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_.