From out the Vasty Deep | Page 7

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.
* * * * *
In what was called the moat garden of Wyndfell Hall, twilight was
deepening into night. But Lionel Varick, who was now pacing up and
down the broad path which followed the course of the moat, could still
see, sharply outlined against the pale winter sky, the vision of tranquil
beauty and the storehouse of archaeological and antiquarian interest
which was now his home.
By his special orders the windows had been left uncurtained. There
were lights in a great number of the rooms--indeed, the lower part of
the house was brilliantly illuminated. But as the windows in the
beautiful linen-panelled hall were diamond-paned, the brilliance was
softened, and there was something deliriously welcoming, almost

fairy-like, in the picture the old house presented to its new owner's
eager gaze.
After a while he stayed his steps near the narrow brick bridge which
spanned the moat where a carriage road connected the domain of
Wyndfell Hall with the outside world, and, as he stood there in the
gathering twilight, he looked a romantic figure. Tall and well-built, he
took, perhaps, an almost excessive care over his dress. Yet there was
nothing effeminate or foppish about his appearance.
A follower of that now forgotten science, phrenology, would have been
impressed by Lionel Varick's head. It was large and well-shaped, with a
great deal of almost golden hair, now showing a white thread or two,
which did not, however, detract from his look of youth. He had a fine
broad forehead; deep, well-set grey eyes; and a beautiful, sensitive
mouth, which he took care not to conceal with a moustache. Thus in
almost any company he would have looked striking and
distinguished--the sort of man of whom people ask, "Who is that
standing over there?"
Varick was a man of moods--subject, that is, to fits of exultation and of
depression--and yet with an amazing power of self-control, and of
entirely hiding what he felt from those about him.
To-night his mood was one of exultation. He almost felt what Scots call
"fey." Something seemed to tell him that he was within reach of the
fruition of desires which, even in his most confident moments, had
appeared till now wildly out of any possibility of attainment. He came,
on both his father's and his mother's side, of people who had lived for
centuries the secure, pleasant life of the English county gentry. But
instead of taking advantage of their opportunities, the Varicks had gone
not upwards, but steadily downwards--the final crash having been
owing to the folly, indeed the far more than folly, as Lionel Varick had
come to know when still a child, of his own father.
Lionel's father had not lived long after his disgraceful bankruptcy. But
he had had time to imbue his boy with an intense pride in the past
glories of the Varick family. So it was that the shabby, ugly little villa

where his boyhood had been spent on the outskirts of a town famous
for its grammar-school, and where his mother settled for her boy's sake
after her husband's death, had been peopled to young Varick with
visions of just such a country home as was this wonderful old house
now before him.
No wonder he felt "fey" to-night. Everything was falling out as he had
hoped it would do. He had staked very high--staked, indeed, all that a
man can stake in our complex civilization, and he had won! In the
whole wide world there was only one human being who wished him ill.
This was an elderly woman, named Julia Pigchalke, who had been his
late wife's one-time governess and companion. She had been his enemy
from the first day they had met, and she had done her utmost to prevent
his marriage to her employer. Even now, in spite