When the ladies passed through into the white parlour, Blanche slipped away. She got hold of her firm ally, the butler, and explained in a very few words what she thought had better be done. Accompanied by Pegler, they went into every room, and into every nook and cranny of the house, upstairs and down--but they found no trace of any alien presence.
Miss Pigchalke, so much was clear, had vanished as quietly and silently as she had come.
One--two--three--four--five--six--Bubbles heard the clock in the dark corridor outside her room ring out the harmonious chimes, and she turned restlessly round in her warm, comfortable bed.
It was very annoying to think she would have to wait two hours for a cup of tea, but there it was! She had herself told Pegler she didn't want to be disturbed till eight o'clock. She still felt too "done," too weak, to get up and try to find her way to the kitchen to make herself some tea.
She lay, with her eyes wide open, longing for the daylight, and looking back with shrinking fear to a night full of a misty horror.
Again and again she had lived through that awful moment when Varick had pushed her over the edge of the embankment, to roll quickly, softly, inexorably, into the icy-cold water.
She knew he had pushed her over. To herself it was a fact which did not admit of any doubt at all. She had seen the mingled hatred and relief which had convulsed his face. It was with that face she would always see Lionel Varick henceforth.
There had been a moment when she had thought she would tell Dr. Panton; then she had come to the conclusion that there was no good purpose to be served by telling the strange and dreadful truth.
Some noble lines of Swinburne's which had once been quoted to her by a friend she loved, floated into her mind--
"But ye, keep ye on earth Your lips from over-speech, Loud words and longing are so little worth; And the end is hard to reach. For silence after grievous thing's is good, And reverence, and the fear that makes men whole And shame, and righteous governance of blood, And Lordship of the Soul. And from sharp words and wits men pluck no fruit, And gathering thorns they shake the tree at root; For words divide and rend, But silence is most noble till the end."