Then he remembered.  Why, of course, it was the voice of that crazy, unpleasant old woman who had called on him last spring!  But how had Miss Pigchalke found her way into Wyndfell Hall?  And where on earth was she?

He looked round him, this way and that; and his eyes, by now accustomed to the dim light thrown by a hanging lamp, saw everything quite distinctly.  He was certainly alone in the corridor now.  But Miss Pigchalke had as certainly been there a moment ago.  He wondered if she could have hidden herself in a huge oak chest which stood to his right?  Nay, there she could not be, for he remembered having been shown that it was full of eighteenth-century gala gowns.

And while he was looking about him, feeling utterly perplexed and bewildered, through a door which was ajar there suddenly passed out Lionel Varick.

“Is anyone in there?” asked the doctor sharply.

Varick started violently.  “You did startle me!” he exclaimed.  “No, there’s no one in there—­I came up to look for a book.  But as I told them to delay dinner yet a little longer, would you mind if we went in and saw Bubbles together on our way downstairs?  I feel I should rather like to get my first interview with her over—­and with you there.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”  But there was a doubtful ring in Dr. Panton’s voice.  He would, as a matter of fact, have very much preferred that Varick should not see the girl to-night, especially if there was the slightest truth in the other’s suspicion that Bubbles believed him to have been in any way instrumental, however accidentally, in making her fall into the water.

His mind worked quickly, as minds are apt to work when faced with that sort of problem, and he decided that on the whole he might as well let Varick do as he wished.

“You’d better not say very much to her.  Just say you hope she’s feeling all right by now—­or something of that sort.”

But when they came to the closed door of the girl’s room he turned and said:  “I’ll just go in and prepare her for your visit—­if you don’t mind?”

* * * * *

Bubbles was lying straight down in bed, for, at her own request, the bolster had been taken away.  Her head was only just raised up on the pillow.  By the light of the one candle he could see her slender form outlined under the bed-clothes.  Her eyes were closed, her features pinched and worn.  There was something almost deathly in the look of her little face.

He wondered if she was asleep—­if so, it would be rather a relief to him to go outside the door and tell Varick that she mustn’t be disturbed.  But all at once she opened her eyes widely, and there even came the quiver of a smile over her face.

“Doctor?” she said plaintively.  “Doctor, come nearer, I want to ask you a question.”

“Yes?” he said.  “What is it, Miss Bubbles?”

“I want to ask you,” she said dreamily, “why you brought me back?  I was beginning to feel so much at home in the grey world.  There were such kind people there, waiting to welcome me.  Only one friend I felt sad to leave behind——­”