hed in white from head to foot, and
she appeared--I don't quite know how to describe it--as if at once
alive and dead. Her face looked dead, but her eyes looked alive."

"Had you ever seen either of these women before--I mean in life?"

He had turned away from her, and was staring into the fire.

"No; I've never seen anyone in the least like either of them."

Varick moved a few steps, and then, as if hardly knowing what he was
doing, he began turning over the leaves of the picture paper Miss
Burnaby had been reading.

"Do you suppose that Helen Brabazon saw exactly what you saw?" he asked
at last.

"No, I'm sure she didn't; for the younger-looking woman had already
disappeared, it was as if she faded into nothingness, before Helen
Brabazon called out,"--there was a hesitating, dubious tone in Blanche's
voice. "But of course we can't tell what exactly she did see. She may
have seen something--someone--quite different from what I thought I
saw."

Varick began staring into the fire again, and Blanche felt intolerably
nervous and uncomfortable. "I think, Lionel, that I must speak to
Bubbles very seriously!" she said at last. "I haven't a doubt _now_ that
she really has got some uncanny power--a power of stirring the
imagination--of making those about her think they see visions."

"But why should she have chosen that you should see such--such a vision
as that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"Ah, there you have me! I can't imagine what should prompt her to do
such a cruel, unseemly thing."

"You think it's quite impossible that Bubbles personated either of
these--these"--he hesitated for a word, and Blanche answered his only
half-asked question very decidedly.

"If there'd been only one figure there, I confess I should have thought
that Bubbles had in some way dressed up, and 'worked it.' You know how
fond she used to be of practical jokes? But there were two
forms--absolutely distinct the one from the other."

Lionel Varick took a turn up and down the long room. Then he came and
stood opposite to her, and she was shocked at the change in his face. He
looked as if he had been through some terrible physical experience.

"I wish you'd arrange for her to go away, at once--I mean, to-morrow.
Forgive me for saying such a thing, but I feel that nothing will go
right while Bubbles is at Wyndfell Hall," he exclaimed.

Blanche looked what he had never seen her look before--offended. "I
don't think I can get her away