There was a pause.  And then the younger woman went on:  “And if we knew each other for such a short time, as one measures time, I on my side soon got very fond of Milly.  Though she was a good deal over thirty”—­again the listener felt a thrill of unreasoning surprise—­“there was something very simple and young about poor Milly.”

The speaker stopped, and Blanche, leaning forward, exclaimed:  “I am deeply interested in what you tell me, Miss Brabazon!  I have never liked to say much to Lionel about his wife; but I have always so wondered what she was really like?”

“She simply adored Mr. Varick,” Helen answered eagerly.  “She worshipped him!  She was always making plans as to what she and ‘Lionel’ would do when she got better.  I myself thought it very wrong that all of them, including Dr. Panton, entered into a kind of conspiracy not to let her know how ill she was.”

“I think that was right,” said Blanche Farrow shortly.  “Why disturb her happiness—­if indeed she was happy?”

“She was indeed!—­very, very happy!” cried Helen.  “She had had a miserable life as a girl, and even after she was grown up.  When she met Mr. Varick, and they fell in love at first sight, she’d hardly ever seen a man to speak to, excepting some of her father’s tiresome old cronies—­”

“Was she pretty?” asked Blanche abruptly.

“Oh, no,”—­the other shook her head decidedly.  “Not at all pretty—­in fact I suppose most people would have called her very plain.  Poor Milly was sallow, and, when I knew her, very thin; but I believe she’d never been really strong, never really healthy.”  She hesitated, and then said in a low voice:  “That made Mr. Varick’s wonderful devotion to her all the more touching.”

Blanche Farrow hardly knew what to say.  “Yes, indeed,” she murmured mechanically.

Lionel devoted to a plain, unhealthy woman?  Somehow she found it quite impossible to believe that he could ever have been that.  And yet there was no doubting the sincerity of the girl’s accents.

“Both Dr. Panton and I used to agree,” Helen went on, “that he didn’t give himself enough air and exercise.  I hired a car for part of the time, and used to take him out for a good blow, now and again.”

“And what did Mrs. Varick really die of?” asked Blanche Farrow.

“Pernicious anaemia,” answered Helen promptly.  “It’s a curious, little-known disease, from what I can make out.  The doctor told me he thought she had had it for a long time—­or, at any rate, that she had had it for some years before she married Mr. Varick.”

There was a pause.

“I wonder why they didn’t come and live here?” said Miss Farrow thoughtfully.

“Oh, but she hated Wyndfell Hall!  You see, her father’s whole mind had been set on nothing but this house, and making it as perfect as possible.  It was in a dreadful state when he inherited it from an old cousin; yet he was offered, even so, an enormous sum for some of the wonderful oak ceilings.  But he refused the offer—­indignantly, and he set himself to make it what it must have been hundreds of years ago.”