a distant cousin. Miss Farrow could have lived in comfort and in
dignity on what income she had, but for one inexplicable failing--the
more old-fashioned and severe of her friends and relatives called it a
vice.

Soon after she had come into the enjoyment of her few hundreds a year,
some rich, idle acquaintance had taken Blanche to Monte Carlo, and
there, like a duck to water, she had taken to play! Henceforth
gambling--any kind of gambling--had become her absorbing interest in
life. It was well indeed that what fortune she had was strictly settled
on her sisters' children, her two brothers-in-law being her trustees.
With one of them, who was really wealthy, she had long ago quarrelled.
With the other, now a widower, with only a life interest in his estate,
she was on coldly cordial terms, and sometimes, as was the case now,
acted as chaperon to his only child, her niece and namesake, Bubbles
Dunster.

Blanche Farrow never begged or borrowed. When more hard hit than usual,
she retired, alone with her faithful maid, to some cheap corner of the
Continent; and as she kept her money worries to herself, she was well
liked and popular with a considerable circle.

Such was the human being who in a sense was Lionel Varick's only close
friend. They had met in a strange way, some ten years ago, in what Miss
Farrow's sterner brother-in-law had called a gambling hell. And, just as
we know that sometimes Satan will be found rebuking sin, so Blanche
Farrow had set herself to stop the then young Lionel Varick on the
brink. He had been in love with her at that time, and on the most
unpleasant evening when a cosy flat in Jermyn Street had been raided by
the police, he had given Blanche Farrow his word that he would never