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.