But somehow Miss Farrow felt that the speaker was not alluding so much to the room, as to the way everything was being done, and her heart warmed to the girl, for she was really anxious that Lionel’s first party should be a success.

When they had settled themselves in the lovely, delicately austere-looking white parlour, as it was called, which again suggested to Blanche Farrow the atmosphere of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” Bubbles dutifully sat herself down by Miss Burnaby.  Soon she was talking to that lady in a way which at once fascinated and rather frightened her listener.  Bubbles had a very pretty manner to old people.  It was caressing, deferential, half-humorously protecting.  She liked to shock and soothe them by turns; and they generally yielded themselves gladly, after a little struggle, both to the shocking and to the soothing.

Miss Farrow and Helen Brabazon sat down at the further end of the delightful, gladsome-looking room.  It was hung with a delicate, faded Chinese paper; and against the walls stood a few pieces of fine white lacquer furniture.  The chairs were painted—­some French, some Heppelwhite.  Over the low mantelpiece was framed a long, narrow piece of exquisite embroidery.

“I suppose you have often stayed here?” began Miss Farrow civilly.

Helen Brabazon looked at her, surprised.  “I’ve never been here before!” she exclaimed.  “How could I have been?  I’ve only known Mr. Varick for, let me see,”—­she hesitated—­“a very little over a year.”

“But you were a great friend of his wife’s—­at least so I understood?”

Blanche concealed, successfully, her very real astonishment.  She had certainly been told by Lionel that Miss Brabazon and “poor Milly” had been intimate friends; that this fact was, indeed, the only link between Miss Brabazon and her host.

The girl now sitting opposite to her flushed deeply, and suddenly Blanche Farrow realized that there was a good deal of character and feeling in the open, ingenuous face.

“Yes, that’s true.  We became great friends”—­a note of emotion broke into the steady, well-modulated voice—­“but our friendship was not an old friendship, Miss Farrow.  I only knew Milly—­well, I suppose I knew her about ten weeks in all.”

“Ten weeks in all?” This time Blanche Farrow could not keep the surprise she felt out of her voice.  “What an extraordinary mistake for me to have made!  I thought you had been life-long friends.”

Helen shook her head.  “What happened was this.  A friend of mine—­I mean a really old friend—­had a bad illness, and I took her down to Redsands—­you may know it, a delightful little village not far from Walmer.  I took a house there, and Mr. and Mrs. Varick had the house next door.  We made friends, I mean Mr. Varick and myself, over the garden wall, and he asked me if I would mind coming in some day and seeing his wife.  I had a great deal of idle time on my hands, so very soon I spent even more time with the Varicks than I did with my friend, and she—­I mean poor Milly—­became very, very fond of me.”