"A penny for your thoughts!" he said jokingly.
Blanche shook her head, smiling.

Not for very much more than a penny would she have told him the thought that had suddenly come, as such thoughts will do, into her mind.

That thought was, how extraordinary had been Varick's transformation from what a censorious world might have called an unscrupulous adventurer into a generous man of position and substance--all owing to the fact that some two years ago he had drifted across an unknown woman in a foreign hotel! Even to Blanche there was something pathetic in the thought of "poor Milly," whose birthplace and home this beautiful and strangely perfect old house had been.

It was Milly--not that sinister figure that Pegler thought she had seen--whose form ought to haunt Wyndfell Hall.

But there survived no trace, no trifling memento even, of the dead woman's evidently colourless personality.
And as if Varick had guessed part of what was passing through her mind, "Any news of the ghost, Blanche ?" he asked jokingly.