satisfaction at the lively scene, though Blanche Farrow saw his face
change and stiffen, when his penetrating eyes rested in turn for a long
moment on Bubbles' now laughing little face. Perhaps because of that
frowning look, she drew the girl after her into the hall. "Come in here
for a moment, Bubbles--I want to speak to you. I've just heard Helen
Brabazon say something about raising the ghost. No more séances while
I'm in command here--is that understood?"

And Bubbles looked up with an injured, innocent expression. "Of course
it's understood! Though, as a matter of fact, Miss Burnaby has already
asked me to give her a private sitting."

"You must promise me to refuse, Bubbles--" Miss Farrow spoke very
decidedly. "I don't know how you do what you did last night, and, to
tell you the truth, I don't care--for it's none of my business. But
there was one moment this morning when I feared that horrid Mr. Burnaby
was going to take his sister and his niece away--and that really would
have been serious!"

"Serious?" queried Bubbles. "Why serious, Blanche? We should have got on
very well without them."

Her aunt looked round. They were quite alone, standing, for the moment,
in a far corner of the great room, near the finely carved confessional
box, which seemed, even to Blanche Farrow, an incongruous addition to
the furniture.

"You're very much mistaken, Bubbles! Lionel would have never forgiven
you--or me. He attaches great importance to these people; Helen Brabazon
was a great friend of his poor wife's." She hesitated, and then said
rather awkwardly: "I sometimes wish you liked him better; he's a good
friend, Bubbles."

"I should think more a bad enemy than a good friend," muttered the girl,
in so low a voice that her aunt hardly caught the ungracious words.

That was all--but that was enough. Blanche told herself that she had now
amply fulfilled the promise she had made to Lionel Varick when the two
had stood speeding their parting guest this morning from Wyndfell Hall.
Even quite at the end Mr. Burnaby had been barely civil. He seemed to
think that there had been some kind of conspiracy against him the night
before; and as they watched the car go over the moat bridge, Varick had
muttered: "I wouldn't have had this happen for a thousand pounds!" But
he had recovered his good temper, and even apologized to Blanche for
having felt so much put out by the action of a cantankerous old man.

The others were now all streaming into the hall, and Bubbles would
hardly allow the good-natured Sir Lyon and Bill Donnington to finish
their cigarettes before she shooed them out to cut down some ivy. Varick
looked annoyed when he heard that the decorations in the church were not
yet finished. "Can't we bribe some of the servants to go down and do
them?" he asked. "It seems a shame that you and Donnington should have
to go off there again in the cold and darkness."

But in her own way Bubbles had almost as strong a will as had her host.
She always knew what she wanted to do, and generally managed to do it.
"I would much rather finish the work myself, and I think Bill would
rather come too," she said coolly.

So once more the little donkey-cart was loaded up with holly and trails
of ivy, and the two set off amid the good-natured comments and chaff of
the rest of the party. James Tapster alone looked sulky and annoyed. He
wondered how a bright, amusing girl like Bubbles Dunster could stand the
company of such a commonplace young man as was Bill Donnington.

As they reached the short stretch of open road which separated Wyndfell
Hall from the church, Bubbles felt suddenly how cold it was.

"I think we shall have snow to-morrow," said Donnington, looking round
at his companion. He could only just see her little face in the
twilight, and when they finally passed through the porch in the glorious
old church, it seemed, for the first few moments, pitch-dark.

"I'll tell you what I like best about this church," said the girl
suddenly.

"For my part," said Donnington simply, "I like everything about it."

He struck a match, and after a few minutes of hard work, managed to
light several of the hanging oil lamps.

"What I like best," went on Bubbles, "are the animals up there."

She pointed to where, just under the cambered oak roof, there ran a
dado, on which, carved in white bas-relief, lions, hares, stags, dogs,
cats, crocodiles, and birds, formed a singular procession, which was
continued round the nave and choir.

"Yes, I like them too," assented Donnington slowly. "Though somehow I
did feel this afternoon that they were out of place in a church."

"Oh, how can you say that?" cried the girl. "I love to think of them
here! I'm sure that at night they leap joyfully down, and skip about the
church, praising the Lord."

"Bubbles!" he exclaimed reprovingly.

"Almost any animal," she said, with a touch of seriousness, "is nicer,
taking it all in all, than almost any human being." And then she quoted
in the deep throaty voice which was one of her greatest charms:

  "A robin redbreast in a cage
  Puts all Heaven in a rage."

"The one _I_ should like to see put over every manger is:

  "A horse misus'd upon the road
  Calls to Heaven for human blood,"

said Donnington.

"Oh!" she cried, "and Bill, surely the best of all is:

  "A skylark wounded on the wing,
  A cherubim doth cease to sing."

Donnington smiled. "I suppose I'm more practical than you are," he said.
"If I were a schoolmaster, I'd have inscribed on the walls of every
classroom:

  "Kill not the moth or butterfly,
  For the Last Judgment draweth nigh."

They worked very hard during the half-hour that followed, though only
the finishing touches remained to be done. Still, it meant moving a
ladder about, and stretching one's arms a good deal, and Bubbles
insisted on doing her full share of everything.

"Let's rest a few minutes," she said at last, and leading the way up the
central aisle, she sat down wearily in one of the carved choir stalls.

Then she lifted her arms, and putting her hands behind her neck, she
tipped her head back.

The young man came and sat down in the next stall. Bubbles was leaning
back more comfortably now, her red cap almost off her head. There was a
great look of restfulness on her pale, sensitive face.

She put out her hand and felt for his; after a moment of hesitation he
slid down and knelt close to her.

"Bubbles," he whispered, "my darling--darling Bubbles. I wish that here
and now you would make up your mind to give up everything--" He stopped
speaking, and bending, kissed her hand.

"Yes," she said dreamily. "Give up everything, Bill? Perhaps I will. But
what do you mean by everything?"

There was a self-pitying note in her low, vibrant voice. "You know it is
given to people, sometimes, to choose between good and evil. I'm
afraid"--she leant forward, and passed her right hand, with a touch of
tenderness most unusual with her, over his upturned face and curly
hair--"I'm afraid, Bill, that, almost without knowing it, I chose evil,
'Evil, be thou my good.' Isn't that what the wicked old Satanists used
to say?"

"Don't you say it too!" he exclaimed, sharply distressed.

"I know I acted stupidly--in fact, as we're in a church I don't mind
saying I acted very wrongly last night."

Bubbles spoke in a serious tone--more seriously, indeed, than she had
ever yet spoken to her faithful, long-suffering friend. "But a great
deal of what happens to me and round me, Bill, I can't help--I wish I
could," she said slowly.

"I don't quite understand." There was a painful choking feeling in his
throat. "Try and tell me what you mean, Bubbles."

"What I mean is clear enough"--she now spoke with a touch of impatience.
"I mean that wherever I am, _They_ come too, and gather about me. It
wasn't my fault that that horrible Thing appeared to Pegler as soon as I
entered the house."

"But why should you think the ghost Pegler saw--if she did see it--had
anything to do with you? Wyndfell Hall has been haunted for over a
hundred years--so the village people say."

"Pegler saw nothing till I came. And though I struggle against the
belief, and though I very seldom admit it, even to myself, I know quite
well, Bill, that I'm never really alone--never free of Them
unless--unless, Bill, I'm in a holy place, when they don't dare to
come."

There was a tone of fear, of awful dread, in her voice. In spite of
himself he felt impressed.

"But why should they come specially round _you_?" he asked uneasily.

"You know as well as I do that I'm a strong medium. But I'll tell you,
Bill, something which I've never told you before."

"Yes," he said, with a strange sinking of the heart. "What's that,
Bubbles?"

"You know that Persian magician, or Wise Man, whom certain people in
London went cracked over last spring?"

"The man you _would_ go and see?"

"Yes, of course I mean that man. Well, when he saw me he made his
interpreter tell me that he had a special message for me--"

Bubbles was leaning forward now, her hands resting on Bill's shoulders.
"I wonder if I ought to tell you all he said," she whispered. "Perhaps I
ought to keep it secret."

"Of course you ought to tell me! What was the message?"

"He said that I had rent the veil, wilfully, and that I was often
surrounded by the evil demons who had come rushing through; that only by
fasting and praying could I hope to drive them back, and close the rent
which I had made."

"I shouldn't allow myself to think too much of what he said," said Bill
hoarsely. "And yet--and yet, Bubbles? There may have been something in
it--."

He spoke very earnestly, poor boy.

"Of course there was a great deal in it. But they're not always demons,"
she said slowly. "Now, for instance, as I sit here, where good, simple
people have been praying together for hundreds of years, the atmosphere
is kind and holy, not wicked and malignant, as it was last night."

She waited a moment, then began again, "I remember going into a cottage
not long ago, where an old man holds a prayer meeting every Wednesday
evening--he's a Dissenter--you know the sort of man I mean? Well, I felt
extraordinarily comforted, and _left alone_."

Her voice sank to a low whisper. "I suppose"--there came a little catch
in her voice--"I suppose, Bill, that I am what people used to call
'possessed.' In old days I should have been burnt as a witch. Sometimes
I feel as if a battle were going on round me and for me--a battle
between good and evil spirits. That was what I was feeling last night,
before you came up. I couldn't rest--I couldn't stay in bed. I felt as
if I must move about to avoid--"

"To avoid what?" he asked.

"--Their clutchings."

Her voice dropped. "I've been in old houses where I seemed to know
everything about every ghost!"--she tried to smile. "People don't change
when they what we call die. If they're dull and stupid, they remain dull
and stupid. But here in Wyndfell Hall, I'm frightened. I'm frightened of
Varick--I feel as if there were something secret, secret and sinister,
about him. I seem to hear the words, 'Beware--beware,' when he is
standing by me. What do _you_ think about him, Bill? There are a lot of
lying spirits about."

"I haven't thought much about Varick one way or the other," said
Donnington reluctantly. "But I should have thought he was a good
chap. See how fond Miss Farrow is of him?"

"That doesn't mean much," she said dreamily. "Blanche doesn't know
anything about human nature--she only thinks she does. She's no
spiritual vision left at all."

"I'm sorry you have that feeling about Varick," said Bill uncomfortably.

"Varick is never alone," said Bubbles slowly. "When I first arrived, and
he came out to the porch to meet me, there was Something standing by
him, which looked so real, Bill, that I thought it really was a woman of
flesh and blood. I nearly said to him, 'Who's that? Introduce me.'"

"D'you mean you think you actually see spirits, even when you're not
setting out to do so, Bubbles?" asked. Bill.

She had never said that to him before. But then this was the first time
she had ever talked to him as freely and as frankly as she was talking
now.

"Yes, that's exactly what I do mean," she said. "It's a sort of power
that grows--and oh, Bill, I'd do anything in the world to get rid of it!
But this woman whom I saw standing by Lionel Varick in the porch was not
a spirit. She was an astral body; that is, she was alive somewhere else:
it was her thoughts--her vengeful, malicious thoughts--which brought her
here."

"I can't believe that!" he exclaimed.

"It's true, Bill. Though I never saw an astral body before, I knew that
Thing to be one--as soon as I realized it wasn't a real woman standing
there."

"What was she like?" he asked, impressed against his will.

"An ugly, commonplace-looking woman. But she had a powerful, determined
sort of face, and she was staring up at him with a horrible expression:
I could see that she hated him, and wished him ill--"

"Have you ever seen the--the Thing again?"

Yes, of course I have. The same astral body was there last night. It was
from her that his mother was trying to shield him."

"But you've never seen this astral body--as you call it--excepting on
those two occasions?"

Bubbles hesitated. "I've only seen her clearly twice. But during the
week that I've been here, I've often felt that she was close to Lionel
Varick."

"And what's your theory about her? Why does she hate him, I mean?"

"My theory--?" the girl hesitated again. "I should think it's someone he
was fond of when he was a young man, and whom he treated badly. She's
ugly enough now--but then women do change so."

"Bubbles," he uttered her name very seriously.

"Yes, Bill?"

"Surely you can stop yourself seeing these kind of strange, dreadful,
unnatural things?"

Bubbles did not answer all at once. And then she said: "Yes--and no,
Bill! It sometimes happens that I see what you would call a ghost
without wishing to see it; yet I confess that sometimes I _could_ stop
myself. But it excites and stimulates me! I feel a sort of longing to be
in touch with what no one else is in touch with. But I'll tell you one
thing"--she was pressing up closer to him now, and his heart was
beating.... If only this enchanted hour could go on--if only Bubbles
would continue in this gentle, sincere, confiding mood--

"Yes," he said hoarsely, "what will you tell me?"

"I never see anything bad when I'm with you. I think I saw your Guardian
Angel the other day, Bill."

He tried to laugh.

"Indeed I did! Though you are so tiresome and priggish," she whispered,
"though often, as you know, I should like to shake you, still, I know
that you've chosen the good way; that's why our ways lie so apart,
dearest--"

As she uttered the strange words, she had slid down, and was now lying
in his arms, her face turned up to his in the dim light....

Their ways apart? Ah, no! He caught her fiercely to his heart, and for
the first time their lips met in a long, clinging kiss.

Then, all at once, he got up and pulled Bubbles on to her feet. "We must
be going back to the house," he said, speaking with a touch of hardness
and decision which was rare in his dealings with the girl.

"Watch with me, and pray for me," she muttered--and then: "You don't
know what a comfort you are to me, Bill."

