The story begins with the explanation of that circumstance which
had greatly puzzled Mr. Ricardo--Celia's entry into the household
of Mme. Dauvray.
Celia's father was a Captain Harland, of a marching regiment, who
had little beyond good looks and excellent manners wherewith to
support his position. He was extravagant in his tastes, and of an
easy mind in the presence of embarrassments. To his other
disadvantages he added that of falling in love with a pretty girl
no better off than himself. They married, and Celia was born. For
nine years they managed, through the wife's constant devotion, to
struggle along and to give their daughter an education. Then,
however, Celia's mother broke down under the strain and died.
Captain Harland, a couple of years later, went out of the service
with discredit, passed through the bankruptcy court, and turned
showman. His line was thought-reading; he enlisted the services of
his daughter, taught her the tricks of his trade, and became "The
Great Fortinbras" of the music-halls. Captain Harland would move
amongst the audience, asking the spectators in a whisper to think
of a number or of an article in their pockets, after the usual
fashion, while the child, in her short frock, with her long fair
hair tied back with a ribbon, would stand blind-folded upon the
platform and reel off the answers with astonishing rapidity. She
was singularly quick, singularly receptive.
The undoubted cleverness of the performance, and the beauty of the
child, brought to them a temporary prosperity. The Great
Fortinbras rose from the music-halls to the assembly rooms of
provincial towns. The performance became genteel, and ladies
flocked to the matinees.
The Great Fortinbras dropped his pseudonym and became once more
Captain Harland.
As Celia grew up, he tried a yet higher flight--he became a
spiritualist, with Celia for his medium. The thought-reading
entertainments became thrilling seances, and the beautiful child,
now grown into a beautiful girl of seventeen, created a greater
sensation as a medium in a trance than she had done as a lightning
thought-reader.
"I saw no harm in it," Celia explained to M. Fleuriot, without any
attempt at extenuation. "I never understood that we might be doing
any hurt to any one. People were interested. They were to find us
out if they could, and they tried to and they couldn't. I looked
upon it quite simply in that way. It was just my profession. I
accepted it without any question. I was not troubled about it
until I came to Aix."
A startling exposure, however, at Cambridge discredited the craze
for spiritualism, and Captain Harland's fortunes declined. He
crossed with his daughter to France and made a disastrous tour in
that country, wasted the last of his resources in the Casino at
Dieppe, and died in that town, leaving Celia just enough money to
bury him and to pay her third-class fare to Paris.