He wondered if she could have hidden herself in a huge oak chest which stood to his right?
Nay, there she could not be, for he remembered having been shown that it was full of eighteenth-century gala gowns.
And while he was looking about him, feeling utterly perplexed and bewildered, through a door which was ajar there suddenly passed out Lionel Varick.
"Is anyone in there ?" asked the doctor sharply.
Varick started violently.

"You did startle me!" he exclaimed.

"No, there's no one in there--I came up to look for a book.

But as I told them to delay dinner yet a little longer, would you mind if we went in and saw Bubbles together on our way downstairs?
I feel I should rather like to get my first interview with her over--and with you there." "I don't see why you shouldn't." But there was a doubtful ring in Dr.
Panton's voice.

He would, as a matter of fact, have very much preferred that Varick should not see the girl to-night, especially if there was the slightest truth in the other's suspicion that Bubbles believed him to have been in any way instrumental, however accidentally, in making her fall into the water.
His mind worked quickly, as minds are apt to work when faced with that sort of problem, and he decided that on the whole he might as well let Varick do as he wished.
"You'd better not say very much to her.