A wild wish suddenly possessed him to turn and implore her, now that she
was in this strange, gentle, yielding mood, to marry him at once--to
become his wife in secret, under any conditions that seemed good to her!
But he checked the impulse, drove it back. He felt that he would be
taking a mean advantage if he did that now. She had once said to him: "I
_must_ marry a rich man, Bill. I should make any poor man miserable."

He had never forgotten that, nor forgiven her for saying it--though he
had never believed that it was true.

Almost as if she was reading into his mind, Bubbles said wistfully: "You
won't leave off caring for me, Bill? Not even if I marry somebody else?
Not even--?" She laughed nervously, and her laugh, to Donnington a
horrible laugh, echoed through the dimly lit church. "Not even," she
repeated, "if I bring myself to marry Mr. Tapster?"

He seized her roughly by the arm. "What d'you mean, Bubbles?" he asked
sternly.

"Don't do that! You hurt me--I was only joking," she said, shrinking
back. "But you are really _too_ simple, Bill. Didn't it occur to you
that Mr. Tapster had been asked here for me?"

"For you?" He uttered the words mechanically. He understood now why men
sometimes murder their sweet-hearts--for no apparent motive.

"He's not a bad sort. It isn't his fault that he's so repulsive. It
wouldn't be fair if he was as rich as that, and good-looking, and
amiable, and agreeable, as well--would it?"

They were walking down the church, and perhaps Bubbles caught a glimpse
into his heart: "I'm a beast," she exclaimed. "A beast to have spoiled
our time together in this dear old church by saying that to you about
Mr. Tapster. Try and forget it, Bill!"

He made no answer. His brain was in a whirlwind of wrath, of suspicion,
of anger, of sick jealousy. This was the real danger--not all the
nonsense that Bubbles talked about her power of raising ghosts, and of
being haunted by unquiet spirits. The real danger the girl was in now
was that of being persuaded into marrying that loathsome Tapster--for
his money.

He left her near the door while he went back to put out the lights. Then
he groped his way to where she was standing, waiting for him. In the
darkness he looked for, found, and lifted, the heavy latch. Together
they began pacing down the path between the graves in the churchyard,
and then all of a sudden he put his hand on her arm: "What's that?
Hark!" he whispered.

He seemed to hear issuing from the grand old church a confused, musical
medley of sounds--a bleating, a neighing, a lowing, even a faint
trumpeting, all mingling together and forming a strange, not unmelodious
harmony.

"D'you hear anything, Bubbles?" he asked, his heart beating, his face,
in the darkness, all aglow.

"No, nothing," she answered back, surprised. "We must hurry, Bill. We're
late as it is."

CHAPTER IX

It had been Bubbles' happy idea that the children of the tiny hamlet
which lay half-a-mile from Wyndfell Hall, should have a Christmas tree.
Hers, also, that the treat for the children was to be combined with the
distribution of a certain amount of coal and of other creature comforts
to the older folk.

All the arrangements with regard to this double function had been made
before the party at Wyndfell Hall had been gathered together. But still,
there were all sorts of last things to be thought of, and Lionel Varick
and Bubbles became quite chummy over the affair.

Blanche Farrow was secretly amused to note with what zest her friend
threw himself into the rôle of country squire. She thought it a trifle
absurd, the more so that, as a matter of fact, the people of Wyndfell
Green were not his tenants, for he had only a life interest in the house
itself. But Varick was determined to have a good, old-fashioned country
Christmas; and he was seconded in his desire not only by Bubbles, but by
Helen Brabazon, who entered into everything with an almost childish
eagerness. Indeed, the doings on Christmas Day brought her and Bubbles
together, too. They began calling each other by their Christian names,
and soon the simple-minded heiress became as if bewitched by the other
girl.

"She's a wonderful creature," she confided to that same wonderful girl's
aunt. "I've never known anyone in the least like Bubbles! At first I
confess I thought her very odd--she almost repelled me. But now I can
see what a kind, good heart she has, and I do hope she'll let me be her
friend."

"I think you would be a very good friend for Bubbles," answered Blanche
pleasantly. "You're quite right as to one thing, Miss Brabazon--she has
a very kind, warm heart. She loves to give people pleasure. She's quite
delightful with children."

The speaker felt that it would indeed be a good thing if Bubbles could
attach herself to such a simple yet sensible friend as was this
enormously rich girl. "And if you really like Bubbles," went on Blanche
Farrow deliberately, "then I should like just to tell you one or two
things about her."

Helen became all eager, pleased attention. "Yes?" she exclaimed. "I wish
you would! Bubbles interests me more than anyone I ever met."

"I want to tell you that I and Bubbles' father very much regret her
going in for all that--that occultism, I believe it's called."

"But you and Mr. Varick both think it's only thought-reading," said
Helen quickly.

Blanche felt rather surprised. It was acute and clever of the girl to
have said that. But no doubt Miss Burnaby had repeated their
conversation.

"Yes; I personally think it's only thought-reading. Still, it's
thought-reading carried very far. The kind of power Bubbles showed the
night before last seems to me partly hypnotic, and that's why I
disapprove of it so strongly."

"I agree," said Helen thoughtfully. "It was much more than ordinary
thought-reading. And I suppose that it's true that she thought she saw
the--the spirits she described so wonderfully?"

"I doubt if even she thought she actually saw them. I think she only
perceived each image in the mind of the person to whom she was
speaking."

"I suppose," asked Helen hesitatingly, "that you haven't the slightest
belief in ghosts, Miss Farrow?"

"No, I haven't the slightest belief in ghosts," Blanche smiled. "But I
do believe that if a person thinks sufficiently hard about it, he or she
can almost evolve the figure of a ghost. I think that's what happened to
my maid the other night. Pegler's a most sensible person, yet she's
quite convinced that she saw the ghost of the woman who is believed to
have killed her little stepson in the room next to that in which I am
now sleeping."

And then as she saw a rather peculiar look flit over her companion's
face, she added quickly: "D'you think that you have seen anything since
you've been here, Miss Brabazon?"

Helen hesitated. "No," she said. "I haven't exactly seen anything.
But--well, the truth is, Miss Farrow, that I do feel sometimes as if
Wyndfell Hall was haunted by the spirit of my poor friend Milly, Mr.
Varick's wife. Perhaps I feel as I do because, of course, I know that
this strange and beautiful old house was once her home. It's pathetic,
isn't it, to see how very little remains of her here? One might, indeed,
say that nothing remains of her at all! I haven't even been able to find
out which was her room; and I've often wondered in the last two days
whether she generally sat in the hall or in that lovely little
drawing-room."

"I can tell you one thing," said Blanche rather shortly, "that is that
there is a room in this house called 'the schoolroom.' It's between the
dining-room and the servants' offices. I believe it was there that Miss
Fauncey, as the people about here still call her, used to do her
lessons, with a rather disagreeable woman rejoicing in the extraordinary
name of Pigchalke, who lived on with her till she married."

"That horrible, horrible woman!" exclaimed Helen. "Of course I know
about _her_. She adored poor Milly. But she was an awful tyrant to her
all the same. She actually wrote to me some time ago. It was such an odd
letter--quite a mad letter, in fact. It struck me as so queer that
before answering it I sent it on to Mr. Varick. She wanted to see me, to
talk to me about poor Milly's last illness. She has a kind of crazy
hatred of Mr. Varick. Of course I got out of seeing her. Luckily we were
just starting for Strathpeffer. I put her off--I didn't actually refuse.
I said I couldn't see her then, but that I would write to her later."

"Lionel mentioned her to me the other day. He allows her a hundred a
year," said Blanche indifferently.

"How very good of him!" in a very different tone of voice she said
musingly: "I have sometimes wondered if the room I'm sleeping in now was
that in which Milly slept as a girl. Sometimes I feel as if she was
close to me, trying to speak to me--it's a most queer, uncanny, horrid
kind of feeling!"

Blanche and Bubbles knew from experience that Christmas Day in the
country is not invariably a pleasant day; but they had thought out every
arrangement to make it "go" as well as was possible. They were all to
have a sort of early tea, and then those who felt like it would proceed
to the village schoolroom, and help with the Christmas Treat.

An important feature of the proceedings was to be a short speech by
Lionel Varick. Blanche had found, to her surprise and amusement, that he
had set his heart on making it. He wanted to get into touch with his
poorer neighbours--not only in a material sense, by distributing gifts
of beef and blankets; that he had already arranged to do--but in a
closer, more human sense. No one she had ever known desired more
ardently to be liked than did the new owner of Wyndfell Hall.

The programme was carried out to the letter. They all drank a cup of tea
standing in the hall when dressed ready for their expedition. Everyone
was happy, everyone was in a good humour--excepting, perhaps, Bill
Donnington. The few words Bubbles had said concerning Mr. Tapster had
frightened, as well as angered him. He watched the unattractive
millionaire with jealous eyes. It was only too clear that Bubbles had
fascinated James Tapster, as she generally did all dull and
unimaginative people. But Donnington, perforce, had to keep his jealous
feelings to himself; and after they had all reached the school-room of
the pretty, picturesque little village, he found he had far too much to
do in helping to serve the hungry children and their parents with the
feast provided for them, to have time for private feelings of fear,
jealousy and pain.

A small platform had been erected across one end of the room. But the
programme of the proceedings which were to take place thereon only
contained two items. The first of these took most of the Wyndfell Hall
house-party completely by surprise; for Bubbles and her aunt had kept
their secret well.

Tables had been pushed aside, benches put end to end; the whole
audience, with Lionel Varick's guests in front, were seated, when
suddenly there leapt on to the platform the strangest and most
fantastic-looking little figure imaginable!

For a moment no one, except Bill Donnington, guessed who or what the
figure was. There came a great clapping of hands and stamping of
feet--for, of course, it was Bubbles! Bubbles dressed up as a witch--red
cloak, high peaked hat, short multi-coloured skirt, high boots and
broom-stick--all complete!

When the applause had died down, she recited a quaint little poem of her
own composition, wishing all there present the best of luck in the
coming year. And then she executed a kind of fantastic _pas seul_,
skimming hither and thither across the tiny stage.

Everyone watched her breathlessly: Donnington with mingled admiration,
love, and jealous disapproval; James Tapster with a feeling that perhaps
the time had come for him to allow himself to be "caught" at last; Helen
Brabazon with wide-eyed, kindly envy of the other girl's cleverness;
Varick with a queer feeling of growing suspicion and dislike.

Finally, Bubbles waved her broom-stick, and more than one of those
present imagined that they saw the light, airy-looking little figure
flying across the hall, and so out of a window--.

The whole performance did not last five minutes, and yet few of those
who were present ever forgot it. It was so strange, so uncanny, so
vivid. Bill Donnington heard one of the village women behind him say:
"There now! Did you ever see the like? She was the sort they burnt in
the old days, and I don't wonder, either."

After this exciting performance the appearance of "the squire," as some
of the village people were already beginning to call him, did not
produce, perhaps, quite the sensation it might have done had he been the
first instead of the second item on the programme. But as he stood
there, a fine figure of a man, his keen, good-looking face lit up with a
very agreeable expression of kindliness and of good-will, a wave of
appreciation seemed to surge towards him from the body of the hall.

Poor Milly's father had been the sort of landowner--to the honour of
England be it said the species has ever been comparatively rare--who
regarded his tenants as of less interest than the livestock on his home
farm. What he had done for them he had done grudgingly; but it was even
now clear to them all that in the new squire they had a very different
kind of gentleman.

Varick was moved and touched--far more so than any of those present
realized. The scene before him--this humble little school-room, and the
simple people standing there--meant to him the fulfilment of a life-long
dream. And that was not all. As he was hesitating for his first word,
his eyes rested on the front bench of his audience, and he saw Helen
Brabazon's eager, guileless face, upturned to his, full of interest and
sympathy.

He also felt himself in touch with the others there. Blanche, looking
her own intelligent, dignified, pleasant self, was a goodly sight. Sir
Lyon Dilsford, too, was in the picture; but Varick felt a sudden pang of
sympathy for the landless baronet. Sir Lyon would have made such a
good, conscientious squire; he was the kind of man who would have helped
the boys to get on in the world--the girls, if need be, to make happy
marriages. James Tapster looked rather out of it all; he looked his
apathetic, sulky self--a man whom nothing would ever galvanize into real
good-fellowship. How could so intelligent a woman as Blanche think that
any money could compensate a clever, high-spirited girl like Bubbles for
marrying a James Tapster? Varick was glad Bubbles was not "in front."
She was probably divesting herself of that extraordinary witch costume
of hers behind the little curtained aperture to his left.

And then, all at once, he realized that Bubbles was among his audience
after all! She was sitting by herself, on a little stool just below the
platform. He suddenly saw her head, with its shock of dark-brown hair,
and there came over him a slight feeling of discomfort. Bubbles had
worked like a Trojan. All this could not have happened but for her; and
yet--and yet Varick again told himself that he could very well have
dispensed with Bubbles from his Christmas house party. There was growing
up, in his dark, secretive heart, an unreasoning, violent dislike to the
girl.

All these disconnected thoughts flashed through his mind in something
under half-a-minute, and then Varick made his pleasant little speech,
welcoming the people there, and saying he hoped there would ensue a long
and pleasant connection between them.

There was a great deal more stamping of feet and handclapping, and then
gradually the company, gentle and simple, dispersed.

Miss Farrow still had long and luxuriant hair, and perhaps the
pleasantest half-hour in each day had come to be that half-hour just
before she dressed for dinner, when Pegler, with gentle, skilful
fingers, brushed and combed her mistress's beautiful tresses, and
finally dressed them to the best advantage.

