ents in the long course of
their friendship!

"I hope Bubbles won't try on any more of her thought-reading
tomfoolery," he said disagreeably. "What happened last night has driven
Mr. Burnaby away."

"I think you're wrong," said Blanche quickly. "I'm certain he received
the letter of which he spoke."

"I don't agree with you"; and it was with difficulty that Varick
restrained himself from telling her what he had overheard the unpleasant
old man say to his niece.

"I think we shall get on all the better without him," said Blanche
decidedly.

She vaguely resented the way in which Varick spoke of Bubbles. After
all, the girl had come to Wyndfell Hall out of the purest good
nature--in order to help them through with their party.

"Oh, well, I daresay you're right." (He couldn't afford to quarrel with
Blanche.) "And I forgot one thing. I've heard from Panton--"

"You mean your doctor friend?" she said coldly.

"Yes, and he hopes to be here sooner than he thought he could be. He's a
good chap, Blanche"--there came a note of real feeling into Varick's
voice--"awfully hard-worked! I hope we'll be able to give him a good
time."

"He'll have to sleep in the haunted room."

"That won't matter. He wouldn't believe in a ghost, even if he saw one!
Be nice to him, for my sake; he was awfully good to me, Blanche."

And Blanche Farrow softened. There was a very good side to her friend
Lionel. He was one of those rare human beings who are, in a moral sense,
greatly benefited by prosperity. In old days, though his attractive,
dominant personality had brought him much kindness, and even friendship,
of a useful kind, his hand had always been, as Blanche Farrow knew well,
more or less against every man. But now?--now he seemed to look at the
world through rose-coloured glasses.

He glanced at the still very attractive woman standing by his side, his
good-humour quite restored. "A penny for your thoughts!" he said
jokingly.

Blanche shook her head, smiling. Not for very much more than a penny
would she have told him the thought that had suddenly come, as such
thoughts will do, into her mind. That thought was, how extraordinary had
been Varick's transformation from what a censorious world might have
called an unscrupulous adventurer into a generous man of position and
substance--all owing to the fact that some two years ago he had drifted
across an unknown woman in a foreign hotel!

Even to Blanche there was something patheti