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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Wife
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2006 [EBook #1586]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND WIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MAN AND WIFE
+
+by Wilkie Collins
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.--THE IRISH MARRIAGE.
+
+
+
+Part the First.
+
+
+
+THE VILLA AT HAMPSTEAD.
+
+I.
+
+ON a summer's morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls
+were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship,
+bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.
+
+They were both of the same age--eighteen. They had both, from childhood
+upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now
+parting for the first time--and parting, it might be, for life.
+
+The name of one was Blanche. The name of the other was Anne.
+
+Both were the children of poor parents, both had been pupil-teachers at
+the school; and both were destined to earn their own bread. Personally
+speaking, and socially speaking, these were the only points of
+resemblance between them.
+
+Blanche was passably attractive and passably intelligent, and no more.
+Anne was rarely beautiful and rarely endowed. Blanche's parents
+were worthy people, whose first consideration was to secure, at any
+sacrifice, the future well-being of their child. Anne's parents were
+heartless and depraved. Their one idea, in connection with their
+daughter, was to speculate on her beauty, and to turn her abilities to
+profitable account.
+
+The girls were starting in life under widely different conditions.
+Blanche was going to India, to be governess in the household of a Judge,
+under care of the Judge's wife. Anne was to wait at home until the
+first opportunity offered of sending her cheaply to Milan. There, among
+strangers, she was to be perfected in the actress's and the singer's
+art; then to return to England, and make the fortune of her family on
+the lyric stage.
+
+Such were the prospects of the two as they sat together in the cabin of
+the Indiaman locked fast in each other's arms, and crying bitterly.
+The whispered farewell talk exchanged between them--exaggerated and
+impulsive as girls' talk is apt to be--came honestly, in each case,
+straight from the heart.
+
+"Blanche! you may be married in India. Make your husband bring you back
+to England."
+
+"Anne! you may take a dislike to the stage. Come out to India if you
+do."
+
+"In England or out of England, married or not married, we will meet,
+darling--if it's years hence--with all the old love between us; friends
+who help each other, sisters who trust each other, for life! Vow it,
+Blanche!"
+
+"I vow it, Anne!"
+
+"With all your heart and soul?"
+
+"With all my heart and soul!"
+
+The sails were spread to the wind, and the ship began to move in the
+water. It was necessary to appeal to the captain's authority before the
+girls could be parted. The captain interfered gently and firmly. "Come,
+my dear," he said, putting his arm round Anne; "you won't mind _me!_
+I have got a daughter of my own." Anne's head fell on the sailor's
+shoulder. He put her, with his own hands, into the shore-boat alongside.
+In five minutes more the ship had gathered way; the boat was at the
+landing-stage--and the girls had seen the last of each other for many a
+long year to come.
+
+This was in the summer of eighteen hundred and thirty-one.
+
+II.
+
+Twenty-four years later--in the summer of eighteen hundred and
+fifty-five--there was a villa at Hampstead to be let, furnished.
+
+The house was still occupied by the persons who desired to let it. On
+the evening on which this scene opens a lady and two gentlemen were
+seated at the dinner-table. The lady had reached the mature age of
+forty-two. She was still a rarely beautiful woman. Her husband, some
+years younger than herself, faced her at the table, sitting silent and
+constrained, and never, even by accident, looking at his wife. The third
+person was a guest. The husband's name was Vanborough. The guest's name
+was Kendrew.
+
+It was the end of the dinner. The fruit and the wine were on the table.
+Mr. Vanborough pushed the bottles in silence to Mr. Kendrew. The lady of
+the house looked round at the servant who was waiting, and said, "Tell
+the children to come in."
+
+The door opened, and a girl twelve years old entered, lending by the
+hand a younger girl of five. They were both prettily dressed in white,
+with sashes of the same shade of light blue. But there was no family
+resemblance between them. The elder girl was frail and delicate, with a
+pale, sensitive face. The younger was light and florid, with round red
+cheeks and bright, saucy eyes--a charming little picture of happiness
+and health.