On Christmas night this daily ceremony had been put off till Miss
Farrow's bed-time, when, after a quiet, short evening, the party had
broken up on the happiest terms with one another.

As Blanche sat down, and her maid began taking the hairpins out of her
hair, she told herself with a feeling of gratification that this had
been one of the pleasantest Christmas days she had ever spent.
Everything had gone off so well, and she could see that Varick had
enjoyed every moment of it, from his surprise distribution of little
gifts to his guests at breakfast, to the last warm, grateful hand-shake
on the landing outside her door.

"Were you in the school-room, Pegler?" she asked kindly. "It was really
rather charming, wasn't it? Everyone happy--the children and the old
people especially. And they all _so_ enjoyed Miss Bubbles' dressing up
as a witch!"

"Why, yes," said Pegler grudgingly. "It was all very nice, ma'am, in a
way, and, as you say, it all went off very well. But there's a queer
rumour got about already, ma'am."

"A queer rumour? What d'you mean, Pegler?"

"Quite a number of the village folk say that Mr. Varick's late lady, the
one who used to live here--" Pegler stopped speaking suddenly, and went
on brushing her mistress's hair more vigorously.

"Yes, Pegler?"--Miss Farrow spoke with a touch of impatience. "What
about Mrs. Lionel Varick?"

"Well, ma'am, I don't suppose you'll credit it, but quite a number of
them do say that her sperrit was there during this afternoon. One woman
I spoke to, who was school-room maid here a matter of twenty years back,
said she saw her as clear as clear, up on the platform, wearing the sort
of grey dress she used to wear when she was a girl, ma'am, when her
father was still alive. None of the men seem to have seen her--but quite
a number of the women did. The post-mistress says she could have sworn
to her anywhere."

"What absolute nonsense!"

Blanche felt shocked as well as vexed.

"It was when Mr. Varick was making that speech of his," said Pegler
slowly. "If you'll pardon me, ma'am, for saying so, it don't seem
nonsense to me. After what I've seen myself, I can believe anything.
Seeing is believing, ma'am."

"People's eyes very often betray them, Pegler. Haven't you sometimes
looked at a thing and thought it something quite different from what it
really was?"

"Yes, I have," acknowledged Pegler reluctantly. "And of course, the
lighting was very bad. Some of the people hope that Mr. Varick's going
to bring electric light into the village--d'you think he'll do that,
ma'am?"

"No," said Miss Farrow decidedly. "I shouldn't think there's a hope of
it. The village doesn't really belong to him, Pegler. It was wonderfully
kind of him to give what he did give to-day, to a lot of people with
whom he has really nothing to do at all."

And then, after her maid had gone, Blanche lay in bed, and stared into
the still bright fire. Her brain seemed abnormally active, and she found
it impossible to go to sleep. What a curious, uncanny, uncomfortable
story--that of "poor Milly's" ghost appearing on the little platform of
the village school-room! There seems no measure, even in these
enlightened days, to what people will say and believe.

And then there flashed across her a recollection of the fact that
Bubbles had been there, sitting just below Lionel Varick. Strange,
half-forgotten stories of Indian magic--of a man hung up in chains
padlocked by British officers, and then, a moment later, that same man,
freed, standing in their midst, the chains rattling together,
empty--floated through Blanche Farrow's mind. Was it possible that
Bubbles possessed uncanny powers--powers which had something to do with
the immemorial magic of the immemorial East?

Blanche had once heard the phenomenon of the vanishing rope trick
discussed at some length between a number of clever people. She had paid
very little attention to what had been said at the time, but she now
strained her memory to recapture the sense of the words which had been
uttered. One of the men present, a distinguished scientist, had actually
seen the trick done. He had seen an Indian swarm up the rope and
disappear--into thin air! What had he called it? Collective hypnotism?
Yes, that was the expression he had used. Some such power Bubbles
certainly possessed, and perhaps to-day she had chosen to exercise it by
recalling to the minds of those simple village folk the half-forgotten
figure of the one-time mistress of Wyndfell Hall. If she had really done
this, Bubbles had played an ungrateful, cruel trick on Lionel Varick.

Blanche at last dropped off to sleep, but Pegler's ridiculous yet
sinister story had spoilt the pleasant memories of her day, and even her
night, for she slept badly, and awoke unrefreshed.

CHAPTER X

There are few places in a civilized country more desolate than a big,
empty country railway station: such a station as that at Newmarket--an
amusing, bustling sight on a race day; strangely still and deserted,
even on a fine summer day, when there's nothing doing in the famous
little town; and, in the depth of winter, extraordinarily forlorn. The
solitariness and the desolation were very marked on the early afternoon
of New Year's Eve which saw Varick striding up and down the deserted
platform waiting for Dr. Panton, and Dr. Panton's inseparable companion,
a big, ugly, intelligent spaniel called Span.

Varick had more than one reason to be grateful to the young medical man
with whom Fate had once thrown him into such close contact; and so this
last spring, when Panton had had to be in London for a few days, Varick
had taken a deal of trouble to ensure that the country doctor should
have a good time. But his own pleasure in his friend's company had been
somewhat spoilt by something Panton had then thought it right to tell
him. This something was that his late wife's one-time companion, Miss
Pigchalke, had gone to Redsands, and, seeking out the doctor, had tried
to force him to say that poor Mrs. Varick had been ill-treated--or if
not exactly ill-treated, then neglected--by her husband, during her last
illness.

"I wouldn't have told you, but that I think you ought to know that the
woman has an inexplicable grudge against you," he had said.

"Not inexplicable," Varick had answered quietly. "For Julia Pigchalke
first came as governess to Wyndfell Hall when my wife was ten years old,
and she stayed on with her ultimately as companion--in fact as more
friend than companion. Of course I queered her pitch!"

And then, rather hesitatingly, he had gone on to tell Dr. Panton that he
was now paying his enemy an annuity of a hundred a year. This had been
left to Miss Pigchalke in an early will made by his poor wife, but it
had not been repeated in the testatrix's final will, as Mrs. Varick had
fiercely resented Miss Pigchalke's violent disapproval of her marriage.

Panton had been amazed to hear of Varick's quite uncalled-for
generosity, and he had exclaimed, "Well, that does take the cake! I wish
I'd known this before. Still, I don't think Miss Pigchalke will forget
in a hurry what I said to her. I warned her that some of the things she
said, or half-said, were libellous, and that it might end very badly for
her if she said them again. She took the line that I, being a doctor,
was privileged--but I assured her that I was nothing of the kind! Still,
she's a venomous old woman, and if I were you I'd write her a
solicitor's letter."

That little conversation, which had taken place more than six months
ago, came back, word for word, to Varick's mind, as he walked sharply up
and down the platform, trying to get warm. It was strange how Miss
Pigchalke and her vigorous, unpleasant personality haunted him. But he
had found in his passbook only this morning that she had already cashed
his last cheque for fifty pounds. Surely she couldn't, in decency, go
on with this half-insane kind of persecution if she accepted what was,
after all, his free and generous gift every six months?

The train came steaming in, and only three passengers got out. But among
them was the man for whom Varick was waiting. And, at the sight of the
lithe, alert figure of Dr. Panton, and of the one-time familiar form of
good old Span, Varick's troubled, uncomfortable thoughts took wings to
themselves and flew away.

The two men's hands met in a firm, friendly grasp. "This _is_ jolly,"
said the younger of the two, as they walked out to the big car. "And I'm
ever so much obliged to you for letting me bring Span!"

And Panton did think it very jolly of Varick to have left his guests,
and come all this way through the cold to meet him. It was good of him,
too, to have let him bring his dog.

As they drove slowly through the picturesque High Street of the famous
town, Varick's friend looked about him with keen interest and enjoyment.
He had an eager, intelligent, alert mind, and he had never been to
Newmarket before.

Once they got clear of the town, and were speeding through the pleasant,
typically English country lanes which give Suffolk a peculiarly soothing
charm Span (who was a rather large liver-and-white spaniel), lying
stretched out sedately at their feet, Varick suddenly asked carelessly:
"No more news of my enemy, Miss Pigchalke, I suppose?"

Panton turned to him quickly in the rushing wind: "Yes, something _has_
happened. But I didn't think it worth writing to you about. An
extraordinary advertisement appeared about a month ago in one of the
popular Sunday papers, and Mrs. Bilton--you remember the woman--?"

Varick shook his head. He looked exceedingly disturbed and annoyed, and
the man now sitting by his side suddenly regretted that he had said
anything about that absurd advertisement.

"Mrs. Bilton was the woman whom I recommended to you as a charwoman,
soon after you were settled down at Redsands."

"Yes, I remember the name now. What of her?"

"She came up to see me one evening about a month ago, and she brought
the paper--the _News of the World_ I think it was--with her."

"Yes," said Varick shortly. "Yes--go on, Panton. What was in the
advertisement?"

"The advertisement simply asked for information about you and your
doings, past and present, and offered a reward for any information of
importance. It was very oddly worded. What I should call an amateur
advertisement. Mrs. Bilton came up to consult me as to whether she
should write in answer to it. Of course I strongly advised her to do
nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact"--Dr. Panton chuckled--"I have
reason to believe she _did_ write, but I need hardly say that, as far as
she was concerned, nothing came of it!"

"I wish you could remember exactly how the advertisement was worded?"
said Varick. It was clear that he felt very much disturbed.

"I'm sorry I didn't keep a copy of it; all I can tell you is that it
asked for information concerning the past life and career of Lionel
Varick, _sometime of Redsands and Chichester._"

"Chichester?" repeated Varick mechanically.

The name of the Sussex cathedral town held for him many painful, sordid
memories. His first wife, the woman whose very existence he believed
unknown to everyone who now knew him, with the exception of Blanche
Farrow, had been a Chichester woman. It was there that they had lived in
poverty and angry misery during the last few weeks of her life.

"Yes, that's all I remember--but I've put it more clearly than the
advertisement did."

"What an extraordinary thing!" muttered Varick.

"I don't know that it's so very extraordinary. It was that woman
Pigchalke's doing, obviously. As I told you the last time we met, I felt
that she would stick at nothing to annoy you. She's quite convinced that
you're an out-and-out villain."

Dr. Panton laughed. He really couldn't help it. Varick was such a
thoroughly good fellow!

"I wonder," said Varick hesitatingly, "if I could get a copy of that
Sunday paper? I feel that it's the sort of thing that ought to be
stopped--don't you, Panton?"

"I'm quite sure it didn't appear again in the same paper, or I should
have heard of it again. That one particular copy did end by going the
whole round of Redsands. I went on hearing about it for, I should
think,--well, right up to when I left home."

A rush of blind, unreasoning rage was shaking Varick. Curse the woman!
What a brute she must be, to take his money, and go on annoying him in
this way. "I wish you'd written and told me about it when it happened,"
he said sombrely.

The doctor looked at him, distressed. "I'm sorry I didn't, if you feel
like that about it!" he exclaimed. "But you were so put out when I told
you of the woman's having come to see me, and it was so obvious that the
advertisement came from her, that I thought I'd say nothing about it. I
wouldn't have told you now, only that you mentioned her."

Varick saw that his friend was very much disturbed. He made a determined
effort over himself. "Never mind," he said, trying to smile. "After all,
it's of no real consequence."

"I don't know if you'll find it any consolation to be told that that
sort of thing is by no means uncommon," said Panton reflectively.
"People, especially women, whose minds for any reason have become just a
little unhinged, often take that sort of strange dislike to another
human being. Sometimes for no reason at all. Every medical man would
tell you of half-a-dozen such cases within his own knowledge.
Fortunately, such half-insane people generally choose a noted man--the
Prime Minister, for instance, or whoever happens to be very much in the
public eye. If the persecution becomes quite intolerable there's a
police-court case--or the individual is quite properly certified as
insane."

And then something peculiar and untoward happened to Lionel Varick. The
words rose to his lips: "That horrible woman haunts me--haunts me! I can
never get rid of her--she seems always there--"

Had he uttered those words aloud, or had he not? He glanced sharply
round, and then, with relief, he made up his mind that he had _not_
uttered them, for the man sitting by his side was looking straight
before him, with a pleased, interested expression on his plain,
intelligent face.

Varick pulled himself together. This would never do! He asked himself,
with a touch of acute anxiety, whether it were possible that he was
losing his nerve? He had always possessed the valuable human gift of
being able to control, absolutely, his secret feelings and his emotions.

"Did I tell you that Miss Brabazon is here?" he asked carelessly.

And the other exclaimed: "I'm glad of that. I formed a tremendously high
opinion of that girl last year. By the way, I was surprised to hear,
quite by accident, the other day, that she's a lot of money. I don't
quite know why, but I formed the impression that it was her friend who
was well-to-do--didn't you?"

"I never thought about it," said Varick indifferently. "By the way, Miss
Brabazon's old aunt, a certain Miss Burnaby, is here too. It's rather a
quiet party, Panton; I hope you won't be bored."

"I'm never bored. Who else have you got staying with you?"

Varick ran over the list of his guests, only leaving out one, and, after
a scarcely perceptible pause, he remedied the omission.

"Then there's Miss Farrow's niece; she was called after her aunt, so her
real name is Blanche--"

"'Known to her friends as Bubbles,'" quoted Dr. Panton, with a cynical
inflection in his voice.

"How do you know that?" exclaimed Varick.

