Bubbles had now been at Wyndfell Hall two whole days, and so far her
aunt had said nothing to her. Somehow she felt a certain shyness of
approaching the subject. In so far as she had ever thought about it--and
she had never really thought about it at all--Miss Farrow regarded all
that she knew of spiritualism as a gigantic fraud. It annoyed her
fastidiousness to think that her own niece should be in any way
associated with that kind of thing. She realized the temptation it must
offer to a clever girl who, as her father truly said, had had as a child
an uncanny power of thought-reading, and of "willing" people to do what
she liked.

Blanche Farrow smiled and sighed as she stared into the fire. How the
world had changed! She could not imagine her own father, though he had
been far less conventional than was Hugh Dunster, talking her over with
a young man.

Poor Bill Donnington! Of course he was devoted to Bubbles--her slave, in
fact. Blanche had only seen him once; she had thought him sensible,
undistinguished, commonplace. She knew that he was the third or fourth
son of a worthy North-country parson--in other words, he "hadn't a bob."
He was, of course, the last man Bubbles would ever think of marrying.
Bubbles, like most of her set, was keenly alive to the value of money.
Bubbles, as likely as not, would make a set, half in fun, half in
earnest, at James Tapster!

To tell the truth, Miss Farrow had not forgotten Bubbles when she had
assented to Lionel Varick's suggestion that rich, if dull-witted, James
Tapster should be included in the party.