Sitting all alone in the hall, crouching down on a footstool close to the fire, for somehow she felt tired—tired, and exhausted—she made one definite resolution. She would give up, as far as she was able, the practice of those psychic arts which she knew those who loved her believed to involve a real danger to her general well-being. What had happened the afternoon before had frightened her. She had been entirely unconscious of the awful phenomena which had taken place, and she was becoming seriously alarmed at her own increasing power of piercing the veil which hangs between the seen and the unseen. What she had told Donnington during their talk in the old darkened church had been true: she often felt herself companioned by entities who boded ill, if not to herself, then to those about her. Since yesterday, also, there had hung heavily over her mind a premonition that she, personally, was in danger. Now she told herself that perhaps the peculiar, disturbing sensation had only been a forerunner of James Tapster's unexpected offer of marriage.
"What would you say to our all going out for a walk?" Luncheon was just over, and Varick was facing his guests. The only one missing was Dr. Panton, who had gone up to his room, saying he had some work to do.
"I'm afraid it must be very wet and slushy," said Blanche Farrow dubiously. It had snowed in the night, and now a thaw had set in.
She had an almost catlike dislike of wet or dirt; on the other hand, she was one of those people who are generally willing to put aside their own wishes in favour of what those about them wish to do; and she saw that for some reason or other Lionel Varick wanted this suggestion of his to be carried out.
"I can take you to a place," he exclaimed, "where I think we shall find it dry walking even to-day. It's a kind of causeway, or embankment"—he turned to Helen Brabazon—"which some people say was built by the Romans."
"I think a walk would be very nice," she agreed.
Helen did not look like her usual cheerful, composed self. The experience which had befallen her the day before still haunted her mind to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps a good long walk would make her feel a different creature, and chase that awful image of Milly Varick in her grave-clothes from her brain.
And so in the end the whole party started off, with the exception of Miss Burnaby and Dr. Panton. Bubbles tried hard to get out of going on what she frankly said seemed to her "a stupid expedition," but Donnington had a theory that the open air would do her good, and as for Varick, he exclaimed in a good-humoured but very determined tone: "If you won't come, Bubbles, I give the whole thing up!" In a lower voice he added: "Naughty as you are, you're the life and soul of the party."
And thus it was to please Varick, rather than Donnington, that Bubbles started on what was to be to all those that took part in it a memorable walk.