+
+Mr. Kendrew looked inquiringly at the youngest of the two girls.
+
+"Here is a young lady," he said, "who is a total stranger to me."
+
+"If you had not been a total stranger yourself for a whole year past,"
+answered Mrs. Vanborough, "you would never have made that confession.
+This is little Blanche--the only child of the dearest friend I have.
+When Blanche's mother and I last saw each other we were two poor
+school-girls beginning the world. My friend went to India, and married
+there late in life. You may have heard of her husband--the famous Indian
+officer, Sir Thomas Lundie? Yes: 'the rich Sir Thomas,' as you call him.
+Lady Lundie is now on her way back to England, for the first time since
+she left it--I am afraid to say how many years since. I expected her
+yesterday; I expect her to-day--she may come at any moment. We exchanged
+promises to meet, in the ship that took her to India--'vows' we called
+them in the dear old times. Imagine how changed we shall find each other
+when we _do_ meet again at last!"
+
+"In the mean time," said Mr. Kendrew, "your friend appears to have sent
+you her little daughter to represent her? It's a long journey for so
+young a traveler."
+
+"A journey ordered by the doctors in India a year since," rejoined Mrs.
+Vanborough. "They said Blanche's health required English air. Sir Thomas
+was ill at the time, and his wife couldn't leave him. She had to send
+the child to England, and who should she send her to but me? Look at her
+now, and say if the English air hasn't agreed with her! We two mothers,
+Mr. Kendrew, seem literally to live again in our children. I have an
+only child. My friend has an only child. My daughter is little Anne--as
+_I_ was. My friend's daughter is little Blanche--as _she_ was. And, to
+crown it all, those two girls have taken the same fancy to each other
+which we took to each other in the by-gone days at school. One has often
+heard of hereditary hatred. Is there such a thing as hereditary love as
+well?"
+
+Before the guest could answer, his attention was claimed by the master
+of the house.
+
+"Kendrew," said Mr. Vanborough, "when you have had enough of domestic
+sentiment, suppose you take a glass of wine?"
+
+The words were spoken with undisguised contempt of tone and manner.
+Mrs. Vanborough's color rose. She waited, and controlled the momentary
+irritation. When she spoke to her husband it was evidently with a wish
+to soothe and conciliate him.
+
+"I am afraid, my dear, you are not well this evening?"
+
+"I shall be better when those children have done clattering with their
+knives and forks."
+
+The girls were peeling fruit. The younger one went on. The elder
+stopped, and looked at her mother. Mrs. Vanborough beckoned to Blanche
+to come to her, and pointed toward the French window opening to the
+floor.
+
+"Would you like to eat your fruit in the garden, Blanche?"
+
+"Yes," said Blanche, "if Anne will go with me."
+
+Anne rose at once, and the two girls went away together into the garden,
+hand in hand. On their departure Mr. Kendrew wisely started a new
+subject. He referred to the letting of the house.
+
+"The loss of the garden will be a sad loss to those two young ladies,"
+he said. "It really seems to be a pity that you should be giving up this
+pretty place."
+
+"Leaving the house is not the worst of the sacrifice," answered Mrs.
+Vanborough. "If John finds Hampstead too far for him from London,
+of course we must move. The only hardship that I complain of is the
+hardship of having the house to let."
+
+Mr. Vanborough looked across the table, as ungraciously as possible, at
+his wife.
+
+"What have _you_ to do with it?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Vanborough tried to clear the conjugal horizon b y a smile.
+
+"My dear John," she said, gently, "you forget that, while you are at
+business, I am here all day. I can't help seeing the people who come to
+look at the house. Such people!" she continued, turning to Mr. Kendrew.
