ooked
uncomfortable and disapproving.

After they had all been seated, waiting they hardly knew for what, for a
few moments, Bubbles leapt from her low chair and blew out all the
candles, a somewhat lengthy task, and one which plunged the room into
almost darkness. But she threw a big log of wood on the fire, and the
flames shot up, filling the room with shafts of rosy, fitful light.

There was a pause. Varick said something in a rather cheerful,
matter-of-fact voice to Miss Brabazon, and Bubbles turned round sharply:
"I'm afraid we ought to have complete silence--even silence of thought,"
she said solemnly.

Blanche Farrow looked at the girl. What queer jargon was this? In the
wavering light thrown by the fire Bubbles' face looked tense and rather
strained.

Was it possible, Blanche asked herself with a touch of uneasiness, that
the child was taking this seriously--that she _believed_ in it at all?
Her father thought so, but then Hugh Dunster was such an old fool!

The moments ran by. One or two of the chairs creaked. James Tapster
yawned, and he put up his hand rather unwillingly to hide his yawn. He
thought all this sort of thing very stupid, and so absolutely
unnecessary. He had enjoyed listening to Miss Bubbles' cheerful,
inconsequent chatter. It irritated him that she should have been dragged
away from him--for so he put it to himself--by that unpleasant,
supercilious woman, Blanche Farrow. It was a pity that a nice girl like
Miss Bubbles had such an aunt. Only the other day he had heard a queer
story about Miss Farrow. The story ran that she had once been caught in
a gambling raid, and her name kept out of the papers by the influence of
a man in the Home Office who had been in love with her at the time.

And then he looked up, startled for once--for strange, untoward sounds
were issuing from the lips of Bubbles Dunster. The girl was leaning
forward, her elbows on her knees, crouched upon the low chair, her
slight, sinuous little figure bathed in red light. She was groaning,
rocking herself backwards and forwards convulsively. To most of those
present it was a strange, painful exhibition--painful, yet certainly
thrilling!

Suddenly she began to speak, and the words poured from her lips with a
kind of breathless quickness. But the strange, uncanny, startling thing
about it was that the voice which uttered these staccato sentences was
not Bubbles' well modulated, drawling voice. It was the high, peevish
voi