"Because there was a portrait of the young lady in the _Sketch_ last
week. She seems to be a kind of feminine edition of the Admirable
Crichton. She can act, dance, cook--and she's famed as a medium in the
psychic world--whatever that may mean!"

"I see you know all about her," observed Varick, smiling.

But though he was smiling at his friend, his inner thoughts were grim
thoughts. He was secretly repeating to himself: "Chichester, Chichester?
How can she have got hold of _Chichester_?"

Dr. Panton went on: "I'm glad I'm going to meet this Miss Bubbles--I've
never met that particular type of young lady before. Though, of course,
it's not, as some people believe, a new type. There have always been
girls of that sort in the civilized world."

"It's quite true that the most curious thing about Bubbles," said Varick
thoughtfully, "is a kind of thought-reading gift. I fancy she must have
inherited it from an Indian ancestress, for her great-great-grandfather
rescued a begum on her way to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre. He
ultimately married her, and though she never came to England. Bubbles'
father, a fool called Hugh Dunster, who's lost what little money he ever
had, is one of her descendants. There's something just a little Oriental
and strange in Bubbles' appearance."

"This is 'curiouser and curiouser,' as Alice in Wonderland used to say!"
exclaimed Panton. "Do you think I could persuade Miss Bubbles to give an
exhibition of her psychic gifts?"

The speaker uttered the word "psychic" with a very satiric inflection in
his pleasant voice.

Varick smiled rather wryly. "You're quite likely to have an exhibition
of them without asking for it! The first evening that my guests were
here she held what I believe they call a séance, and as a result Miss
Brabazon's uncle, old Burnaby, not only bolted from the room, but left
Wyndfell Hall the next morning."

"What an extraordinary thing!"

"Yes," said Varick, "it _was_ an extraordinary thing. I confess I can't
explain Bubbles' gift at all. At this séance of hers she described quite
accurately long dead men and women--"

"Are you sure of that, Varick?"

"Of course I am, for she described my own mother."

There was a pause.

"Being a very intelligent, quick girl, she naturally helps herself out
as best she can," went on Varick reflectively.

"Then you're inclined to think her thought-reading is more or less a
fraud?" cried Panton triumphantly.

"Less, rather than more, for she's convinced me that she sees into the
minds of her subjects and builds up a kind of--of--"

"Description?" suggested the doctor.

"More than that--I was going to say figure. She described, as if she saw
them standing there before her, people of whom she'd never even
heard--and the descriptions were absolutely exact. But if you don't
mind, Panton--"

He hesitated, and the other said, "Yes, Varick?"

"Well, I'd rather you leave all that sort of thing alone, as far as
Bubbles Dunster is concerned. Both Miss Farrow and I are very anxious
that she shouldn't be up to any more of her tricks while she's here.
People don't half like it, you see. Even _I_ didn't like it."

Somehow it was a comfort to Varick to talk freely about Bubbles to a
stranger--Bubbles had got on his nerves. He would have given a good deal
to persuade her to leave Wyndfell Hall; but he didn't know how to set
about it. In a sense she was the soul of the party. The others all liked
her. Yet he, himself, felt a sort of growing repugnance to her which he
would have been hard put to it to explain. Indeed, the only way he could
explain it--and he had thought a good deal about it the last few
days--was that she undoubtedly possessed an uncanny power of starting
into life images which had lain long dormant in his brain.

For one thing--but that, of course, might not be entirely Bubbles'
fault--Milly, his poor wife, had become again terribly real to him. It
was almost as if he felt her to be alive, say, in the next room--lying,
as she had been wont to lie, listening for his footsteps, in the little
watering place where they had spent the last few weeks of her life.

He could not but put down that unpleasant, sinister phenomenon to the
presence of Bubbles, for he had been at Wyndfell Hall all the summer,
and though the place had been Milly's birthplace--where, too, she had
spent her melancholy, dull girlhood--no thought of her had ever come to
disturb his pleasure in the delightful, perfect house and its enchanting
garden. Of course, now and again some neighbour with whom he had made
acquaintance would say a word to him indicating what a strange, solitary
life the Faunceys, father and daughter, had led in their beautiful home,
and how glad the speaker was that "poor Milly" had had a little
happiness before she died. To these remarks he, Varick, would of course
answer appropriately, with that touch of sad reminiscence which carries
with it no real regret or sorrow.

But during the last few days it had been otherwise. He could not get
Milly out of his mind, and he had come to feel that if this peculiar
sensation continued, he would not be able to bring himself to stay on at
Wyndfell Hall after the break-up of his present party.

This feeling of his dead wife's presence had first become intolerably
vivid in the village school-room during the children's Christmas Day
treat. At one time--so the clergyman had told him--Milly had had a
sewing-class for the village girls in that very room; but the class had
not been a success, and she had given it up after a few weeks. That was
her only association with the ugly little building, and yet--and yet,
once he had got well into his speech, he had suddenly _felt her to be
there_--and it was not the gentle, fretful, adoring Milly he had known,
but a Presence which seemed filled with an awful, clear-eyed knowledge
of certain secret facts which his reasoning faculties assured him were
only known to his own innermost self.

CHAPTER XI

A turn in the road brought them within sight of Wyndfell Hall,
and--"What a singular, wonderful-looking old place!" exclaimed Dr.
Panton.

And, indeed, there was something mysteriously alluring in the long,
gabled building standing almost, as it were, on an island, among the
high trees which formed a screen to the house on the north and east
sides. It was something solemn, something appealing--like a melodious,
plaintive voice from the long-distant past, out of that Old Country
which was the England of six hundred years ago.

"You've no idea how beautiful this place is in summer, Panton--and yet
the spring is almost more perfect. You must come again then, and make a
really good, long stay."

"Span will enjoy a swim in the moat even now," said the doctor, smiling.
They were going slowly over the narrow brick bridge, and so up to the
deep-eaved porch.

A butler and footman appeared as if by magic, and the sound of laughing
voices floated from behind them. There was a pleasant stir of life and
bustle about the delightful old house, or so it seemed to the guest.

He jumped out of the car behind his host, then he turned round. "Span!"
he called out. "Span!"

But the dog was still lying on the floor of the car, and he made no
movement, still less any attempt to jump down.

"What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Span's master. "Come down,
Span! Come down at once!"

He waited a moment; then he went forward and tried to drag the dog out.
But Span resisted with all his might. He was a big spaniel, and Panton,
from where he stood, had no purchase on him. "There's something wrong
with him," he said with concern. "Wait a moment, Varick--if you don't
mind."

He got up into the car again and patted Span's head. The dog turned his
head slowly, and licked his master's hand.

"Now, Span, jump out! There's a good dog!"

But Span never moved.

At last Panton managed to half-shove, half-tumble the dog out. "I've
only known him behave like this once before," he muttered, "and that was
with a poor mad woman whom I was once compelled to put up in my house
for two or three days. He simply wouldn't go near her! He behaved just
as he's doing now."

Span was lying on the ground before them, inert, almost as if dead. But
his eyes, his troubled, frightened eyes, were very much alive.

Varick went off into the house for a moment. He had never liked dogs;
and this ugly brute's behaviour, so he told himself, annoyed him very
much.

Span got up and shook himself, almost as if he had been asleep.

Panton bent down. "Span," he said warningly, "be a good dog and behave
yourself! Remember what happened to you after the poor lunatic lady went
away."

And Span looked up with that peculiar, thoughtful look which dogs
sometimes have of understanding everything which is being said to them.

Span had been beaten--a very rare experience for him--after the mad lady
had left the doctor's house. But whether he understood or not the exact
reference to that odious episode in his happy past life, there was no
doubt that Span did understand that his master regarded him as being in
disgrace; and it was a very subdued dog that walked sedately into the
hall where most of the party were gathered together ready to greet the
new-comer.

Miss Farrow was particularly cordial, and so was Helen Brabazon. She and
Dr. Panton had become real friends during Mrs. Varick's illness, and
they had been at one in their affection for, and admiration of, Lionel
Varick during that piteous time. To the doctor (though he would not have
admitted it, even to himself, for the world) there had been something
very repugnant about the dying woman. Though still young in years, she
might have been any age; and she was so fretful and so selfish, hardly
allowing her husband out of her sight, while utterly devoted to him, of
course, in her queer, egoistic way--and to Miss Brabazon, her kind new
friend. The doctor had soon realized that it was the pity which is akin
to love which had made Helen become so attached to poor Milly
Varick--intense pity for the unhappy soul who was going to lose her
new-found happiness. Milly's pathetic cry: "I never had a girl friend
before. You can't think how happy it makes me!" had touched Helen to the
heart.

Standing there, in that noble old room hung with some beautiful
tapestries forming a perfect background to the life and colour which was
now filling it, Panton was surprised to find how vividly those memories
of last autumn came surging back to him. It must be owing to this
meeting with Miss Brabazon--this reunion with the two people with whom
he had gone through an experience which, though it so often befalls a
kind and sympathetic doctor, yet never loses its poignancy--that he was
thinking now so intensely of poor Mrs. Varick.

It was Helen Brabazon who had introduced the new-comer to Miss Farrow,
for Varick had disappeared, and soon Dr. Panton was looking round him
with interest and curiosity. Most of the people whom he knew to be
staying at Wyndfell Hall were present, but not the girl his friend had
described--not the girl, that is, whose portrait he had seen in the
_Sketch_. Just as he was telling himself this, a door opened, and two
people came through together--a tall, fair, smiling young man, and a
quaint, slender figure, looking like a child rather than like a woman,
whose pale, yet vivid little face was framed in thick, dark brown,
bobbed hair, and whose large, bright eyes gleamed mischievously.

Bubbles had chosen to put on this afternoon a long, rose-red knitted
jumper over a yellow skirt, and she looked as if she had stepped out
from some ancient Spanish religious procession.

"Bubbles," called out her aunt, "this is Dr. Panton. Come and be
introduced to him."

Then something very odd happened. Varick joined his new guest at the
very same moment that the girl came forward with hand outstretched and a
polite word of welcome on her lips; but, before she could speak, Span,
who had been behaving with so sedate a dignity that the people present
were scarcely conscious of his existence, gave a sudden loud and
horrible howl.

His master, disregarding Bubbles' outstretched hand, seized the dog by
the collar, rushed with him to the door giving on to the porch, and
thrust him out into the cold and darkness.

Span remained quite quiet when on the wrong side of the door. There
might have been no dog there.

"I'm so sorry," said Panton apologetically, as he came again towards the
tea-table. "I can't think what's the matter with the poor brute. He's
almost perfect manners as a rule."

He turned to Miss Brabazon, who laughingly exclaimed: "Yes, indeed!
Span's such an old friend of mine that I feel quite hurt. I thought he
would be sure to take some notice of me; but I didn't even know he was
there till he set up that awful, unearthly howl."

"I think it's very cruel to have turned the dog out into the cold,"
Bubbles said in her quick, decided way. "There's nothing about dogs I
don't know, Doctor--Doctor--"

"--Panton," he said shortly.

"Oh, Panton? May I go out to him, Dr. Panton?" There was a challenge in
her tone.

Panton answered stiffly: "By all means. But Span's not always pleasant
with complete strangers; and he prefers men, Miss Dunster."

"I think he'll be all right with me."

Bubbles went and opened the door, and a moment later they heard her low,
throaty voice talking caressingly to the dog. Span whined, but in a
gentle, happy way.

"He's quite good now," she called out triumphantly.

Varick turned to the company: "Will you forgive me for a moment?" he
said. "I forgot to say a word to my chauffeur about our plans for
to-morrow." And as he went through one door, Bubbles, followed by the
now good and repentant Span, appeared through another.

"He's a darling," she cried enthusiastically. "One of the nicest dogs
I've ever met!"

She sat down, and endeared herself further to Span by giving him a large
piece of cake.

And Dr. Panton, looking at the charming group--for the lithe,
dark-haired girl in her brilliant, quaint garment, and the dog over
which she was bending, made a delightful group--told himself grudgingly
that Miss Bubbles was curiously attractive: far more attractive-looking
than he would have thought her to be by the portrait published in the
_Sketch_--though even that had been sufficiently arresting to remain in
his mind for two or three days. Was there really something Eastern about
her appearance? He would never have thought it but for those few words
of Varick's. Many English girls have that clear olive complexion, those
large, shadowy dark eyes, which yet can light up into daring, fun, and
mischief.

But, alas! the story of Span--even this early chapter of the story of
his stay at Wyndfell Hall--had not a happy ending. As Varick came
forward again among his guests, Span once more set up that sharp,
uncanny howl, and this time he cringed and shivered, as well as howled.

Span's master, with an angry exclamation, again dragged the now
resisting dog across to the door which led into the outer porch. After
he had shut the door, and Span's howls were heard subsiding, he turned
to the others apologetically. "I'm really awfully sorry," he exclaimed.
"If this sort of thing goes on I'll have to send him home to-morrow."

Poor Panton looked thoroughly put out and annoyed. But Bubbles came to
his rescue--Bubbles and the young man whom the doctor now knew to be
Bill Donnington.

"Come on, Bill! We'll take him round to the kitchen. You don't mind, do
you?"

Span's owner shook his head; devoted though he was to his dog, he felt
he could well do without Span for a while.

After Bubbles and Donnington had disappeared together, their eager
voices could be heard from the paved court-yard which connected two of
the wings of Wyndfell Hall. Span was barking now, barking eagerly,
happily, confidently. And when the two young people reappeared they were
both laughing.

