Wyndfell Hall.

Suddenly his eyes fell on the following passage:

"Every piece of the furniture in 'the White Parlour,' as it is still
called, is of historic value and interest. To take but one example.
A low, high-backed chair, covered with _petit point_ embroidery,
is believed to have been the _prie-dieu_ on which the Princesse
de Lamballe knelt during the whole of the night preceding her terrible
death. In a document which was sold with the chair in 1830, her
servant--who, it appears, had smuggled the chair into the
prison--recounts the curious fact that the poor Princess had a
prevision that she was to be _torn in pieces_. She spent the last
night praying for strength to bear the awful ordeal she knew lay
before her."

Donnington shut the book. "That's strange!" he muttered to himself as
he got up.

After putting the book back in the bookcase where he had found it, he
stood and looked round the splendid apartment with a mixture of interest
and delighted attention.

Yes, this wonderful old "post and panel" dwelling was the most beautiful
of the many beautiful old country houses with which he had made
acquaintance in the last two or three years; and it was awfully good of
Bubbles to have got him asked here! Even if she hadn't actually
suggested he should come, he knew that of course he owed his being here
to her.

The queer, enigmatic, clever girl had the whole of Donnington's
steadfast heart. Since he had first met Bubbles--only some eighteen
months ago, but it now seemed an eternity--all life had been different.

At first she had at once repelled, attracted, and shocked him. He had
been much taken aback when she had first proposed coming to see him,
unchaperoned, in the modest rooms he occupied in Gray's Inn. Then, after
she had twice invited herself to tea, her constant comings seemed quite
natural. Sometimes she would be accompanied by a friend, either another
girl or a man, and they would form a merry, happy little party of three
or four. But of course he was far, far happiest when she came alone.
Almost from the first moment there had been a kind of instinctive
intimacy between them, and very soon she had learnt to rely on him--even
to take his advice about little things--and to come to him with all her
troubles.

Bubbles Dunster had already been what Donnington in his own mind called
"deeply bitten" with spiritualism before they had met; yet he had known
he