ow long I _was_ asleep?"

"You didn't sleep very long," said her aunt dryly--"not half-an-hour in
all. I should advise you, Bubbles, to follow Miss Brabazon's example--go
up and have a good rest, before getting ready for dinner."

Bubbles turned away. She walked very slowly, with dragging steps, to the
door; and a moment later Miss Burnaby also left the room.

Varick walked over towards the fireplace. He held out his hands to the
flames--he felt cold, shiveringly cold.

He turned, as he had so often done in the past, for comfort to the woman
now standing silent by his side, and who knew at once so much and so
little of his real life.

"I wonder what really happened?" he muttered. "It was a most
extraordinary thing! I've seldom met anyone so little hysterical or
fanciful as--as is Miss Brabazon." And then: "Why, Blanche," he
exclaimed, startled, "what's the matter?"

There was a look on her face he had never seen there before--a very
troubled, questioning, perplexed look.

"I saw something too, Lionel," she said in a low voice; "I--I saw more
than Helen Brabazon admits to having seen."

"_You_ saw something?" he echoed incredulously.

"Yes, and were it not that I am an older woman, and have more
self-control than your young friend, I should have cried out too."

"What _did_ you see?" he asked slowly.

"What I think I saw--for I am quite convinced that I saw nothing at all,
and that the extraordinary phenomenon or vision, call it what you will,
was only another of Bubbles' tricks--what I saw--" She stopped dead. She
found it extraordinarily difficult to go on.

"Yes?" he said sharply. "Please tell me, Blanche. What is it you saw, or
thought you saw?"

"I thought I saw _two_ women standing just behind your chair," she said
deliberately.

Varick made a violent movement--so violent that it knocked over a rather
solid little oak stool which always stood before the fire. "I beg your
pardon!" he exclaimed; and, stooping, picked the stool up again. Then,
"What sort of women?" he asked; and though he tried to speak lightly, he
failed, and knew he failed.

"It isn't very easy to describe them," she said reluctantly. "The one
was a stout young woman, with a gipsy type of face--that's the best way
I can describe it. But the other--"

She waited a full minute, but Varick did not, could not, speak.

She went on:

"The other, Lionel, looked more like--well, like what a ghost is
supposed to look like! She was swat