"He's taken to the cook tremendously," said Bubbles. "And he's even made
friends--and that's much more wonderful--with the cat. He went straight
up to her and smelt her, and she seemed to be quite pleased with the
attention."

She turned to Dr. Panton: "I'll go out presently and see how he's
getting on," she added.

He looked at her gratefully. She really was a nice girl! He had thought
that she would be one of those disagreeable, forward, self-sufficing,
modern young women, who are absorbed only in themselves, and in the
effect they produce on other people. But Miss Bubbles was not in the
least like that.

Helen Brabazon whispered, smiling: "Isn't Bubbles Dunster a dear, Dr.
Panton? She's not like anyone I ever met before--and that makes her all
the nicer, doesn't it?"

CHAPTER XII

About an hour after Dr. Panton's arrival, the whole of the party was
more or less scattered through the delightful old house, with the
exception of Lionel Varick, who had gone off to the village by himself.

But the four ladies finally gathered together in the hall to put in the
time between tea and dinner.

Miss Burnaby was soon nodding over a book close to the fire, while Helen
Brabazon and Blanche Farrow had brought down their work. This consisted,
as far as Helen was concerned, of a complicated baby's garment destined
for the Queen's Needlework Guild. Blanche, sitting close to Helen, was
bending over a frame containing the intricate commencement of a fruit
and bird _petit-point_ picture, which, when finished, she intended
should form a banner screen for this very room.

Three seven-branched silver candlesticks had now been lighted, and
formed pools of soft radiance in the gathering dusk.

After wandering about restlessly for a while, Bubbles ensconced herself
far away from the others, in the old carved wood confessional, which had
seemed in Donnington's eyes so incongruous and unsuitable an object to
form part of the furnishings of a living room.

To Blanche Farrow, the confessional, notwithstanding the beauty of the
carving, suggested an irreverent simile--that of a telephone-box. She
told herself that only Bubbles would have chosen such an uncomfortable
resting-place.

But when stepping up into what had once been the priest's narrow seat,
Bubbles called out that it was delightfully nice and quiet in there, as
well as dark--for there still hung over the aperture through which she
had just passed a curtain of green silk brocade embroidered with pale
passion flowers.

There followed a period of absolute silence and quietude in the room.
Then the door leading from the outside porch opened, and Varick came in.
"I hope I'm not intruding," he exclaimed in his full, resonant voice;
and the ladies, with the exception of Bubbles, who remained invisible,
looked up and eagerly welcomed him.

During the last few days he had made a real conquest of Miss Burnaby,
who, with the one startling exception of the emotion betrayed by her at
the séance, secretly struck both him and Blanche Farrow as the most
commonplace human being with whom either had ever come in contact.

"I'm quite warm," he said, in answer to the old lady's invitation to
come up to the fire. "I had to go down to the village Post Office to see
why the London papers hadn't arrived. But I've got them all now."

He came over to where she was sitting and handed her a picture paper.
Then he retreated, far from the fire, close to a table which was
equi-distant from the confessional and the door giving access to the
staircase hall. Bringing forward a deep, comfortable chair out of the
shadows, he sat down, and opening one of the newspapers he had brought
in, began to read it with close attention.

On the table at his elbow, there now stood what looked to Helen's eyes
like a bouquet of light. But this only made the soft darkness which
filled the further side of the great room seem more intense to those
sitting near the fireplace.

They were all pleasantly tired after the doings of the day; and soon
Blanche's quick ears caught a faint, regular sound issuing from the
far-off confessional. Bubbles, so much was clear, had fallen asleep.

And then, not for the first time in the last few days, the aunt began
considering within herself the problem of her niece. Blanche had begun
to like Donnington with a cordiality of liking which surprised herself.
His selfless love for the girl touched her more than she had thought it
possible for anything now to touch her worldly heart. And whereas she
would naturally have considered a marriage between the penniless
Donnington and brilliant, clever, popular Bubbles as being out of the
question, she was beginning to feel that such a marriage might be, nay,
almost certainly was, the only thing likely to ensure for Bubbles a
reasonably happy and normal life. Blanche Farrow knew enough of human
nature to realize that the kind of love Bill Donnington felt for her
strange little niece was of a high and rare quality. It was very unlike
the usual selfish, acquisitive love of a man for a maid. It was more
like the tender, watching, tireless devotion certain mothers have for
their children--it was infinitely protecting, infinitely forgiving,
infinitely understanding.

Blanche sighed, a long, deep sigh, as she told herself sadly that no one
had ever loved _her_ like that--not even her old friend Mark Gifford. He
had loved her long; in fact he rarely saw her, even now, without asking
her to marry him. Also he had been, in his own priggish way, a very,
very good and useful friend to her. But still, Blanche knew, deep in her
heart, that Mark Gifford disapproved of her, that he often misunderstood
her, that he was ashamed of the strength of the attraction which made
him still wish to make her his wife, and which had kept him a bachelor.
As long as this old friend had known her he had always written her a
Christmas letter. The letter had not come this Christmas, and she had
missed it. But Mark had no idea of where she was, and--and after all,
perhaps his faithful friendship had waned at last from lack of real
response.

And then, while thinking these rather melancholy, desultory thoughts,
Blanche Farrow suddenly experienced a very peculiar sensation. It was
that of finding herself as if impelled to look up from the
embroidery-frame over which she was bending.

She did look up; and for a moment her heart--that heart which the way of
her life had so atrophied and hardened--seemed to stop beating, for just
behind Lionel Varick, whose head was still bent over his newspaper with
a complete air of unconcern, interest, and ease--stood, or appeared to
stand, two shadowy figures.

She shut her eyes; then opened them again--wide. _The figures were still
there_, and they had grown clearer, more definite, especially the
countenance of each of the two wraith-like women who stood, like
sentinels, one on either side of the seated man.

Blanche gazed at them fixedly for what seemed to her an eternity of
time. But even while, in a way, she could not deny the evidence of her
senses, she was telling herself that she was really seeing
_nothing_--that this extraordinary experience was but another exercise
of Bubbles' uncanny power.

And as she, literally not believing the evidence of her senses, stared
at the two immobile figures, her eyes became focussed on the face of the
woman standing to Varick's right. There was a coarse beauty in the
mask-like-looking countenance, but it was a beauty now instinct with a
kind of stark ferocity and rage.

At last she slowly concentrated her gaze on the other luminous figure.
Though swathed from neck to heel in what Blanche told herself, with a
peculiar feeling of horror, were old-fashioned grave-clothes, the second
woman yet looked more _real_, more _alive_, than the other. Her face, if
deadly pale, was less mask-like, and the small, dark eyes gleamed, while
the large, ill-shaped mouth seemed to be quivering.

And then, all at once, the form to Varick's right began to dissolve--to
melt, as it were, into the green-grey and blue tapestry which hung
across the farther wall of the hall.

But while this curious phenomenon took place, the woman swathed in her
grave-clothes remained quite clearly visible....

Suddenly Helen Brabazon started to her feet; she uttered a loud and
terrible cry--and at that same moment Blanche saw the more living and
sinister of the two apparitions also become disintegrated, and quickly
dissolve into nothingness.

Lionel Varick leapt from his chair. His face changed from a placid
gravity to one of surprise and distress. "What is it?" he cried, coming
forward. "What is it, Miss Brabazon--Helen?"

The girl whom he addressed fell back into her chair. She covered her
face with her hands. Twice she opened her lips and tried to speak--in
vain. At last she gasped out, "It's all right now. I'll be better in a
minute."

"But what happened?" exclaimed Varick. "Did anything happen?"

"I think I must have gone to sleep without knowing it--for I've had a
terrible, terrible--nightmare!"

Miss Burnaby got up slowly, deliberately, from her chair near the fire.
She also came up to her niece.

"You were working up to the very moment you cried out," she said
positively. "I had turned round and I was watching you--when suddenly
you jumped up and gave that dreadful cry."

"Do tell us what frightened you," said Varick solicitously.

"Please don't ask me what I saw--or thought I saw; I would rather not
tell you," Helen said in a low voice.

"But of course you must tell us!" Miss Burnaby roused herself, and spoke
with a good deal of authority. "If you are not well you ought to see a
doctor, my dear child."

Helen burst into bitter sobs. "I thought I saw Milly, Mr. Varick--poor,
poor Milly! She looked exactly as she looked when I last saw her, in her
coffin, excepting that her eyes were open. She was standing just behind
you--and oh, I shall never, never forget her look! It was a terrible,
terrible look--a look of hatred. Yet I cared for her so much! You know I
did all that was possible for one woman to do for another during those
few weeks that I knew her?"

Lionel Varick's face turned a curious, greyly pallid tint. It was as if
all the natural colour was drained out of it.

"Where's Bubbles?" he asked, in a scarcely audible voice.

For a moment no one answered him, and then Blanche said quietly:
"Bubbles is over there, in the confessional, asleep."

He turned and walked quickly over to the carved, box-like confessional,
and drew aside the green-embroidered curtain.

Yes, the girl lay there asleep--or was she only pretending? Her breast
rose and fell, her eyes were closed.

Varick took hold of her arm with no gentle gesture, and she awoke with a
cry of surprise and pain. "What is it? Don't do that!" she said in a
hoarse and sleepy tone.

And then, on seeing who it was, she smiled wryly. "Is it forbidden to
get in here?" she asked, still speaking in a heavy, dull way. "I didn't
know it was,"--and stumblingly she stepped down out of the confessional.

Varick scowled at her, and made no answer to her question. Together they
walked over to where the other three were standing--Miss Burnaby still
gazing at her niece, with an annoyed, frightened expression on her face.

As Bubbles and Varick came up to her, Helen got up from the chair in
which she had sunk back. She held a handkerchief to her face, and was
making a great effort to regain her self-control and composure.

"Please forgive me, Mr. Varick. I oughtn't to have told you what I
thought I saw--for I'm sure it was only a dream, a horrible, startling
dream. But--but you made me tell you, didn't you?"

She looked up into his pale, convulsed face with an anguished
expression. "I think I'll go upstairs now, and rest a little before I
dress for dinner," and then she walked across the room, and out of the
door, with a steady step.

Bubbles stretched out her arms with a weary gesture. "What's all this
fuss about?" she asked. "I feel absolutely done--done--done! Not at all
as if I'd had a good long sleep. I wonder how long I _was_ asleep?"

"You didn't sleep very long," said her aunt dryly--"not half-an-hour in
all. I should advise you, Bubbles, to follow Miss Brabazon's example--go
up and have a good rest, before getting ready for dinner."

Bubbles turned away. She walked very slowly, with dragging steps, to the
door; and a moment later Miss Burnaby also left the room.

Varick walked over towards the fireplace. He held out his hands to the
flames--he felt cold, shiveringly cold.

He turned, as he had so often done in the past, for comfort to the woman
now standing silent by his side, and who knew at once so much and so
little of his real life.

"I wonder what really happened?" he muttered. "It was a most
extraordinary thing! I've seldom met anyone so little hysterical or
fanciful as--as is Miss Brabazon." And then: "Why, Blanche," he
exclaimed, startled, "what's the matter?"

There was a look on her face he had never seen there before--a very
troubled, questioning, perplexed look.

"I saw something too, Lionel," she said in a low voice; "I--I saw more
than Helen Brabazon admits to having seen."

"_You_ saw something?" he echoed incredulously.

"Yes, and were it not that I am an older woman, and have more
self-control than your young friend, I should have cried out too."

"What _did_ you see?" he asked slowly.

"What I think I saw--for I am quite convinced that I saw nothing at all,
and that the extraordinary phenomenon or vision, call it what you will,
was only another of Bubbles' tricks--what I saw--" She stopped dead. She
found it extraordinarily difficult to go on.

"Yes?" he said sharply. "Please tell me, Blanche. What is it you saw, or
thought you saw?"

"I thought I saw _two_ women standing just behind your chair," she said
deliberately.

Varick made a violent movement--so violent that it knocked over a rather
solid little oak stool which always stood before the fire. "I beg your
pardon!" he exclaimed; and, stooping, picked the stool up again. Then,
"What sort of women?" he asked; and though he tried to speak lightly, he
failed, and knew he failed.

"It isn't very easy to describe them," she said reluctantly. "The one
was a stout young woman, with a gipsy type of face--that's the best way
I can describe it. But the other--"

She waited a full minute, but Varick did not, could not, speak.

She went on:

"The other, Lionel, looked more like--well, like what a ghost is
supposed to look like! She was swathed in white from head to foot, and
she appeared--I don't quite know how to describe it--as if at once
alive and dead. Her face looked dead, but her eyes looked alive."

"Had you ever seen either of these women before--I mean in life?"

He had turned away from her, and was staring into the fire.

"No; I've never seen anyone in the least like either of them."

Varick moved a few steps, and then, as if hardly knowing what he was
doing, he began turning over the leaves of the picture paper Miss
Burnaby had been reading.

"Do you suppose that Helen Brabazon saw exactly what you saw?" he asked
at last.

"No, I'm sure she didn't; for the younger-looking woman had already
disappeared, it was as if she faded into nothingness, before Helen
Brabazon called out,"--there was a hesitating, dubious tone in Blanche's
voice. "But of course we can't tell what exactly she did see. She may
have seen something--someone--quite different from what I thought I
saw."

Varick began staring into the fire again, and Blanche felt intolerably
nervous and uncomfortable. "I think, Lionel, that I must speak to
Bubbles very seriously!" she said at last. "I haven't a doubt _now_ that
she really has got some uncanny power--a power of stirring the
imagination--of making those about her think they see visions."

