"Yes, I suppose I have"--she hesitated--"in a way. I've always felt that, like me, he hadn't many real friends. And, of course, in old days, ages ago, he was very fond of me," she smiled. "That always pleases a woman, Mark." "Does it?" he asked, probingly; and as only answer she reddened slightly. There came a little pause, and then Blanche exclaimed: "I'm sorry, very sorry, if he's got into a new scrape, Mark; and I'm surprised too. Some two years ago he married a rich woman; she died not long after their marriage, but she was devoted to him, and he's quite well off now." "Did you know her?" asked Mark Gifford, in a singular tone. "No, I never came across her. I was away--in Portugal, I think. He wrote and told me about his marriage, and then, later, when his wife fell ill, he wrote again. He was extremely good to her, Mark." "D'you know much about Varick's early life?" he asked. "I think I know all there is to know," she answered. What was Mark getting at? What had Lionel Varick done? Her mind was already busily intent on the thought of how disagreeable it would be to have to warn him of impending unpleasantness. It was good of Mark to have taken all this trouble! Of course, he had taken it for her sake, and she felt very grateful--and still a little frightened; he looked so unusually grave. "What _do_ you know of Varick's early life?" he persisted. "I don't think there's very much to know," she answered uneasily. "His father had a place in Yorkshire, and got involved in some foolish, wild speculations. In the end the man went bankrupt, everything was sold up, and they were very poor for a while--horribly poor, I believe. Then the elder Varick died, and his widow and Lionel went and lived at Bedford. I gather Lionel's mother was clever, proud, and quarrelsome. At any rate, she quarrelled with her people, and he had a very lonely boyhood and youth." "Then you know very little of how Varick lived before you yourself met him? How old would he have been then, Blanche?" "I should think four or five-and-twenty," she said hesitatingly. "I suppose," and then Mark Gifford looked at her with a troubled, hesitating look, "I suppose, Blanche--I fear I'm going to surprise you--that you were not aware that he'd been married before?" "Yes," she said eagerly, "I did know that, Mark." What on earth was he driving at? That woman, Lionel Varick's first wife, was surely dead? She, Blanche, had had, by a curious accident, someone else's word for that. And then--there rose before her the vision of a ghastly-looking, wild, handsome face; quickly she put it from her, and went on: "He married, when he was only nineteen, a girl out of his own class. They separated for a while; then they seem to have come together again, and, fortunately for Lionel, she died." "She died murdered--poisoned." Mark Gifford uttered the dread words very quietly. "Almost certainly poisoned by her husband, Lionel Varick."