I've only known Mr. Varick for, let me see,"she hesitated"a very little over a year.

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.

In a small way he had long made a study of Lionel Varick, and it amused him to see Varick in a new rôlethat of a prosperous country gentleman.

There were also many memoirs of great persons by themselves, many histories of the recent war, several thousand books of verse, a monograph by K.D. Varick on Catalysers and Catalysis and the Generation of Hydrogen, and New Wine by the Reverend Laurence Juke.

Tapster was a cynical, rather unpleasant person, yet on one occasion he had helped Varick out of a disagreeable scrape.

About six months ago she had called on Dr. Panton, the clever young medical man who had attended poor Mrs. Varick during her last illness.

He now had no doubt that Miss Pigchalke had been in the corridor, or, more likely, in some room opening out of it, and that she had followed Varick into this darkened room and then, noiselessly, slipped out again.

This Julia Pigchalke seemed to have hated Varick from the first.

She had been surprised, and rather amused, to see Lionel Varick at a neighbouring table, apparently entertaining a middle-aged, rather prim-looking lady, whom he had introduced to her, Blanche, rather unwillingly, as "my friend, Miss Weatherfield.

There's more Dutch Varick than Irish Ormond in me.