In common with the rest of the world, she had at times followed the course of some great murder trial; and she had been interested, as most intelligent people are occasionally interested, in the ins and outs of more than one so-called "poisoning mystery." But such happenings had seemed utterly remote from herself; and to her imagination the word "murderer" had connoted an eccentric, cunning, mentally misshapen monster, lacking all resemblance to the vast bulk of human kind. She tried to realize that, if Mark Gifford's tale were true, a man with whom she herself had long been in close sympathy, and whose peculiar character she had rather prided herself on understanding, had been--nay, was--such a monster. Blanche felt a touch of shuddering repulsion from herself, as well as from Varick, as she now remembered how sincerely she had rejoiced when, reading between the lines of his letter, she had guessed that he was marrying an unattractive woman for her money. It was now a comfort to feel that, even so, she had certainly felt a sensation of disgust when it had come to her knowledge that Varick had assumed, with regard to that same unattractive woman, an extravagant devotion she felt convinced he did not--could not--feel. It had shocked her, made her feel uncomfortable, to hear Helen Brabazon's artless allusions to the tenderness and devotion he had lavished on "poor Milly." Helen Brabazon? A sensation of pain, almost of shame, swept over Blanche Farrow. Were Helen to appear as witness in a _cause célèbre_ the girl's life would henceforth be shadowed and smirched by an awful memory. And then there rose before her mind another dread possibility. Was it not possible--nay, probable--that she, Blanche Farrow, would be sucked into the vortex? She remembered a case in which the prisoner had been charged with the murder of a relation through whose death he had received considerable benefit, and how four or five men and women of repute had been called to testify to his high character, and to the kindness of his heart. But their evidence had availed him nothing, for he had been hanged. Blanche quickened her footsteps as, in imagination, she saw herself in the witness-box speaking on behalf of Lionel Varick. She argued with herself that, after all, it was just possible that he might be innocent! If so, she would fight for him to the death, and that, however much it distressed and angered Mark Gifford that she should do so. Absorbed in the dread and terrible thing he had come to tell her, she had not given him, the man who loved her, and whose wife she was to be, one thought since their solemn, rather shamefaced, embrace. Yet now the knowledge that, however, much he disapproved, Mark would stand by her, gave her a wonderful feeling of security, of having left the open sea of life for a safe harbour--and that in spite of the terrible hours, perhaps the terrible weeks and months, which now lay before her. * * * * *