From out the Vasty Deep

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

"I suppose you have often stayed here?" began Miss Farrow civilly.

Helen Brabazon looked at her, surprised. "I've never been here before!" she exclaimed. "How could I have been? I've only known Mr. Varick for, let me see,"—she hesitated—"a very little over a year."

"But you were a great friend of his wife's—at least so I understood?"

Blanche concealed, successfully, her very real astonishment. She had certainly been told by Lionel that Miss Brabazon and "poor Milly" had been intimate friends; that this fact was, indeed, the only link between Miss Brabazon and her host.

The girl now sitting opposite to her flushed deeply, and suddenly Blanche Farrow realized that there was a good deal of character and feeling in the open, ingenuous face.

"Yes, that's true. We became great friends"—a note of emotion broke into the steady, well-modulated voice—"but our friendship was not an old friendship, Miss Farrow. I only knew Milly—well, I suppose I knew her about ten weeks in all."

"Ten weeks in all?" This time Blanche Farrow could not keep the surprise she felt out of her voice. "What an extraordinary mistake for me to have made! I thought you had been life-long friends."

Helen shook her head. "What happened was this. A friend of mine—I mean a really old friend—had a bad illness, and I took her down to Redsands—you may know it, a delightful little village not far from Walmer. I took a house there, and Mr. and Mrs. Varick had the house next door. We made friends, I mean Mr. Varick and myself, over the garden wall, and he asked me if I would mind coming in some day and seeing his wife. I had a great deal of idle time on my hands, so very soon I spent even more time with the Varicks than I did with my friend, and she—I mean poor Milly—became very, very fond of me."

There was a pause. And then the younger woman went on: "And if we knew each other for such a short time, as one measures time, I on my side soon got very fond of Milly. Though she was a good deal over thirty"—again the listener felt a thrill of unreasoning surprise—"there was something very simple and young about poor Milly."

The speaker stopped, and Blanche, leaning forward, exclaimed: "I am deeply interested in what you tell me, Miss Brabazon! I have never liked to say much to Lionel about his wife; but I have always so wondered what she was really like?"