It was well indeed that what fortune she had was strictly settled on her sisters' children, her two brothers-in-law being her trustees.
With one of them, who was really wealthy, she had long ago quarrelled.
With the other, now a widower, with only a life interest in his estate, she was on coldly cordial terms, and sometimes, as was the case now, acted as chaperon to his only child, her niece and namesake, Bubbles Dunster.
Blanche Farrow never begged or borrowed.

When more hard hit than usual, she retired, alone with her faithful maid, to some cheap corner of the Continent; and as she kept her money worries to herself, she was well liked and popular with a considerable circle.
Such was the human being who in a sense was Lionel Varick's only close friend.

They had met in a strange way, some ten years ago, in what Miss Farrow's sterner brother-in-law had called a gambling hell.

And, just as we know that sometimes Satan will be found rebuking sin, so Blanche Farrow had set herself to stop the then young Lionel Varick on the brink.

He had been in love with her at that time, and on the most unpleasant evening when a cosy flat in Jermyn Street had been raided by the police, he had given Blanche Farrow his word that he would never play again; and he had kept his word.