“I can take you to a place,” he exclaimed, “where I think we shall find it dry walking even to-day.  It’s a kind of causeway, or embankment”—­he turned to Helen Brabazon—­“which some people say was built by the Romans.”

“I think a walk would be very nice,” she agreed.

Helen did not look like her usual cheerful, composed self.  The experience which had befallen her the day before still haunted her mind to the exclusion of everything else.  Perhaps a good long walk would make her feel a different creature, and chase that awful image of Milly Varick in her grave-clothes from her brain.

And so in the end the whole party started off, with the exception of Miss Burnaby and Dr. Panton.  Bubbles tried hard to get out of going on what she frankly said seemed to her “a stupid expedition,” but Donnington had a theory that the open air would do her good, and as for Varick, he exclaimed in a good-humoured but very determined tone:  “If you won’t come, Bubbles, I give the whole thing up!” In a lower voice he added:  “Naughty as you are, you’re the life and soul of the party.”

And thus it was to please Varick, rather than Donnington, that Bubbles started on what was to be to all those that took part in it a memorable walk.

Poor Donnington!  The young man felt alarmed and perplexed concerning Bubbles’ general condition.  He knew something that had shocked and startled her had happened the day before, but when he had tried to find out what it was, she had snubbed him.

Like so many people wiser and cleverer than himself, Donnington found it impossible to make up his mind concerning psychic phenomena.  When kneeling by Bubbles’ side in the dimly-lit church he had accepted, almost without question, her own explanation of her strange and sinister gift, but by now he had argued himself out of the belief that such things could be in our work-a-day world.

There was someone else of the party who was also giving a great deal of anxious thought to Bubbles’ uncanny powers.  Blanche Farrow, like Helen Brabazon, could not banish from her mind the experience which had befallen her in the hall last evening.  Every time she looked at Lionel Varick there rose before her that terrible vision of the two unquiet spirits who had stood, sentinel-wise, on either side of him....

Again and again in the long watches of a wakeful night, Blanche had-assured herself that what she had seen was no more real than is a vivid dream.  She had further told herself, taking comfort in the telling, that the power possessed by Bubbles was now understood, and accounted for, by those learned men who make a scientific study of hypnotism.  Yet, try as she would, she could not banish from her mind and from her memory the unnerving experience.

They were crossing the moat bridge when there came a shout from the house.  They all stopped, to be joined, a minute later, by Dr. Panton.  “It’s an extraordinary thing,” he exclaimed, “I fully intended to give up this afternoon to writing, but somehow I suddenly felt as if I must look out of the window!  You all looked so merry and bright that I have thrown my work to the winds, and here I am, coming with you.”