ect--object on
the same ground as Daddy's tiresome widow does. However, I can but try."

She pirouetted round, and quickly drew with her foot a gilt footstool
from under an Empire settee. She stood upon it and clapped her hands.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" she cried. "This is a time of year when ghosts
are said to walk. Why shouldn't we hold a seance, here and now, and call
up spirits from the vasty deep?"

"But will they come?" quoted Sir Lyon, smiling up into her eager,
sensitive little face.

Sir Lyon was quite enjoying Lionel Varick's Christmas house-party. For
one thing, he was interested in his host's personality. In a small way
he had long made a study of Lionel Varick, and it amused him to see
Varick in a new role--that of a prosperous country gentleman.

Suddenly Bubbles found an ally in a most unexpected quarter. Helen
Brabazon called out: "I've always longed to attend a seance! I did once
go to a fortune-teller, and it was thrilling--."

Bubbles stepped down off her footstool. She had the gift--which her aunt
also possessed--of allowing another to take the field.

"If it was so exciting," said Lionel Varick dryly, "I wonder that you
only went once, Miss Brabazon."

Helen's face grew grave. "I'll tell you about it some day," she said in
a low voice; "as a matter of fact, it was just before you and I first
met."

"Yes," said Varick lightly. "And what happened? Do tell me!"

Helen turned to him, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "She described
Milly--I mean the fortune-teller described Milly, almost exactly. She
told me that Milly was going to play a great part in my life."

And then she felt sharply sorry she had said as much or as little as she
had said, for her host's face altered; it became, from a healthy pallor,
a deep red.

"Forgive me!" she exclaimed. "Forgive me! I oughtn't to have told you--"

"Don't say that. You can tell _me_ anything!"

Blanche Farrow, who had now moved forward to the fireplace, would again
have been very much surprised had she heard the intense, intimate tone
in which Lionel Varick uttered those few words to his late wife's
friend.

Helen blushed--a deep, sudden blush--and Sir Lyon, looking at her across
the room, told himself that she was a remarkable-looking girl, and that
he would like to make friends with her. He liked the earnest,
old-fashioned type of girl--but fate rarely threw him into the company
of such a one.

"It is quite unnecessary for any of you to m