ok on a graver tinge: "I couldn't help being very much
impressed last night, Mr. Varick. You see, my father, who died when I
was only eight years old, always called me 'Girlie.' Somehow that made
me feel as if _he was really there_."

"And yet," said Varick slowly, "Bubbles told you nothing that you didn't
know? To my mind what happened last night was simply a clever exhibition
of thought-reading. She's always had the gift."

"The odd thing was," said Helen, after a moment's hesitation, "that she
said my father didn't like my being here. _That_ wasn't
thought-reading--"

"There's something a little queer--a little tricky and malicious
sometimes--about Bubbles," he said meaningly.

Helen looked at him, startled. "Is there really? How--how horrid!" she
exclaimed.

"Yes, you mustn't take everything Bubbles says as gospel truth," he
observed, lighting a cigarette. "Still, she's a very good sort in her
way."

As he looked at her now puzzled, bewildered face, he realized that he
had produced on Helen's mind exactly the impression he had meant to do.
If Bubbles said anything about him which--well, which he would rather
was left unsaid--Helen would take no notice of it.

CHAPTER VIII

The party spent the rest of the morning in making friends with one
another. Mr. Tapster had already singled out Bubbles Dunster at dinner
the night before. He was one of those men--there are many such--who,
while professing to despise women, yet devote a great deal of not very
profitable thought to them, and to their singular, unexpected, and often
untoward behaviour!

As for Sir Lyon Dilsford, he was amused and touched to discover that, as
is so often the case with a young and generous-hearted human being,
Helen Brabazon had a sincere, if somewhat vague, desire to use her money
for the good of humanity. He was also touched and amused to find how
ignorant she was of life, and how really child-like, under her staid and
sensible appearance. Of what she called "society" she cherished an utter
contempt, convinced that it consisted of frivolous women and idle
men--in a word, of heartless coquettes and of fortune-hunters. To Helen
Brabazon the world of men and women was still all white and all black.
Sir Lyon, who, like most intelligent men, enjoyed few things more than
playing schoolmaster to an attractive young woman, found the hour that
he and Miss Brabazon spent together in the library of Wyndfell Hall
speed by all too quickly. T