"But why should she have chosen that you should see such--such a vision
as that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"Ah, there you have me! I can't imagine what should prompt her to do
such a cruel, unseemly thing."

"You think it's quite impossible that Bubbles personated either of
these--these"--he hesitated for a word, and Blanche answered his only
half-asked question very decidedly.

"If there'd been only one figure there, I confess I should have thought
that Bubbles had in some way dressed up, and 'worked it.' You know how
fond she used to be of practical jokes? But there were two
forms--absolutely distinct the one from the other."

Lionel Varick took a turn up and down the long room. Then he came and
stood opposite to her, and she was shocked at the change in his face. He
looked as if he had been through some terrible physical experience.

"I wish you'd arrange for her to go away, at once--I mean, to-morrow.
Forgive me for saying such a thing, but I feel that nothing will go
right while Bubbles is at Wyndfell Hall," he exclaimed.

Blanche looked what he had never seen her look before--offended. "I
don't think I can get her away to-morrow, Lionel. She's nowhere to go
to. After all, she gave up a delightful party to come here and help us
out."

"Very well," he said hastily. "Perhaps I ought not to have suggested
anything so inhospitable"--he tried to smile. "But I will ask you to do
me _one_ favour?"

"Yes," she said, still speaking coldly. "What is it?"

"I want you to ask Miss Brabazon and her aunt to keep what happened this
afternoon absolutely to themselves."

"Of course I will!" She was relieved. "I don't think either of them is
in the least likely to be even tempted to speak of it."

CHAPTER XIII

But even while Varick and Blanche Farrow were arranging together that
this disturbing and mysterious occurrence should remain secret, Helen
Brabazon was actually engaged in telling one who was still a stranger to
her the story of her amazing experience.

Perhaps this was owing to the fact that the door of the hall had
scarcely shut behind her when she met Sir Lyon Dilsford face to face.

Almost involuntarily he exclaimed, with a good deal of real concern in
his voice: "Is anything the matter? I hope you haven't had bad news?"

She said, "Oh, no," and shook her head; but the tears welled up again
into her eyes.

When an attractive girl who generally shows remarkable powers of
quietude and self-control breaks down, and proves herself a very woman
after all, the average man is generally touched, and more than a little
moved. Sir Lyon felt oddly affected by Helen's evident distress, and an
ardent desire to console and to help her rose instinctively in his mind.

"Come into the study!" he exclaimed in a low voice. "And tell me if
there's anything I can do to help you?"

She obeyed him, and, as he followed her in, he shut the door.

She sat down, and for a while he stood before her, gazing
sympathetically into her flushed, tear-stained face.

"I'm afraid you'll think it so absurd," she said falteringly. "Even I
can hardly believe now that what happened _did_ happen!"

"Don't tell me--if you'd rather not," he said suddenly; a very
disagreeable suspicion entering his mind.

Was it within the bounds of possibility that James Tapster had tried
to--to kiss her? Sir Lyon had a great prejudice against the poor
millionaire, but he instantly rejected the idea. If such a thing had
indeed happened to her, Helen Brabazon was the last girl ever to offer
to tell anyone, least of all a man.

Helen all at once felt that it would be a comfort to confide her
strange, terrifying experience to this kind new friend.

"I'd rather tell you, I think."

She waited a moment, and then came out with a bald statement of what had
happened. "I was sitting knitting, when something seemed to force me to
look up--and I saw, or I thought I saw, the spirit of a dear, dead
friend."

Sir Lyon uttered an exclamation of extreme astonishment.

"Yes, I know it was only my imagination," Helen went on in a low,
troubled voice. "But it gave me a most fearful shock, and I feel that,
however long I live, I shall never forget it!"

"I wish you would tell me a little more about it," he said persuasively.
"I don't ask out of idle curiosity. I was very much impressed by what
happened on the first night of our visit here--I mean at the séance."

"So was I," she said reluctantly. "But, of course, this had nothing to
do with--with anything of that sort. In fact, Bubbles (as she has asked
me to call her) was sitting, asleep, I think, in that curious old carved
confessional box. My aunt and Mr. Varick were reading--Mr. Varick had
just come up from the village with this morning's London papers; Miss
Farrow was doing her embroidery, and I'd just been counting some
stitches in my knitting, when I looked up and saw--"

She stopped, as if not able to go on.

"Was what you saw, what you took to be an apparition, close to the
confessional?" asked Sir Lyon abruptly.

"No, not so very close--still, not very far away. It--she--seemed to be
standing behind Mr. Varick, a little to his left, on the door side."

"I suppose you would rather not tell me who it was you saw?"

Sir Lyon thought he knew, but he wished to feel sure.

"I don't see why I shouldn't tell you," yet she hesitated. "It was poor
Milly, Sir Lyon--I mean Mrs. Lionel Varick. She and I became great
friends during the weeks preceding her death. She even told me that,
apart from her husband, she had never cared for anyone as she grew to
care for me. And yet--oh, Sir Lyon, what was so very, very terrible just
now, was that I felt her looking at me with a kind of hatred in her dead
face," and, as she uttered these last words, an expression of deep pain
came over Helen Brabazon's countenance.

Sir Lyon then asked a rather curious question: "How was the apparition
clothed?"

"In her shroud. A woman in Redsands made it. I saw the woman about
it--perhaps that impressed it on my mind," her mouth quivered. "The
figure standing there was exactly like Milly dead, excepting that her
eyes seemed alive, and that there was that dreadful look of anger on
her face."

"How long did the vision last?"

"Oh, not a whole minute altogether! When I first saw it I got up, and
without knowing what I was doing, I screamed; and then she, Milly,
seemed to fade away--to melt into the air.

"Did anyone else see anything?" asked Sir Lyon eagerly.

"No, I don't think so. In fact, I'm quite sure not. My aunt was sitting
with her back to Mr. Varick."

There was a pause. And then Helen asked: "You don't believe that the
dead _can_ appear to the living--do you, Sir Lyon?"

"I've never been able quite to make up my mind," he said slowly. "But I
do believe, absolutely, in what is now called materialization. I must
believe in it, because I've witnessed the phenomena a number of times
myself. But, of course, always under a most carefully prepared set of
conditions. I wish you'd tell me," he went on, "exactly how the figure
struck you? Can you describe to me in greater detail the appearance of
what seemed to be the spirit of your friend?"

Helen did not quite understand what he meant, but she answered
obediently: "It's very difficult to describe more exactly what I did
see. As I told you just now, the eyes alone seemed to be really alive in
the pale, waxen-looking face, and I thought the mouth quivered."

"I know," he interjected quickly.

"But the rest of her poor, thin, emaciated looking body seemed to be so
stiff and still, swathed in the long, white grave-clothes--and I can't
express to you the sort of growing horror of it all! I _knew_ it was
only a few moments, yet it _seemed_ like hours of time. I felt as if I
_must_ call out and indeed I did. But before I could go on to utter her
name, Miss Farrow spoke to me, my aunt got up from her chair, and Mr.
Varick rushed forward! Of course it all happened in much less time than
it takes to tell."

She looked at him earnestly. What a kind, dependable face he had!

"Have you, Sir Lyon, any explanation to suggest?" she asked.

"I don't suppose," he said slowly, "that you would accept my
explanation, Miss Brabazon."

"I think I would," she said simply. "After what happened that first
night I feel that anything is possible. I am _sure_ my dear father's
spirit was there."

"I am inclined to think so too. But as to this instance I am not so sure
that what you saw was your dead friend. Unless--"

"Unless?" repeated Helen questioningly.

"You told me that during her lifetime you were on the best terms of
friendship with this poor lady, and yet that on her dead face there was
a look of hatred? How do you account for that?"

He looked questioningly, penetratingly, into the girl's distressed face.

Sir Lyon had always prided himself on his self-command and perfect
self-control, and yet he would have given almost anything for a really
honest answer to this question.

And poor Helen did give him an honest answer--honest, that is, from her
own simple-hearted point of view. "I can't account for it!" she
exclaimed. "But I am sure it was there. I felt the hatred coming out
from her towards me. And oh, Sir Lyon, it was horrible!"

"Try and think it was not Mrs. Varick's spirit," he said impressively.
"Try and tell yourself that it was either a dream, a waking phantom of
your brain, or--or--"

"Or what?" asked Helen eagerly.

But there are thoughts, questions, suspicions that no human being
willingly puts into words.

During the last few days Sir Lyon had become convinced that Lionel
Varick had resolved in his powerful, unscrupulous mind to make Helen
Brabazon his wife. It was in vain that he argued with himself that the
question of Miss Brabazon's future concerned him not at all. He found
himself again and again, when watching those two, giving a great deal of
uneasy thought to the matter. Now and again he would remind himself that
Varick had been no greater an adventurer than many a man who, when
utterly impecunious, has married an heiress amid the hearty approval and
acclamation of most of the people about them. And Varick could not now
be regarded as impecunious; he was a man of substance, though no doubt
even his present income would seem as nothing compared with the Brabazon
fortune.

Sir Lyon was ashamed of his growing distaste, even dislike, of his
courteous host. It was as if in the last few days a pit had been dug
between them. It was not pleasant to him to be accepting the hospitality
of a man whom he was growing to dislike and suspect more and more every
day. And yet though he could have made a hundred excuses to leave
Wyndfell Hall, he stayed on, refusing to inquire too closely into the
reason.

At times he tried to persuade himself that he was keenly interested in
the problem presented by Bubbles Dunster. The girl was beyond question a
most rare and exceptional medium. At one time he had made a close study
of psychic phenomena; and though he had come to certain conclusions
which had led to his entirely giving up the practices which had once
seemed to him the only thing worth living for, he was still sufficiently
interested in the subject to feel that Bubbles' powers were well worth
watching.

Sir Lyon would have given much to have been present at what, if Helen's
account were correct, had been an extraordinary example of what is
called materialization.

Had this terrible vision of Mrs. Varick been an emanation of Helen
Brabazon's own brain--some subconscious knowledge that she, Helen, was
now the object of Varick's pursuit? Or was this woman, whom they all
called "poor Milly," an unquiet spirit, wandering about full of jealous,
cruel thoughts, even with regard to the two who had evidently been so
selflessly devoted to her--her girl friend and her husband?

And then, suddenly a queer feeling of intense relief swept over him.
Whether a sentient being or not had appeared to Helen Brabazon, there
could be no doubt that what had just happened would make the course of
Varick's wooing more arduous. He was ashamed to find that this
conviction made him suddenly feel oddly light-hearted--almost, so he
told himself, a young man again!

CHAPTER XIV

As he walked into his bedroom, which was pleasantly warm--for there was
a good fire, and the curtains across the three windows were closely
drawn--Dr. Panton told himself that he was indeed beginning the New Year
very well.

Half-an-hour ago the whole party, with the exception of Miss Burnaby,
who had gone to bed at her usual time, had stood outside the front door
under the starry sky while the many clocks of Wyndfell Hall rang out the
twelve strokes which said farewell to the Old Year, and brought the New
Year in. Then they had all crowded back again into the hall, and, hand
in hand, sung "Auld Lang Syne."

As everyone had shaken hands and wished each other a Happy New Year,
many and sincere had been the good wishes felt and expressed. Even James
Tapster had looked genial and happy for once. He was beginning to feel
as if he would, after all, throw the handkerchief to Bubbles (his own
secret, graceful paraphrase for making an offer of marriage). But as yet
Dr. Panton knew nothing of this little under-current in the broad stream
which seemed to be flowing so pleasantly before him. Had he done so, he
would have been startled and distressed, for he had already, with a
shrewd medical man's judgment, "sized up" his fellow guest, and found
him very much wanting.

Thus not knowing or divining anything of the various human
under-currents, save, perhaps, that he guessed Donnington to be in love
with Bubbles, Dr. Panton went off to bed in a very cheerful and
contented state of mind. So contented was he that as, with leisurely
fingers, he lit the candles on his dressing-table, he incidentally told
himself that Wyndfell Hall was the only house in which he had ever
stayed which, lacking any other luminant but lamps and candles, yet had
amply enough of both!

Lighting a pipe--for he didn't feel in the least sleepy--he drew forward
a deep, comfortable armchair close to the fire, and took up a book. But
soon he put it down again, and, staring at the dancing flames, his mind
dwelt with retrospective pleasure on the last few hours.

Seated between Helen Brabazon and Bubbles Dunster, he had thoroughly
enjoyed the delicious New Year's Eve dinner composed by Varick's _chef_.
Miss Brabazon had admitted to having a headache this evening, and she
certainly looked very far from well--less well than he had thought her
to be when they had first seen one another again, after so long an
absence, this afternoon.

And yet, as is sometimes the case, a look of languor suited her; and he
thought she had grown decidedly better-looking in the last year. At
Redsands Miss Brabazon had been a little too buxom, a little too
self-possessed, also, for his taste. And yet--and yet how wonderfully
good she had been to poor Mrs. Varick! With what tender patience had she
put up with the invalid's querulous bad temper, never even mentioning it
to him, the doctor, who so often received painful confidences of the
kind from those who were far nearer and dearer to a dying patient than
Helen had been to querulous Milly Varick.

