en he remembered. Why, of course, it was the voice of that crazy,
unpleasant old woman who had called on him last spring! But how had Miss
Pigchalke found her way into Wyndfell Hall? And where on earth was she?

He looked round him, this way and that; and his eyes, by now accustomed
to the dim light thrown by a hanging lamp, saw everything quite
distinctly. He was certainly alone in the corridor now. But Miss
Pigchalke had as certainly been there a moment ago. He wondered if she
could have hidden herself in a huge oak chest which stood to his right?
Nay, there she could not be, for he remembered having been shown that it
was full of eighteenth-century gala gowns.

And while he was looking about him, feeling utterly perplexed and
bewildered, through a door which was ajar there suddenly passed out
Lionel Varick.

"Is anyone in there?" asked the doctor sharply.

Varick started violently. "You did startle me!" he exclaimed. "No,
there's no one in there--I came up to look for a book. But as I told
them to delay dinner yet a little longer, would you mind if we went in
and saw Bubbles together on our way downstairs? I feel I should rather
like to get my first interview with her over--and with you there."

"I don't see why you shouldn't." But there was a doubtful ring in Dr.
Panton's voice. He would, as a matter of fact, have very much preferred
that Varick should not see the girl to-night, especially if there was
the slightest truth in the other's suspicion that Bubbles believed him
to have been in any way instrumental, however accidentally, in making
her fall into the water.

His mind worked quickly, as minds are apt to work when faced with that
sort of problem, and he decided that on the whole he might as well let
Varick do as he wished.

"You'd better not say very much to her. Just say you hope she's feeling
all right by now--or something of that sort."

But when they came to the closed door of the girl's room he turned and
said: "I'll just go in and prepare her for your visit--if you don't
mind?"

* * * * *

Bubbles was lying straight down in bed, for, at her own request, the
bolster had been taken away. Her head was only just raised up on the
pillow. By the light of the one candle he could see her slender form
outlined under the bed-clothes. Her eyes were closed, her features
pinched and worn. There was something almost deathly in the look of her
little face.

He wondered if sh