“Forgive me for referring to something which makes my plan easier to carry out.  This year two accidents, the death of one colleague, and the premature retirement of another, have pushed me up the ladder of promotion, and, in addition, there has been a legacy.  The English of that is that for our joint menage we shouldn’t want your income at all; we could quite well do without it, and you would be perfectly free to use it in whatever way you like.

“There!  That is my plan.  Now, dearest of women, say yes and make us both happy, for you would make me so happy that I couldn’t help making you happy too.  I wish I had any idea where you will be when you read this letter, on which hangs all my hopes.  Perhaps you will read it at Monte, out on the Corniche Road.  Don’t let the fact that you have been lucky at play make me unlucky in—­you know what!

    “Yours ever (this is no figure of speech),

    “Mark Gifford.”

Blanche Farrow sighed and smiled, as she deliberately read the long letter through twice.  Somehow it warmed her heart; and yet would she ever be able to give up the life which in many ways suited her so well?  If she married Mark—­dear, kind, generous-hearted Mark—­various friendships which, even if they did not mean so much to her as they appeared to do, yet meant a good deal in her present lonely life, would certainly have to be given up.  To take but one instance.  It had almost been an instinct with her to keep Lionel Varick and Mark Gifford apart.  In the old days she had been disagreeably aware of how absolutely Gifford had always disapproved of Varick, and of Varick’s various ways of trying, often successfully, to raise the wind.  Of course, everything was now different with regard to this particular friend.  Varick had become—­by what anyone not a hypocrite must admit had been a fortunate circumstance—­a respectable member of society; but, even so, she knew, deep in her heart, that he and the man whose letter she held in her hand would never like one another.

And yet she was tired—­so tired!—­of the sort of life she led, year in and year out.  Her nerves were no longer what they had once been.  For instance, the strange series of happenings that had just taken place here, at Wyndfell Hall, had thoroughly upset her; and as for the horrible thing that had occurred yesterday, she hadn’t been able to sleep all night for thinking of it.  Nothing that had ever happened in her now long life had had quite the effect on Blanche Farrow that Bubbles’ accident had had.  She had realized, suddenly, how fond she was of the girl—­how strong in all of us is the call of the blood!  As she had stood watching Dr. Panton’s untiring efforts to restore the circulation of the apparently drowned girl there had gone up from Blanche’s heart a wild, instinctive prayer to the God in whom she did not believe, to spare the child.