Again and again, as Blanche Farrow walked slowly back to Wyndfell Hall, she went over the meagre details of the strange story she had just been told.

Again and again she tried to fill in the bare outlines of the tale.
Lionel Varick a murderer?
Her mind, her heart, refused to accept the possibility.
Suddenly there came back to her a recollection of the curious, now many years old, circumstances which had attended her knowledge of Varick's first marriage.
Someone, she could not now remember who, had taken her to one of the cheap foreign restaurants in Soho, which were not then so much frequented by English people as they are now.

She had been surprised, and rather amused, to see Lionel Varick at a neighbouring table, apparently entertaining a middle-aged, rather prim-looking lady, whom he had introduced to her, Blanche, rather unwillingly, as "my friend, Miss Weatherfield." Then had come the strange part of the story! When on her way to stay with some friends in Sussex a few days later, she found herself in the same railway carriage as Miss Weatherfield; and, during the course of some desultory talk, the latter had mentioned that she was daughter to the Chichester doctor who had attended Lionel Varick's wife in her last illness.
_Lionel Varick's wife_?
For a moment Blanche had thought that there must be some mistake, or that her ears had betrayed her.

But she very soon realized that there was no mistake, and that she had heard aright.
Successfully concealing her ignorance of the fact that their mutual friend was a widower, she had ventured a few discreet questions, to which had come willing answers.

These made it clear why Varick had chosen to remain silent concerning what had evidently been a sordid and melancholy episode of his past life.
Miss Weatherfield told her pleasant new acquaintance that the Varicks, when they had first come to Chichester, had been very poor, the wife of an obviously lower class than the husband.