uch immense potential power! Varick fully intended that that little
hand should one day, sooner rather than later, lie, confidingly, in
his. And when that happened he intended to behave very well. He would
"make good," as our American cousins call it; he would go into public
life, maybe, and make a big name for himself, and, incidentally, for
her. What might he not do, indeed--with Helen Brabazon's vast fortune
joined to her impeccable good name! He did not wish to give up his own
old family name; but why should they not become the Brabazon-Varicks? So
far had he actually travelled in his own mind, as he escorted his young
lady guest about the upper rooms and corridors of Wyndfell Hall.

As he glanced, now and again, at the girl walking composedly by his
side, he felt he would have given anything--_anything_--to have known
what was behind those candid hazel eyes, that broad white brow. Again he
was playing for a great stake, and playing, this time, more or less in
the dark....

His mind and memory swung back, in spite of himself, to his late wife.
Milly Fauncey had liked him almost from the first day they had met. It
had been like the attraction--but of course that was the very last
simile that would have occurred to Varick himself--of a rabbit for a
cobra. He had had but to look at the self-absorbed, shy, diffident human
being, to fascinate and draw her to himself. The task would have been
almost too easy, but for the dominant personality of poor Milly's
companion, Julia Pigchalke. She had fought against him, tooth and claw;
but, cunning old Dame Nature had been on his side in the fight, and, of
course, Nature had won.

Miss Pigchalke had always made the fatal mistake of keeping her ex-pupil
too much to herself. And during a certain fatal three days when the
companion had been confined to her hotel bedroom by a bad cold, the
friendship of shy, nervous Milly Fauncey, and of bold, confident Lionel
Varick, had fast ripened, fostered by the romantic Italian atmosphere.
During these three days Varick, almost without trying to do so, had
learnt all there was to learn of the simple-minded spinster and of her
financial circumstances. But he was not the man to take any risk, and he
had actually paid a flying visit to London--a visit of which he had
later had the grace to feel secretly ashamed--for it had had for object
that of making quite sure, at Somerset House, that Miss Fauncey's
account of herself was absolutely correct.