As for Miss Bubbles, he felt it would be easy to lose one's heart to
that strange, queer young creature. They had made real friends over
Span. And, apropos of Span, Dr. Panton frowned to himself. He feared
that the dog was going to be the one blot on this delightful visit. Span
had been very, very badly behaved--setting up that unearthly howl
whenever his master brought him in contact with the rest of the party.
Yet he was quite good in the servants' hall. "It is clear that, like so
many cleverer people than himself, Span likes low company," Bubbles had
whispered mischievously to Span's master. "I daresay they're all very
much nicer than we are, if we only knew it!" she had gone on, but Dr.
Panton had shaken his head. He had no great liking for the modern
domestic servant. He was one of the many people who consider that the
good old type of serving-man and waiting-woman has disappeared for ever.
To-night, remembering Bubbles' words, he gave a careless, rueful thought
to the question of how Varick, who was always generous about money, must
be cheated--"rooked" was the expression the doctor used in his own
mind--by these job servants who were here, so his host told him, just
for the one month. Still, they were all fulfilling their part of their
contract very well, especially the _chef_! Everything seemed to go on
oiled wheels at Wyndfell Hall. But this might be owing to clever Miss
Farrow, for Varick had told him that Miss Farrow was acting as hostess
to the party.

Panton didn't much like that composed, clever-looking lady. She made him
feel a little shy, a little _young_--a sensation he didn't very often
experience nowadays! She treated him with a courtesy which, if
elaborate, was also distant. It was odd to think that Miss Farrow was
the unconventional, friendly Bubbles Dunster's aunt.

Sir Lyon Dilsford, on the other hand, he liked very much. He smiled a
queer little smile as he thought of this new acquaintance. He had looked
up in the middle of dinner, and caught a rather curious look on Sir
Lyon's face. It was a thoughtful, considering, almost tender look. Was
Sir Lyon attracted to Helen Brabazon? Well, Miss Brabazon, with her vast
wealth, and Sir Lyon, with his fine old name, and agreeable, polished
personality, would seem well matched, according to a worldly point of
view. But Panton told himself that he would _far_ prefer Lionel Varick
were _he_ a young woman. But he feared there was no hope of such a chance
coming Miss Brabazon's way. Varick's heart--his big, sensitive
heart--was buried in the grave of his wife....

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!

While the men were still in the dining-room, and Varick had gone out for
a moment to look for some very special, new kind of cigarette which had
come down from London a day or two before, Tapster had spoken very
disagreeably of the richness of the French _chef's_ cooking. He had
seemed to think it an outrage that something of a special, very plain,
nature had not been provided for him every day, and he had hinted that
perhaps the doctor could suggest some antidote to all this richness!
There was another reason, so Panton's sleepy mind told him, why he
didn't like his sulky, plain fellow-guest. It became suddenly,
unexpectedly, clear to him that Tapster was much taken with Miss
Bubbles. The man had hardly taken his eyes off her during the whole of
dinner, and it had been a disagreeable, appraising look--as if he
couldn't quite make up his mind what she was worth! He told himself,
while remembering that look, that Tapster was the kind of man who is
always hesitating, always absorbed in some woman, and yet always afraid
to try his luck--in the hope that if he waits, he may do better next
time! Miss Bubbles was a hundred times too good for such a fellow,
however rich the fellow might be....

Gradually Panton felt himself slipping off into that pleasant condition
which immediately precedes a dreamless, healthful sleep.

And then, all at once, his senses became keenly alert, for a curious
sound became audible in the darkening room. It was without doubt a
sound created by some industrious mouse, or perhaps--though that idea
was a less pleasant one--by a greedy rat. Swish, swish--swish--just like
the rustling of a lady's silk dress!

Panton stretched out his right arm, and knocked the wall behind him
sharply twice or thrice, and the sound stopped suddenly. But after a few
minutes, just as he was dropping off, it began again. But it no longer
startled him, as it had done the first time, and soon he was fast
asleep.

It might have been a moment, it might have been an hour, later, when
there came a sudden, urgent knocking at his door. He sat up in bed.

"Come in," he called out, now wide awake.

The door opened slowly--and there came through it a curious-looking
figure. It was James Tapster, arrayed in a wonderful dressing-gown made
of Persian shawls, and edged with fur. He held a candlestick in his
hand, and the candle threw up a flickering light on his pallid,
alarmed-looking face.

"Dr. Panton," he whispered, "I wish you'd come out here a moment."

And the doctor, cursing his bad luck, and feeling what he very seldom
felt, thoroughly angry, said ungraciously: "What is the matter? Can't
you tell me without my getting out of bed?"

Last night's excellent dinner, which couldn't have hurt any healthy man,
had evidently upset the unhealthy millionaire.

"Can't you hear?" whispered Tapster. His teeth were, chattering; he
certainly looked very ill.

"Hear! Hear what?"

Tapster held up his hand. And then, yes, the man sitting up in the big
four-post bed did hear some very curious noises. It was as if furniture
was being thrown violently about, and as if crockery was being
smashed--but a very, very long way off.

This was certainly most extraordinary! He had done Tapster an injustice.

He jumped out of bed. "Wait a minute!" he exclaimed. "I'll get my
dressing-gown, and we'll go and see what it's all about. What
extraordinary sounds! Where on earth do they come from?"

"They come from the servants' quarters," said Tapster.

There came a sudden silence, and then an awful crash.

"How long have these noises gone on?" asked Panton.

He had put on his dressing-gown, and was now looking for his slippers.

"Oh, for a long time."

Tapster's hand was trembling, partly from excitement, partly from fear.
"How d'you account for it?" he asked.

"One of the servants has gone mad drunk," replied Panton briefly.
"That's what it is--without a doubt! We'd better go down and see what
can be done."

And then, as there came the distant sounds of breaking glass, he
exclaimed: "I wonder everyone hasn't woken up!"

"There is a heavy padded door between that part of the house and this.
My room is on the other side, over what they call the school-room. I
left the padded door open just now when I came through--in fact I
fastened it back."

"That wasn't a very clever thing to do!"

The doctor did not speak pleasantly, but Tapster took no offence.

"I--I wanted someone to hear," he said humbly; "I felt so shut off
through there."

"Still, there's no use in waking everybody else up," said Panton, in a
businesslike tone.

He didn't look forward to the job which he thought lay before him; but,
of course, it wasn't the first time he had been called in to help calm a
man who had become violent under the influence of drink. "Go on," he
said curtly. "Show me the way! I suppose there's a back staircase by
which we can go down?"

He followed his guide along the broad corridor to a heavy green baize
door. Stooping, he undid the hook which fastened the door back. It swung
to, and, as it did so, there came a sudden, complete cessation of the
noise.

"Hullo!" he said to himself, "that's odd."

The two men waited for what seemed to Panton a long time, but in reality
it was less than five minutes.

"Would you like to come into my room for a few moments? I wish you
would," said Mr. Tapster plaintively.

Unwillingly the doctor walked through into what was certainly a very
pleasant, indeed a luxurious room. It was furnished in a more modern way
than the other rooms at Wyndfell Hall. "There's a bath-room off this
room. That's why Varick, who's a good-natured chap, gave it me. He knows
I have a great fear of catching a chill," whispered Mr. Tapster.

"We'd better go down," said the doctor at last.

"D'you think so? But the noise has stopped, and, after all, it is no
business of ours."

Dr. Panton did not tell the other what was really in his mind. This was
that the man who had now become so curiously quiet might unwittingly
have done a mischief to himself. All he said was: "I have a feeling that
I ought to go down, at any rate."

The words had hardly left his lips before the noises began again, and,
of course, from where the two men were now, they sounded far louder than
they had done from the doctor's bed-room. Heavy furniture was
undoubtedly being thrown about, and again there came those curious
crashes, as if plates and dishes were being dashed against the wall and
broken there in a thousand pieces.

"I say, this won't do!" Quickly he went towards the door, and as he
reached the corridor he saw the swing door between the two parts of the
house open, and Miss Farrow came through, looking her well-bred,
composed self, and wearing, incidentally, a short, neat, becoming
dressing-gown.

"I can't think what's happening!" she exclaimed. She looked from the one
man to the other. "What _can_ be happening downstairs?"

As Panton made no answer, Mr. Tapster replied for them both: "The doctor
thinks one of the servants got drunk last night."

"Yes, that must be it, of course. I'll go down and see who it is," she
said composedly.

But Dr. Panton broke in authoritatively: "No, indeed, Miss Farrow! If
it's what I think it is, the fellow will probably be violent. You'd
better let me go down alone and deal with him."

There had come again that extraordinary, sudden stillness.

"I think I'd rather come down with you," she said coolly.

All three started going down the narrow, steep wooden staircase which
connected that portion of the upper floor with the many rambling offices
of the old house.

Tapster and Blanche Farrow each held a candle, but Dr. Panton led the
way; and soon they were treading the whitewashed passages, even their
slippered feet making, in the now absolute stillness, what sounded like
loud thuds on the stone floor.

"Listen!" said Blanche suddenly.

They all stood still, and there came a strange fluttering sound. It was
as if a bird had got in through a window, and was trying to find a way
out.

"D'you know the way to the kitchen? I think that the man must be in the
kitchen, or probably the pantry," whispered the doctor to his hostess.

"I think it's this way."

Miss Farrow led them down a short passage to the right, and cautiously
opened a door which led into the kitchen.

And then they all three uttered exclamations of amazement and of horror.
Holding her candle high in her hand, their hostess was now lighting up a
scene of extraordinary and of widespread disorder.

It was as if a tornado had whirled through the vast, low-ceilinged
kitchen. Heavy tables lay on their sides and upside down, their legs in
the air. Most of the crockery--fortunately, so Blanche said to herself,
kitchen crockery--off the big dresser lay smashed in large and small
pieces here, there, and everywhere. A large copper preserving-pan lay
grotesquely sprawling on the well-scrubbed centre table, which was the
one thing which had not been moved--probably because of its great
weight. And yet--and yet it had been moved--for it was all askew! The
man who did that, if, indeed, one man could alone have done all this
mischief, must have been very, very strong--a Hercules!

The doctor took the candle from Miss Farrow's hand and walked in among
the débris. "He must have gone through that door," he muttered.

Leaving her to be joined by the timorous James Tapster, he went boldly
on across the big kitchen, and through a door which gave into what
appeared to be a scullery. But here everything was in perfect order.

"Where can the man have gone?" he asked himself in astonishment.

Before him there rose a vision of the respectable old butler, and of the
two tall, well-matched, but not physically strong-looking footmen. This
must be the work of some man he had not yet seen? Of course there must
be many men employed about such a place as was Wyndfell Hall.

He retraced his steps. "I think you and Mr. Tapster had better go
upstairs again, and leave me to this," he said decidedly. "I'll have a
thorough hunt through the place, and it'll probably take some time.
Perhaps the man's taken refuge in the pantry. By the way, where do the
servants sleep?"

"Oddly enough, they're none of them sleeping in the house," said Blanche
quietly. "They're down at what are called 'the cottages.' You may have
seen a row of pretty little buildings not very far from the gate giving
on to the high road? Those cottages belong to Mr. Varick. They're quite
comfortable, and we thought it best to put all the servants together
there. When I say all the servants"--she corrected herself quickly--"the
ladies' maids and Mr. Tapster's valet all sleep in the house. But Mr.
Varick and I agreed that it would be better to put the whole of the
temporary staff down together in the cottages."

"In that case I think it's very probable that the man, when he realized
the mischief he'd done, bolted out of doors. However, I may as well have
a look round."

"I'll come with you," said Blanche decidedly. She turned to Mr. Tapster:
"I think you'd better go upstairs, and try and finish your night more
comfortably."

She spoke quite graciously. Blanche was the one of the party who really
tolerated Mr. Tapster--Blanche and Mr. Tapster's host.

"All right, I think I will. Though I feel rather a brute at leaving you
to do the dirty work," he muttered.

He set off down the passage; and then, a few moments later, he had to
call out and ask Miss Farrow to show him the way--he had lost himself!

It took a long time to search through the big commons of the ancient
dwelling. There were innumerable little rooms now converted into store
cupboards, larders, and so on. But everything was in perfect order--the
kitchen alone being in that, as yet, inexplicable condition of wreckage.

But at last their barren quest was ended, and they came up the narrow
staircase on much more cordial and kindly terms with one another than
either would have thought possible some hours before. Then the doctor,
with an "Allow me," pushed in front of Miss Farrow in order to open wide
the heavy padded door. "I wonder that you heard anything through this!"
he exclaimed.

She answered, "I was awakened by Mr. Tapster talking to you. Then, of
course, I heard those appalling noises--for he had left the padded door
open. I got up and, opening my own door, listened, after you had both
gone through. When there came that final awful crash I felt I _must_ go
and see what had happened!"

CHAPTER XV

"Spirits? What absolute bosh! Miss Bubbles has been pulling your leg,
Varick. And yet one would like to know who has been at the bottom of it
all--whether, as you say the butler evidently believes, it is the _chef_
himself, or, as the _chef_ told you, one of the under-servants. In any
case, I hope no one will suppose that that sort of thing can be owing to
a supernatural agency."

"Yet John Wesley did so suppose when that sort of thing happened in the
Wesley household," came in the quiet voice of Sir Lyon.

The three men--Dr. Panton, Sir Lyon, and Lionel Varick--were taking a
walk along the high road. It was only eleven o'clock, but it seemed much
later than that to two of them, for all the morning they had been busy.
An hour of it had been taken up with a very close examination of the
servants, especially of the respectable butler and of the French _chef_.
They had both professed themselves, together and separately, as entirely
unable to account for what had happened in the night. But still, it had
been clear to the three who had taken part in the examination--Blanche
Farrow, Varick, and the doctor--that the butler believed the _chef_ to
be responsible. "It's that Frenchman; they're tricky kind of fellows,
ma'am," the man had said in a confidential aside. And, though the _chef_
was less willing to speak, it was equally clear that he, on his side,
put it down to one of the under-servants.

