ickly across the room, was struck by Varick's look of illness.

"There's no reason for telling him anything about it," she admitted.
"But hadn't we better wait till after dinner before doing anything?"

"Perhaps we had."

Dinner was a curious, uncomfortable meal; even Sir Lyon and Helen
Brabazon felt the atmosphere charged with anxiety and depression.

Miss Burnaby alone was her usual placid, quietly greedy self. She had
expressed suitable regret at all that had happened, but most of the
party realized that she had not really cared at all.

When the ladies passed through into the white parlour, Blanche slipped
away. She got hold of her firm ally, the butler, and explained in a very
few words what she thought had better be done. Accompanied by Pegler,
they went into every room, and into every nook and cranny of the house,
upstairs and down--but they found no trace of any alien presence.

Miss Pigchalke, so much was clear, had vanished as quietly and silently
as she had come.

CHAPTER XVIII

One--two--three--four--five--six--Bubbles heard the clock in the dark
corridor outside her room ring out the harmonious chimes, and she turned
restlessly round in her warm, comfortable bed.

It was very annoying to think she would have to wait two hours for a cup
of tea, but there it was! She had herself told Pegler she didn't want to
be disturbed till eight o'clock. She still felt too "done," too weak, to
get up and try to find her way to the kitchen to make herself some tea.

She lay, with her eyes wide open, longing for the daylight, and looking
back with shrinking fear to a night full of a misty horror.

Again and again she had lived through that awful moment when Varick had
pushed her over the edge of the embankment, to roll quickly, softly,
inexorably, into the icy-cold water.

She knew he had pushed her over. To herself it was a fact which did not
admit of any doubt at all. She had seen the mingled hatred and relief
which had convulsed his face. It was with that face she would always see
Lionel Varick henceforth.

There had been a moment when she had thought she would tell Dr. Panton;
then she had come to the conclusion that there was no good purpose to be
served by telling the strange and dreadful truth.

Some noble lines of Swinburne's which had once been quoted to her by a
friend she loved, floated into her mind--

"But ye, keep ye on earth
Your lips from over-speech,
Loud words and longing ar