatha, who was looking charming in white and pink, with glittering wheat-ears in her hair, when Wilson came twitching at my sleeve.

“You want something positive, Gilroy,” said he, drawing me apart into a corner.  “My dear fellow, I have a phenomenon—­a phenomenon!”

I should have been more impressed had I not heard the same before.  His sanguine spirit turns every fire-fly into a star.

“No possible question about the bona fides this time,” said he, in answer, perhaps, to some little gleam of amusement in my eyes.  “My wife has known her for many years.  They both come from Trinidad, you know.  Miss Penclosa has only been in England a month or two, and knows no one outside the university circle, but I assure you that the things she has told us suffice in themselves to establish clairvoyance upon an absolutely scientific basis.  There is nothing like her, amateur or professional.  Come and be introduced!”

I like none of these mystery-mongers, but the amateur least of all.  With the paid performer you may pounce upon him and expose him the instant that you have seen through his trick.  He is there to deceive you, and you are there to find him out.  But what are you to do with the friend of your host’s wife?  Are you to turn on a light suddenly and expose her slapping a surreptitious banjo?  Or are you to hurl cochineal over her evening frock when she steals round with her phosphorus bottle and her supernatural platitude?  There would be a scene, and you would be looked upon as a brute.  So you have your choice of being that or a dupe.  I was in no very good humor as I followed Wilson to the lady.

Any one less like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined.  She was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a pale, peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut.  Her presence was insignificant and her manner retiring.  In any group of ten women she would have been the last whom one would have picked out.  Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least pleasant, feature.  They were gray in color,—­gray with a shade of green,—­and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive.  I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce?  On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better.  A crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose:  that one of her legs was crippled.

So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not escape me that as my name was mentioned she glanced across at Agatha.  Wilson had evidently been talking.  And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will inform me by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with wheat-ears in her hair.  I wondered how much more Wilson had been telling her about me.