Her nerves were no longer what they had once been.

For instance, the strange series of happenings that had just taken place here, at Wyndfell Hall, had thoroughly upset her; and as for the horrible thing that had occurred yesterday, she hadn't been able to sleep all night for thinking of it.

Nothing that had ever happened in her now long life had had quite the effect on Blanche Farrow that Bubbles' accident had had.

She had realized, suddenly, how fond she was of the girl--how strong in all of us is the call of the blood! As she had stood watching Dr.Panton's untiring efforts to restore the circulation of the apparently drowned girl there had gone up from Blanche's heart a wild, instinctive prayer to the God in whom she did not believe, to spare the child.
Perhaps just because she had not broken down before, she felt the more now all that had happened in the way of the strange, the sinister, and the untoward during the last fortnight.

And all at once, after reading yet again right through the quiet, measured letter of her old friend and constant lover, Blanche Farrow suddenly burst into a passion of tears.
And then it struck her as funny, as even absurd, that she should cry like this! She hadn't cried for years and years--in fact, she could hardly remember the day when she had last cried.
She jumped out of bed and put on her dressing-gown, for it was very cold, and then she went and gazed at her reflection in the one looking-glass in the room.