Elizabeth shook her head. She had wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward slightly, as if in pain.

“Darling, what is it?” Gideon asked, laying a hand on her back to comfort her. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” she murmured. “I just . . . I suddenly got this horrible feeling of . . . of foreboding as we arrived here, as if something terrible had happened.”

Everyone glanced at one another, but no one seemed aware of anything having happened, terrible or otherwise. Persephone pushed her way through the cluster of bodies surrounding Elizabeth to present her with a glass of water, which she took with both hands.

“Nothing has happened,” Persephone assured Elizabeth. “We were all just waiting for you to arrive.”

Elizabeth sipped the water and then sighed and handed the glass back to Persephone. “Thank you. I don’t know what came over me. I’m feeling a bit better now. I’m sure it was nothing.”

Plainly, it was not nothing, and no one was convinced it was.

“If you aren’t well, we can postpone the séance,” Cybil said, but the involuntary sounds of protest from the others that followed this assertion proved she was the only one willing to be so generous.

“I don’t want to disappoint anyone,” Elizabeth said a little unsteadily. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’m . . . It was just a silly notion, I’m sure. I have no idea what could have upset me.”

“Let’s give the poor girl some air,” Cybil suggested, motioning for everyone to step back, which they reluctantly did. “You didn’t have a vision or anything, did you?”

“A vision?” Elizabeth echoed in surprise. “No, nothing like that. Just an overwhelming feeling of dread, but it has passed now.”

“Perhaps something happened here in the past,” Persephone suggested eagerly. “People with the gift can be sensitive to such things.”

“Can they?” Gideon asked skeptically.

“Of course, they can,” Tilly’s mother said, although Gideon had no idea why he should take her word for it.

Gideon glanced at the other couple, who had yet to express an opinion. “It’s possible,” the woman assured him. The man said nothing.

“There,” Elizabeth said, straightening in her chair and laying a hand on her heart. “It’s gone now. I feel perfectly normal again.”

“Are you sure?” Cybil asked with a worried frown.

“She wouldn’t say so if she wasn’t,” Tilly’s mother said testily.

“Do you feel up to participating in the séance?” Persephone asked with apparent concern. Perhaps she was afraid of losing business if Elizabeth fainted or something.

“I do. In fact, now I’m actually more eager. I want to see if I can figure out what I was feeling. Perhaps the spirits will reveal it to me.” She sounded amazingly sincere, and Gideon managed not to roll his eyes.