Donnington had been somewhat perturbed by the thought of their engagement being thus at once made public.  But Bubbles had observed cheerfully:  “Once people know about it, I shan’t be able to get out of it, even if I want to!” To that Bill had said, sorely, that if she wanted to give him the chuck she should of course do so, even on the altar steps.  Bubbles had laughed at that and exclaimed:  “I only said it to tease you, old thing!  The real truth is that I want father to understand that I really mean it—­that’s all.  He reads the Times right through every day, and he’ll think it true if he sees it there.  As for his tiresome widow, she’ll see it in the Morning Post—­and then she’ll believe it, too!”

Blanche Farrow told herself that this mysterious and extraordinary message might have something to do with Bubbles; and as she got up, she went on thinking with increasing unease of the unexpected assignation which lay before her.

It was a comfort to feel that that disagreeable man, James Tapster, was gone, and that the rest of the party, with the exception of herself and Bubbles, were going to-day.

Something had again been said about Miss Burnaby and her niece staying on, and she had heard Varick pressing them earnestly to do so; but the old lady had been unwilling to break her plan, the more so that she had an appointment with her dentist.  Then Varick had asked why Miss Brabazon shouldn’t stay on till Saturday?  There had been a considerable discussion about it; but Blanche secretly hoped they would all go away.  She felt tired and unlike herself.  The events of the last few days had shaken her badly.

What an extraordinary difference a few moments can make in one’s outlook on life!  Blanche Farrow was uncomfortably aware that she would never forget what had happened to her on New Year’s Eve.  That strange and fearful experience had obliterated some of her clearest mental landmarks.  She wished to think, she tried very hard to think, that in some mysterious way the vision she had seen with such terrible distinctness had been a projection from Bubbles’ brain—­Bubbles’ uncanny gift working, perchance, on Lionel Varick’s mind and memory.  She could not doubt that the two wraiths she had seen so clearly purported to be a survival of the human personalities of the two women who each had borne Varick’s name, and had been, for a while, so closely linked with him....

Yet long ago, when quite a young woman, she had come to the deliberate conclusion that there was no such survival of human personality.

Taking up Mark Gifford’s mysterious telegram, and one or two unimportant letters she had just received, she went downstairs, to see, as she came into the dining-room, that only Varick was already down.

He looked up, and she was shocked to see how ill and strained he looked.  He had taken poor little Bubbles’ accident terribly to heart; Blanche knew he had a feeling—­which was rather absurd, after all,—­that he in some way could have prevented it.