The news had found her far away, in Portugal, where, as just a few English people know, there is more than one Casino where mild gambling can be pursued under pleasant conditions. Blanche Farrow would have been hurt if someone had told her that in far-away Portugal Lionel Varick and his affairs had not meant quite so much to her as they would have done if she had been nearer home. Still, she had felt a pang. A man-friend married is often a man-friend marred. But she had been very glad to gather, reading between the lines of his note, that the lady in question was well off. Varick was one of those men to whom the possession of money is as essential to life as the air they breathe is to most human beings. Till this unexpected second marriage of his he had often been obliged to live on, and by, his wits. Then, some months later--for she and Varick were not given to writing to one another when apart, their friendship had never been of that texture--she had received a sad letter from him saying that his wife was seriously ill. The letter had implied, too, that he ought to have been told, before the marriage had taken place, that his wife's family had been one riddled with consumption. Blanche had written back at once--by that time she was a good deal nearer home than Portugal, though still abroad--asking if she could "do anything?" And he had answered that no, there was nothing to be done. "Poor Milly" had a horror of sanatoriums, so he was going to take her to some quiet place on the south coast. He had ended his note with the words: "I do not think it can last long now, and I rather hope it won't. It is very painful for her, as well as for me." And it had not lasted very long. Seven weeks later Miss Farrow had read in the first column of the _Times_ the announcement: "Millicent, only daughter of the late George Fauncey, of Wyndfell Hall, Suffolk, and the beloved wife of Lionel Varick." She had been surprised at the addition of the word "beloved." Somehow it was not like the man she thought she knew so well to put that word in. That was just over a year ago. But when she had met Varick again she had seen with real relief that he was quite unchanged--those brief months of wedded life had not apparently altered him at all. There was, however, one great difference--he was quite at ease about money. That was all--but that was a great deal! Blanche Farrow and Lionel Varick had at any rate one thing in common--they both felt a horror of poverty, and all that poverty implies.