From out the Vasty Deep | Page 6

asked herself why Lionel had
included these tiresome, old-fashioned people in his party. Then she
told herself that it was doubtless because the niece, who lived with
them, couldn't leave them to a solitary Christmas.
Another guest who was not likely to add much in the way of
entertainment to the party was an enormously rich man called James
Tapster. Tapster was a cynical, rather unpleasant person, yet on one
occasion he had helped Varick out of a disagreeable scrape.
If the host had had his way there would also have been in the party a
certain Dr. Panton. But at the last moment he had had to "chuck." There
was a hope, however, that he might be able to come after Christmas. Dr.
Panton was also associated with the late Mrs. Varick. He had attended
her during the last long weeks of her life.
Blanche Farrow's face unconsciously brightened as she remembered Sir
Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of
man, still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the
City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work
seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By
way of relaxation he helped to run an Oxford College East-End
Settlement. "A good chap,"--that was how Blanche summed him up to
herself.
Lionel had asked her if she could think of any young people to ask, and
she had suggested, with some hesitation, her own niece, Bubbles
Dunster, and Bubbles' favourite dancing partner, a young man called
Bill Donnington. Bubbles had arrived at Wyndfell Hall two days ago.
Donnington had not been able to leave London till to-day.
Bubbles? Blanche Farrow's brows knit themselves as she thought of her
niece, namesake, and godchild.
Bubbles was a strange girl, but then so many girls are strange
nowadays! Though an only child, and the apple of her widowed father's

eyes, she had deliberately left her home two years ago, and set up for
herself in London, nominally to study art. At once she had become a
great success--the kind of success that counts nowadays. Bubbles'
photograph was always appearing in the Sketch and in the Daily Mirror.
She was constantly roped in to help in any smart charity affair, and she
could dance, act, and sell, with the best. She was as popular with
women as with men, for there was something disarming, attaching,
almost elfish, in Bubbles Dunster's charm. For one thing, she was so
good-natured, so kindly, so always eager to do someone a good
turn--and last, not least, she had inherited her aunt's cleverness about
clothes! She dressed in a way which Blanche Farrow thought
ridiculously outré and queer, but still, somehow, she always looked
well-dressed. And though she had never been taught dressmaking, she
could make her own clothes when put to it, and was always willing to
help other people with theirs.
Hugh Dunster, Bubbles' father, did not often favour his sister-in-law
with a letter, but she had had a letter from him three days ago, of which
the most important passage ran: "I understand that Bubbles is going to
spend Christmas with you. I wish you'd say a word to her about all this
spiritualistic rot. She seems to be getting deeper and deeper into it. It's
impairing her looks, making her nervous and almost hysterical--in a
word, quite unlike herself. I spoke to her some time ago, and desired
her most earnestly to desist from it. But a father has no power
nowadays! I have talked the matter over with young Donnington (of
whom I sometimes suspect she is fonder than she knows), and he quite
agrees with me. After all, she's a child still, and doesn't realize what
vieux jeu all that sort of thing is. I insisted on reading to her 'Sludge, the
Medium,' but it made no impression on her! In a sense I've only myself
to thank, for I used to amuse myself in testing her amazing
thought-reading powers when she was a little girl."
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.