“Then you know very little of how Varick lived before you yourself met him?  How old would he have been then, Blanche?”

“I should think four or five-and-twenty,” she said hesitatingly.

“I suppose,” and then Mark Gifford looked at her with a troubled, hesitating look, “I suppose, Blanche—­I fear I’m going to surprise you—­that you were not aware that he’d been married before?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly, “I did know that, Mark.”

What on earth was he driving at?  That woman, Lionel Varick’s first wife, was surely dead?  She, Blanche, had had, by a curious accident, someone else’s word for that.  And then—­there rose before her the vision of a ghastly-looking, wild, handsome face; quickly she put it from her, and went on:  “He married, when he was only nineteen, a girl out of his own class.  They separated for a while; then they seem to have come together again, and, fortunately for Lionel, she died.”

“She died murdered—­poisoned.”

Mark Gifford uttered the dread words very quietly.  “Almost certainly poisoned by her husband, Lionel Varick.”

A mist came over Blanche Farrow’s eyes.  She turned suddenly sick and faint.

She put out her hand blindly.  Gifford took it, and made her sit down on a stone bench.

“I’m sorry,” he said feelingly, “very, very sorry to have had to tell you this dreadful thing, Blanche.”

“Never mind,” she muttered.  “Go on, Mark, if there’s anything else to say—­go on.”

As he remained silent for a moment, she asked, in a dull, tired tone:  “But if this awful thing is true, how was it found out, after so many years?”

“It’s a peculiar story,” he answered reluctantly.  “The late—­I might say the last—­Mrs. Varick, whose name, as you of course know, was Millicent Fauncey, had first as governess, and then as companion, an elderly woman called by the extraordinary name of Pigchalke.  This Julia Pigchalke seemed to have hated Varick from the first.  She violently disapproved of the engagement, quarrelled with Miss Fauncey about it, and the two women never met after the marriage.  But Miss Pigchalke evidently cared deeply for poor Mrs. Varick; I’ve seen her, and convinced myself of that.”

“What is she like?” asked Blanche suddenly.

“Well, she’s not attractive!  A stout, stumpy, grey-haired woman, with a very red face.”

Blanche covered her eyes with her hands.  “Go on,” she said again, “go on, Mark, with what you were saying.”

“Where was I?  Oh, I know now!  When Mrs. Varick died, within less than a year of her marriage, Miss Pigchalke suspected foul play, and she deliberately set herself to track Lionel Varick down.  She made it her business to find out everything about him, and but for her I think we may take it that he would have gone on to the end of the chapter a respectable, and in time highly respected, member of society.”

There was a pause.  Blanche was staring before her, listening.