Then had come the strange part of the story!

When on her way to stay with some friends in Sussex a few days later, she found herself in the same railway carriage as Miss Weatherfield; and, during the course of some desultory talk, the latter had mentioned that she was daughter to the Chichester doctor who had attended Lionel Varick’s wife in her last illness.

Lionel Varick’s wife?  For a moment Blanche had thought that there must be some mistake, or that her ears had betrayed her.  But she very soon realized that there was no mistake, and that she had heard aright.

Successfully concealing her ignorance of the fact that their mutual friend was a widower, she had ventured a few discreet questions, to which had come willing answers.  These made it clear why Varick had chosen to remain silent concerning what had evidently been a sordid and melancholy episode of his past life.

Miss Weatherfield told her pleasant new acquaintance that the Varicks, when they had first come to Chichester, had been very poor, the wife of an obviously lower class than the husband.  But that Varick, being the gentleman he was, had not minded what he did to earn an honest living, and that through Dr. Weatherfield he had obtained for a while employment with a chemist, his work being that of taking round the medicines, as he was not of course qualified to make up prescriptions.

While Miss Weatherfield had babbled on, Blanche had been able to piece together what had evidently been a singularly painful story.  Mrs. Varick had been a violent, disagreeable woman, and the kindly spinster had felt deeply sorry for the husband, himself little more than a boy.  But she admitted that her father, while attending Mrs. Varick, had acquired a prejudice against the husband of his patient, and she added, smilingly, that it was without her father’s knowledge or consent that she had given the young man, after the death of his wife, a valuable business introduction.

Miss Weatherfield evidently flattered herself that this introduction had been a turning-point in Varick’s life, and that what appeared to her his present prosperity was owing to what she had done.  In any case, he had shown his gratitude by keeping in touch with her, and on the rare occasions when she came to London, they generally met.

Blanche Farrow, even in those early days, was too much a woman of the world to feel as surprised as some people would have been.  All the same, she had felt disconcerted and a little pained, that the man who was fond of telling her that she was his only real friend in the world had concealed from her so important a fact as that of his marriage.