“Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic,” said he; “I hope, Miss Penclosa, that you will be able to convert him.”

She looked keenly up at me.

“Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he has not seen any thing convincing,” said she.  “I should have thought,” she added, “that you would yourself have been an excellent subject.”

“For what, may I ask?” said I.

“Well, for mesmerism, for example.”

“My experience has been that mesmerists go for their subjects to those who are mentally unsound.  All their results are vitiated, as it seems to me, by the fact that they are dealing with abnormal organisms.”

“Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal organism?” she asked.  “I should like you to select the one who seems to you to have the best balanced mind.  Should we say the girl in pink and white?—­Miss Agatha Marden, I think the name is.”

“Yes, I should attach weight to any results from her.”

“I have never tried how far she is impressionable.  Of course some people respond much more rapidly than others.  May I ask how far your scepticism extends?  I suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and the power of suggestion.”

“I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa.”

“Dear me, I thought science had got further than that.  Of course I know nothing about the scientific side of it.  I only know what I can do.  You see the girl in red, for example, over near the Japanese jar.  I shall will that she come across to us.”

She bent forward as she spoke and dropped her fan upon the floor.  The girl whisked round and came straight toward us, with an enquiring look upon her face, as if some one had called her.

“What do you think of that, Gilroy?” cried Wilson, in a kind of ecstasy.

I did not dare to tell him what I thought of it.  To me it was the most barefaced, shameless piece of imposture that I had ever witnessed.  The collusion and the signal had really been too obvious.

“Professor Gilroy is not satisfied,” said she, glancing up at me with her strange little eyes.  “My poor fan is to get the credit of that experiment.  Well, we must try something else.  Miss Marden, would you have any objection to my putting you off?”

“Oh, I should love it!” cried Agatha.

By this time all the company had gathered round us in a circle, the shirt-fronted men, and the white-throated women, some awed, some critical, as though it were something between a religious ceremony and a conjurer’s entertainment.  A red velvet arm-chair had been pushed into the centre, and Agatha lay back in it, a little flushed and trembling slightly from excitement.  I could see it from the vibration of the wheat-ears.  Miss Penclosa rose from her seat and stood over her, leaning upon her crutch.