How strange to think that “poor Milly”—­for so had even her doctor come to call her in his own mind—­had been born and brought up in this delightful old house!  She had once spoken to him of her unhappy girlhood, coupling it with an expression of gratitude to her husband for having so changed her life.

“Poor Milly” was very present to Dr. Panton to-night.  He, who had hardly given her a thought during the last twelve months, found himself dwelling on her to an almost uncanny extent.  He even recalled some unusual features of her illness which had puzzled and worried him greatly.  He dismissed the recollection of certain of her symptoms with an effort.  There is no truer saying—­at any rate from a doctor’s point of view—­than “Let the dead bury their dead.”  He had done his very best for Mrs. Varick, lavished on her everything that skill and kindness could do, and she had been extraordinarily blessed, not only in her devoted husband, but in that sudden, unexpected friendship with another woman—­and with such a good, conscientious, sweet-tempered young woman as was Helen Brabazon....

Half-past one struck on the landing outside his room, and Dr. Panton got up from the comfortable easy chair; time to be going to bed, yet he still felt quite wide awake.

He walked over to the window nearest to the fire-place, and drew back the heavy, silk-brocaded curtain.  It was a wonderful night, with a promise, he thought, of fine weather—­though one of the men who had stood outside with him had predicted snow.  What a curious, eerie place this old Suffolk house was!  Probably the landscape had scarcely changed at all in the last five hundred years.  Below he could see gleaming water....

He let fall the curtain, and, blowing out the candles, got slowly, luxuriously, into the vast, comfortable four-post bed.

As he composed himself to sleep, broken, disconnected images floated through his brain.  Bill Donnington—­what a nice boy!  And yet not exactly, he felt, in sympathy with any of the people there.  He wondered why Bill Donnington had come to spend Christmas at Wyndfell Hall.  Then he remembered—­and smiled in the fitful firelight.  What a pity there wasn’t some nice, simple, gentle girl for young Donnington!  That was the sort of girl he, Panton, would have chosen for him.  Miss Bubbles, so much was clear, rather despised the poor lad.  She had implied as much in her clever, teasing, funny way, more than once.

And the thought of Bubbles unexpectedly brought up another image—­that of James Tapster.  Of the little party gathered together at Wyndfell Hall, Tapster was the one whom the doctor felt he really didn’t like.  He couldn’t imagine why Varick had asked that disagreeable fellow here!