It was wonderfully kind of him to give what he did give to-day, to a lot of people with whom he has really nothing to do at all." And then, after her maid had gone, Blanche lay in bed, and stared into the still bright fire.

Her brain seemed abnormally active, and she found it impossible to go to sleep.

What a curious, uncanny, uncomfortable story--that of "poor Milly's" ghost appearing on the little platform of the village school-room! There seems no measure, even in these enlightened days, to what people will say and believe.
And then there flashed across her a recollection of the fact that Bubbles had been there, sitting just below Lionel Varick.

Strange, half-forgotten stories of Indian magic--of a man hung up in chains padlocked by British officers, and then, a moment later, that same man, freed, standing in their midst, the chains rattling together, empty--floated through Blanche Farrow's mind.

Was it possible that Bubbles possessed uncanny powers--powers which had something to do with the immemorial magic of the immemorial East?
Blanche had once heard the phenomenon of the vanishing rope trick discussed at some length between a number of clever people.