"Let me see--it's not much after five now; I'll be back by seven." He walked to the door, and from there turned round.

"So long!" he cried out cheerily, and she was surprised, for Varick seldom made use of any slang or colloquialism.
Feeling all at once utterly exhausted and spent, she drew a deep chair forward to the fire and lay back in it.

Her mind seemed completely to empty itself of thought.

She neither remembered the past nor considered the future, and very soon she slipped off into a deep sleep--the sleep of exhaustion which so often follows a great mental strain.
* * * * * It must have been over an hour later that Blanche seemed to awaken to a perception that the big oak door behind her, which gave access to the deep-eaved porch, had opened and closed.
She looked round; and, in the candle-light, for the fire had died down, she saw Varick, looking neither to the right nor to the left, walk quickly across the long room and slip noiselessly through the door leading to the interior of the house.
Then it was seven o'clock?
Nearly three-quarters of an hour before she must go up and dress for dinner.
Almost at once she was asleep again, to be, however, thoroughly awakened a few moments later by the opening and the shutting of a door.
It was the old butler, a man Blanche had come to like and to respect.
He held a salver in his hand, and on the salver was a letter.

"Mr.
Varick asked me to give you this note at a quarter-past seven, ma'am.