Helen’s face grew grave.  “I’ll tell you about it some day,” she said in a low voice; “as a matter of fact, it was just before you and I first met.”

“Yes,” said Varick lightly.  “And what happened?  Do tell me!”

Helen turned to him, and her voice dropped to a whisper.  “She described Milly—­I mean the fortune-teller described Milly, almost exactly.  She told me that Milly was going to play a great part in my life.”

And then she felt sharply sorry she had said as much or as little as she had said, for her host’s face altered; it became, from a healthy pallor, a deep red.

“Forgive me!” she exclaimed.  “Forgive me!  I oughtn’t to have told you—­”

“Don’t say that.  You can tell me anything!”

Blanche Farrow, who had now moved forward to the fireplace, would again have been very much surprised had she heard the intense, intimate tone in which Lionel Varick uttered those few words to his late wife’s friend.

Helen blushed—­a deep, sudden blush—­and Sir Lyon, looking at her across the room, told himself that she was a remarkable-looking girl, and that he would like to make friends with her.  He liked the earnest, old-fashioned type of girl—­but fate rarely threw him into the company of such a one.

“It is quite unnecessary for any of you to move,” observed Bubbles in a business-like tone; “but we are likely to obtain much better results if we blow out the candles.  The firelight will be quite enough.”

And then, to everyone’s surprise, Miss Burnaby spoke.  Her voice was gentle and fretful.  “I thought that there always had to be a medium at a seance,” she observed; “when I went with a friend of mine to what she called a Circle, there was a medium there, and we each paid her half-a-crown.”

“Of course there must be a medium,” said Bubbles quickly.  “And I am going to be the medium this time, Miss Burnaby; but it will be all free and for nothing—­I always do it for love!”

Varick looked at his young guest with a good deal of gratitude.  He had never numbered himself among the girl’s admirers.  To him Bubbles was like a caricature of her aunt.  But now he told himself that there was something to say, after all, for this queer younger generation who dare everything!  He supposed that Bubbles was going to entertain them with a clever exhibition of brilliant acting.  Lionel Varick was no mean actor himself, and it was as connoisseur, as well as expert, that he admired the gift when it was practised by others.

Spiritualism, table-turning, and fortune-telling—­he bracketed them all together in his own mind—­had never interested him in the least.  But he realized dimly what a wonderful chance this new fashionable craze—­for so he regarded it—­gives to the charlatan.  He had always felt an attraction to that extraordinary eighteenth century adventurer, Cagliostro, and to-night he suddenly remembered a certain passage in Casanova’s memoirs....  He felt rather sorry that they hadn’t planned out this—­this seance, before the rest of the party had arrived.  He could have given Bubbles a few “tips” which would have made her task easy, and the coming seance much more thrilling.