Her fat, massive face was painted and powdered; on her head she wore a kind of mantilla also gold-coloured, and about her neck a string of old Egyptian amulets.
Anything more unwholesome or uncanny than were her general appearance and surroundings as the bright flames of the fire showed them in this stuffy, shadowed room, it would be impossible to imagine.
"Sit down here by my side, my little son in the speerit, where I have made a place ready for you, and let me hold your hand while you tell me all that you have been doing and if you have been thinking much of me and that beautiful Eleanor whom I sent to see you last night," went on Madame Riennes in her ogreish, purring voice, patting the sofa.
Just then she looked up and caught sight of the Pasteur standing in the shadow.

Staring at him with her fierce, prominent eyes, she started violently as though at last she had seen something of which she was afraid.
"Say, my Godfrey," she exclaimed in a rather doubtful voice, "what is this that you have brought with you?
Is it a scarecrow from the fields?
Or is it a speerit of your own?
If so, I should have thought that a young man would have liked better the lovely Eleanor than this old devil." "Yes, Madame Jezebel," said the Pasteur striding forward, speaking in a loud, high voice and waving a large umbrella, which had come partly unfolded in his hurried walk.

"It is a scarecrow--one that scares the crows of hell who seek to pick out the souls of the innocent, like _you_, Madame Jezebel." Madame uttered a voluminous oath in some strange tongue, and sprang to her feet with an agility surprising in one so stout.
"Say, who are you ?" she ejaculated in French, confronting him.
"I am the Pasteur Boiset who accompany my ward to pay this little call, Madame." "Oh! indeed.

That thief of a clergyman, who got his finger into the pie of dead Mademoiselle, eh?
Well, there are no more pickings here, Pasteur, but perhaps you come to have your fortune told.

Shall I look in the crystal for you and tell you nice things about--what shall we say?
About the past of that handsome Madame of yours, for instance?
Oh! I will do it for love, yes, for love.