on.

"Yes; I personally think it's only thought-reading. Still, it's
thought-reading carried very far. The kind of power Bubbles showed the
night before last seems to me partly hypnotic, and that's why I
disapprove of it so strongly."

"I agree," said Helen thoughtfully. "It was much more than ordinary
thought-reading. And I suppose that it's true that she thought she saw
the--the spirits she described so wonderfully?"

"I doubt if even she thought she actually saw them. I think she only
perceived each image in the mind of the person to whom she was
speaking."

"I suppose," asked Helen hesitatingly, "that you haven't the slightest
belief in ghosts, Miss Farrow?"

"No, I haven't the slightest belief in ghosts," Blanche smiled. "But I
do believe that if a person thinks sufficiently hard about it, he or she
can almost evolve the figure of a ghost. I think that's what happened to
my maid the other night. Pegler's a most sensible person, yet she's
quite convinced that she saw the ghost of the woman who is believed to
have killed her little stepson in the room next to that in which I am
now sleeping."

And then as she saw a rather peculiar look flit over her companion's
face, she added quickly: "D'you think that you have seen anything since
you've been here, Miss Brabazon?"

Helen hesitated. "No," she said. "I haven't exactly seen anything.
But--well, the truth is, Miss Farrow, that I do feel sometimes as if
Wyndfell Hall was haunted by the spirit of my poor friend Milly, Mr.
Varick's wife. Perhaps I feel as I do because, of course, I know that
this strange and beautiful old house was once her home. It's pathetic,
isn't it, to see how very little remains of her here? One might, indeed,
say that nothing remains of her at all! I haven't even been able to find
out which was her room; and I've often wondered in the last two days
whether she generally sat in the hall or in that lovely little
drawing-room."

"I can tell you one thing," said Blanche rather shortly, "that is that
there is a room in this house called 'the schoolroom.' It's between the
dining-room and the servants' offices. I believe it was there that Miss
Fauncey, as the people about here still call her, used to do her
lessons, with a rather disagreeable woman rejoicing in the extraordinary
name of Pigchalke, who lived on with her till she married."

"That horrible, horrible woman!" exclaimed Helen. "Of course I know
about _her_. She adored poor Milly. But