Then, quite at the end of the interrogation, they had all been startled
by not only the _chef_, but the butler also, suddenly admitting that
something very like what happened last night had happened twice before!
But on the former occasions, though everything in the kitchen had been
moved, including the heavy centre table, nothing had been broken. Still,
it had taken the _chef_ and his kitchen-maids two hours to put
everything right. That had happened, so was now revealed, on the very
morning after the party had just been gathered together. And then,
again, four days ago.

Miss Burnaby, who had slept through everything, exclaimed, when the
happenings of the night before were told her by Mr. Tapster, "The place
seems bewitched! I shall never forget what happened yesterday afternoon
to Helen." Turning to Dr. Panton, she continued: "My niece actually
believes that she saw a ghost yesterday!"

Helen said sharply, "I thought nothing was to be said about that,
Auntie."

Meanwhile the doctor stared at her, hardly believing the evidence of his
own ears. "You thought you saw a ghost?" he said incredulously.

And Helen, turning away, answered: "I would so much rather not speak
about it. I don't want even to think about it ever again!"

An hour later, as Panton and Sir Lyon stood outside the house waiting
for Varick, the doctor said a word to the other man: "A most
extraordinary thing happened here yesterday. Miss Brabazon apparently
believes she saw a ghost."

"Did she tell you so herself?" asked Sir Lyon quietly.

"No, her aunt mentioned it, quite as if it was an ordinary incident.
But I could see that it was true, for she was very much upset, and said
she would rather not speak of it."

They had then been joined by their host, and when once through the gate,
the doctor's first words had proved that his mind was still full of all
that had happened in the night.

"Surely _you_ don't put down what happened last night to a supernatural
agency?"

He was addressing Sir Lyon, and though he spoke quite civilly, there was
an under-current of sarcasm in his pleasant, confident voice.

"At one time I was very deeply interested in what I think one may call
the whole range of psychic phenomena," replied Sir Lyon deliberately,
"and I came to certain very definite conclusions--"

"And what," said Varick, with a touch of real eagerness, "were those
conclusions?"

Till now he had not joined in the discussion.

"For one thing, I very soon made up my mind that a great deal of what
occurs at every properly conducted séance can by no means be dismissed
as 'all bosh,'" answered Sir Lyon.

"Do you consider that the séance which took place the first evening you
were here was a properly conducted séance?" asked Varick slowly.

"Yes--as far as I was able to ascertain--it was. I felt convinced, for
instance, that Laughing Water was a separate entity--that was why I
asked her to pass me by. To me there is something indecent about an open
séance. I have always felt that very strongly; and what happened that
evening in the case of Mr. Burnaby of course confirmed my feeling."

Varick uttered under his breath an exclamation of incredulous amazement.
"D'you mean that you believe there was a _spirit_ present? It would take
some time to do it, but I think I could _prove_ that it was what I took
it to be--thought-reading of quite an exceptional quality, joined to a
clever piece of acting."

"You'd find it more difficult than you think to prove that," said Sir
Lyon quietly. "I've been to too many séances to be able to accept that
point of view. I feel sure that Miss Bubbles was what they call
'controlled' by a separate entity calling herself 'Laughing Water.' But
if you ask me what sort of entity, then I cannot reply."

Panton turned on him: "Then you're a spiritualist?" he exclaimed. "Of
course I was quite unaware of that fact when I spoke just now."

There was an underlying touch of scorn in his voice.

"No, I do not call myself a spiritualist. But still--yes, I accept the
term, if by it you mean that I believe there is no natural explanation
for certain of the phenomena we have seen, or heard of, in the last
twenty-four hours."

He purposely did not allude to what had happened between tea and dinner
in the hall last evening, but he felt certain that it was very present
to Varick himself.

"I spoke just now of the curious occurrences in the Wesley household,"
he observed, turning to the young doctor. "That, of course, is the most
famous case on record of the sort of thing which took place in the
kitchen last night."

"But why," cried Varick, with a touch of excitement, "why should all
these things happen just now at Wyndfell Hall? I know, of course, the
story of the haunted room. But most old houses have one respectable
ghost attached to them. I don't mind the ghost Pegler fancies she
saw--but, good heavens, the place now seems full of tricksy spirits!
Still, it's an odd fact that none of the servants, with the one
exception of Miss Farrow's maid, have seen anything out of the way."

Here the doctor broke in: "That's easily accounted for!" he exclaimed.
"I understand from Miss Farrow that her maid--a remarkable person
without doubt--has held her tongue ever since she saw, or thought she
saw, a ghost. But if the other servants knew everything we know, there'd
be no holding them--there'd be no servants!"

"Of course, I admit that in the great majority of instances those who
think they see what's commonly called a ghost probably see no ghost at
all," said Sir Lyon thoughtfully. "They've heard that a ghost is there,
and therefore they _think_ they see it."

"Then," said Varick, turning on him, "you don't believe Pegler did see
the ghost of Dame Grizel Fauncey?"

Sir Lyon smiled. "I daresay you'll think me very illogical, but in this
one case I think Pegler _did_ see what is commonly called a ghost. And
I'll tell you why I think so."

Both men turned and looked at him fixedly, both in their several ways
being much surprised by his words.

"I have discovered," said Sir Lyon in a rather singular tone, "that this
woman Pegler saw nothing for the first few days she occupied the haunted
room."

Panton stared at the speaker with an astonished expression. "What
exactly do you mean to imply?" he asked.

Sir Lyon hesitated. He was, in some of his ways, very old-fashioned. It
was not pleasant to him to bring a lady's name into a discussion. And
yet he felt impelled to go on, for what had happened in the hall
yesterday afternoon had moved and interested him as he had not thought
to be interested and moved again.

"The woman saw nothing," he said, slowly and impressively, "till Miss
Dunster arrived at Wyndfell Hall. I take that to mean that Miss Dunster
is a very strong medium."

"A medium?" repeated the doctor scoffingly. "Who says medium surely says
charlatan, Sir Lyon--not to say something worse than charlatan!"

Sir Lyon looked thoughtfully at the younger man. "I admit that often
mediums are charlatans--or rather, they begin by being mediums pure and
simple, and they end by being mediums _qua_ charlatans. The temptations
which lie in their way are terrible, especially if, as in the majority
of cases, they make a living by their--their"--he hesitated--"their
extraordinary, as yet misunderstood, and generally mishandled gift."

"Do you mean," asked Varick gravely, "that you believe Bubbles possesses
the power of raising the dead?"

Sir Lyon did not answer at once, but at last he said firmly: "Either the
dead, or some class of intermediate spirits who personate the human
dead. Yes, Varick, that is exactly what I do mean."

All three men stopped in their now slow pacing. Dr. Panton felt too much
surprised to speak.

Sir Lyon went on: "I think that Miss Bubbles' arrival at Wyndfell Hall
made visible, and is still making visible, much that would otherwise
remain unseen."

As he caught the look of incredulous amazement on the doctor's face, he
repeated very deliberately: "That is my considered opinion. As I said
just now, I have had a very considerable experience of psychic
phenomena, and I realized, during that séance which was held the first
evening I spent here, that this young lady possessed psychic gifts of a
very extraordinary nature. There is no doubt at all, in my mind, that
were she a professional medium, her fame would by now be world-wide."

Perhaps it was the derisive, incredulous look on the young medical man's
face which stung him into adding: "If I understand rightly"--he turned
to Varick--"something very like what I should call an impromptu
materialization took place in the hall yesterday--is that not so?"

There was a pause. Twice Varick cleared his throat. Who had broken faith
and told Sir Lyon what had happened? He supposed it to have been Miss
Burnaby. "Though I was present," he said at last, "I, myself, saw
absolutely nothing."

"I, too, have heard something of it!" exclaimed Dr. Panton, looking from
one of his two now moved, embarrassed, and excited companions to the
other. "And you were actually present when it happened, Varick?"

As the other remained silent, he turned to Sir Lyon. "What was it
exactly Miss Brabazon thought she saw?"

Sir Lyon, after a glance at Varick's pale, set face, was sorry that he
had mentioned the curious, painful occurrence; and, though he was a
truthful man, he now told a deliberate lie. "I don't know what the
apparition purported to be," he observed. And he saw, even as he was
uttering the lying words, a look of intense relief come over Varick's
face. "But to my mind Miss Brabazon evidently saw the rare phenomenon
known as a materialization. Miss Bubbles was lying asleep in the
confessional which is almost exactly opposite the door through which one
enters the hall from the house side, thus the necessary conditions were
present."

"I wish _I_ had been present!" exclaimed the doctor. "Either I should
have seen nothing, or, if I had seen anything, I should have managed to
convince myself that what I saw was flesh and blood."

As neither of his two companions said anything in answer to that
observation, Panton went on, speaking with more hesitation, but also
with more seriousness than he had yet shown: "Do I understand you to
mean, Sir Lyon, that you credit our young fellow-guest with supernatural
gifts denied to the common run of mortals?"

"I should not put it quite that way," answered Sir Lyon. "But yes, I
suppose I must admit that I do credit Miss Bubbles with powers which no
one as yet has been able to analyze or explain--though a great many more
intelligent people than has ever been the case before, are trying to
find a natural explanation."

"If that is so," asked the doctor, "why have you yourself given up such
an extraordinarily important and valuable investigation?"

"Because," said Sir Lyon, "I consider my own personal investigations
yielded a definite result."

"And that result--?"

"--was that what I prefer to call by the old term of occultism makes for
evil rather than for good. Also, I became convinced that the practice of
these arts has been, so to speak, put 'out of bounds'--I can think of
no better expression--by whatever Power it be that rules our strange
world."

He spoke earnestly and slowly, choosing his words with care.

"If your theory contains a true answer to the investigations which are
now taking place," exclaimed the doctor, "there was a great deal to be
said for those mediaeval folk who burnt sorcerers and witches! I suppose
you would admit that they were right in their belief that by so doing
they were getting rid of very dangerous, as well as unpleasant, elements
from out of their midst?"

The speaker looked hard at Sir Lyon. Nothing, as he told himself, with
some excitement, had ever astonished him, or taken him so aback, as was
now doing this conversation with an intelligent, cultivated man who
seemed to have broad and sane views on most things, but who was
evidently as mad as a hatter on this one subject.

And then, before Sir Lyon had perchance made up his mind what to answer
exactly, Varick's voice broke in: "Yes," he observed, smiling a little
grimly, "that's the logical conclusion of your view, Dilsford. You can't
get out of it! If a human being really possesses such dangerous powers,
the sooner that human being is put out of the way the better."

"No, no! I don't agree!" Sir Lyon spoke with more energy than he had yet
displayed. "Everything points to the fact that those unfortunate
people--I mean the witches and sorcerers of the Middle Ages--could have
been, and sometimes were, exorcised."

"Exorcised?" repeated Panton. He had never heard the word "exorcised"
uttered aloud before, though he had, of course, come across it in
books. "Do you mean driving out the devil by means of a religious
ceremony?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes," said Sir Lyon, "I do exactly mean that. As you are probably
aware, there is a form of exorcism still in common use. And if I were
our host here, I should have Wyndfell Hall exorcised, preferably by a
Roman Catholic priest, as soon as Miss Bubbles is safely off the
premises."

The doctor again looked sharply at the speaker--but no, Sir Lyon
evidently meant what he said; and even Varick seemed to be taking the
suggestion seriously; for "That's not a bad idea," he muttered.

The three men walked on in silence for a few moments.

"It would be interesting to know," observed Sir Lyon suddenly, "what
Miss Farrow conceives to be the truth as to her niece's peculiar gifts.
I fancy, from something she told me the other day, that she hasn't the
slightest belief in psychic phenomena, I wonder if she feels the same
after what happened yesterday and last night?"

"I can tell you exactly what Miss Farrow thinks," interposed Varick. "I
had a word or two with her about it all this morning, after we'd
examined the servants in the white parlour."

"What _does_ she think," asked Sir Lyon. He had always been interested
in Blanche Farrow, and, in a way, he was fond of her.

"She thinks," said Varick, a little hesitatingly, "that Bubbles, in
addition to her extraordinary thought-reading gift, has inherited from
her Indian ancestress a power of collectively hypnotizing an
audience--of making people see things that she wants them to see. That's
rather awkwardly expressed, but it's the best I can do."

"I quite understand," broke in the doctor. "You mean the sort of power
which certain Indian fakirs undoubtedly possess?"

"Yes," said Varick. "And, as I said just now Bubbles has got Indian
blood in her veins. One of her ancestors actually did marry an Indian
lady of high degree, and Bubbles is descended from one of the children
of that marriage."

"I think that may account for the potency of her gift," said Sir Lyon
thoughtfully, "though, of course, many Europeans have had, and now
possess, these curious powers."

"But though, in a sense, spiritualism is no new thing, even those who
believe in it admit that it has never led to anything," observed Varick
musingly.

"Very rarely, I admit; but still, sometimes even a dream has contained a
revelation of sorts. Thus it is on positive record that a dream revealed
the truth as to what was called the Murder of the Red Barn."

"Can I take it that you do believe the dead return?" asked the doctor
abruptly.

"I think," said Sir Lyon deliberately, "that certain of the dead desire