while the woman had fallen ill, and finally died. Blanche had seen how
it had pained and disturbed Varick to rake out the embers of the past,
and neither had ever referred to the sad story again.

* * * * *

And now, from considering the past, Blanche Farrow turned shrinkingly to
the present.

In common with the rest of the world, she had at times followed the
course of some great murder trial; and she had been interested, as most
intelligent people are occasionally interested, in the ins and outs of
more than one so-called "poisoning mystery."

But such happenings had seemed utterly remote from herself; and to her
imagination the word "murderer" had connoted an eccentric, cunning,
mentally misshapen monster, lacking all resemblance to the vast bulk of
human kind. She tried to realize that, if Mark Gifford's tale were true,
a man with whom she herself had long been in close sympathy, and whose
peculiar character she had rather prided herself on understanding, had
been--nay, was--such a monster.

Blanche felt a touch of shuddering repulsion from herself, as well as
from Varick, as she now remembered how sincerely she had rejoiced when,
reading between the lines of his letter, she had guessed that he was
marrying an unattractive woman for her money. It was now a comfort to
feel that, even so, she had certainly felt a sensation of disgust when
it had come to her knowledge that Varick had assumed, with regard to
that same unattractive woman, an extravagant devotion she felt convinced
he did not--could not--feel. It had shocked her, made her feel
uncomfortable, to hear Helen Brabazon's artless allusions to the
tenderness and devotion he had lavished on "poor Milly."

Helen Brabazon? A sensation of pain, almost of shame, swept over Blanche
Farrow. Were Helen to appear as witness in a _cause celebre_ the girl's
life would henceforth be shadowed and smirched by an awful memory. And
then there rose before her mind another dread possibility. Was it not
possible--nay, probable--that she, Blanche Farrow, would be sucked into
the vortex?

She remembered a case in which the prisoner had been charged with the
murder of a relation through whose death he had received considerable
benefit, and how four or five men and women of repute had been called to
testify to his high character, and to the kindness of his heart. But
their evidence had availed him nothing, for he had been hanged.

Blanche quicke