Then he poured out another stiff brandy and plain water and drank it himself.

Donnington turned to Miss Farrow.  “I have never known Bubbles so—­so wonderful!” he exclaimed in a low voice.  “There must be something in the atmosphere of this place which made it easier than usual.”

Blanche Farrow looked at him searchingly.  “Surely you don’t believe in it?” she whispered incredulously.  “Of course it was a mixture of thought-reading and Bubbles’ usual quickness!”

“I don’t agree with you—­I wish I could.”  The young man looked very pale in the now bright light.  “I thoroughly disapprove of it all, Miss Farrow.  I wish to God I could stop Bubbles going in for it!”

“I agree with you that it’s very bad for her.”

The girl had gone away, right out of the circle.  She was sitting on a chair in the far corner of the room; her head, bent over a table, rested on her arms.

“She’ll be worn out—­good for nothing to-morrow,” went on Donnington crossly.  “She’ll have an awful night too.  I might have thought she’d be up to something of the sort!  One of the servants told her to-night that this house is haunted.  She’ll be trying all sorts of experiments if we can’t manage to stop her.  It’s the only thing Bubbles really lives for now, Miss Farrow.”

“I’m afraid it is”—­Blanche felt really concerned.  What had just taken place was utterly unlike anything she had ever imagined.  And yet—­and yet it didn’t amount to very much, after all!  The most extraordinary thing which had happened, to her mind, was what had been told to old Miss Burnaby.

And then all at once she remembered—­and smiled an inward, derisive little smile.  Why, of course!  She had overheard Miss Burnaby tell her neighbour at dinner that as a girl she had stayed a winter in Austria.  How quick, how clever Bubbles had been—­how daring, too!  Still, deep in her heart, she was glad that her niece had not had time to come round to where she, herself, had been sitting.  Bubbles knew a good deal about her Aunt Blanche, and it certainly would not have been very pleasant had the child made use of her knowledge—­even to a slight degree....  Miss Farrow went up to the table on which now stood a large lacquer tray, and poured herself out a glass of cold water.  She was an abstemious woman.

“I think some of us ought to go up to bed now” she said, turning round.  “It isn’t late yet, but I’m sure we’re all tired.  And we’ve had rather an exciting evening.”

There was a good deal of hand-shaking, and a little talk of plans for the morrow.  Bubbles had come over, and joined the others, but she was still curiously abstracted.

“Where’s Mr. Burnaby?” she asked suddenly.  “Wasn’t he at the seance?”

“He’s gone to bed,” said his sister shortly.

Her host was handing the old lady a bedroom candle, and she was looking up at him with a kind of appeal in her now troubled and bewildered face.