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."