"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.