+"They distrust every thing, from the scraper at the door to the chimneys
+on the roof. They force their way in at all hours. They ask all sorts
+of impudent questions--and they show you plainly that they don't mean to
+believe your answers, before you have time to make them. Some wretch
+of a woman says, 'Do you think the drains are right?'--and sniffs
+suspiciously, before I can say Yes. Some brute of a man asks, 'Are you
+quite sure this house is solidly built, ma'am?'--and jumps on the floor
+at the full stretch of his legs, without waiting for me to reply. Nobody
+believes in our gravel soil and our south aspect. Nobody wants any of
+our improvements. The moment they hear of John's Artesian well, they
+look as if they never drank water. And, if they happen to pass my
+poultry-yard, they instantly lose all appreciation of the merits of a
+fresh egg!"
+
+Mr. Kendrew laughed. "I have been through it all in my time," he said.
+"The people who want to take a house are the born enemies of the people
+who want to let a house. Odd--isn't it, Vanborough?"
+
+Mr. Vanborough's sullen humor resisted his friend as obstinately as it
+had resisted his wife.
+
+"I dare say," he answered. "I wasn't listening."
+
+This time the tone was almost brutal. Mrs. Vanborough looked at her
+husband with unconcealed surprise and distress.
+
+"John!" she said. "What _can_ be the matter with you? Are you in pain?"
+
+"A man may be anxious and worried, I suppose, without being actually in
+pain."
+
+"I am sorry to hear you are worried. Is it business?"
+
+"Yes--business."
+
+"Consult Mr. Kendrew."
+
+"I am waiting to consult him."
+
+Mrs. Vanborough rose immediately. "Ring, dear," she said, "when you
+want coffee." As she passed her husband she stopped and laid her hand
+tenderly on his forehead. "I wish I could smooth out that frown!" she
+whispered. Mr. Vanborough impatiently shook his head. Mrs. Vanborough
+sighed as she turned to the door. Her husband called to her before she
+could leave the room.
+
+"Mind we are not interrupted!"
+
+"I will do my best, John." She looked at Mr. Kendrew, holding the door
+open for her; and resumed, with an effort, her former lightness of tone.
+"But don't forget our 'born enemies!' Somebody may come, even at this
+hour of the evening, who wants to see the house."
+
+The two gentlemen were left alone over their wine. There was a strong
+personal contrast between them. Mr. Vanborough was tall and dark--a
+dashing, handsome man; with an energy in his face which all the world
+saw; with an inbred falseness under it which only a special observer
+could detect. Mr. Kendrew was short and light--slow and awkward in
+manner, except when something happened to rouse him. Looking in _his_
+face, the world saw an ugly and undemonstrative little man. The special
+observer, penetrating under the surface, found a fine nature beneath,
+resting on a steady foundation of honor and truth.
+
+Mr. Vanborough opened the conversation.
+
+"If you ever marry," he said, "don't be such a fool, Kendrew, as I have
+been. Don't take a wife from the stage."
+
+"If I could get such a wife as yours," replied the other, "I would take
+her from the stage to-morrow. A beautiful woman, a clever woman, a woman
+of unblemished character, and a woman who truly loves you. Man alive!
+what do you want more?"
+
+"I want a great deal more. I want a woman highly connected and highly
+bred--a woman who can receive the best society in England, and open her
+husband's way to a position in the world."
+
+"A position in the world!" cried Mr. Kendrew. "Here is a man whose
+father has left him half a million of money--with the one condition
+annexed to it of taking his father's place at the head of one of the
+greatest mercantile houses in England. And he talks about a position,
+as if he was a junior clerk in his own office! What on earth does your
+ambition see, beyond what your ambition has already got?"
+
+Mr. Vanborough finished his glass of wine, and looked his friend
+steadily in the face.
+
+"My ambition," he said, "sees a Parliamentary career, with a Peerage at
+the end of it--and with no obstacle in the way but my estimable wife."
+
+Mr. Kendrew lifted his hand warningly. "Don't talk in that way,"
+he said. "If you're joking--it's a joke I don't see. If you're in
+earnest--you force a suspicion on me which I would rather not feel. Let
+us change the subject."
+
+"No! Let us have it out at once. What do you suspect?"
+
+"I suspect you are getting tired of your wife."
+
+"She is forty-two, and I am thirty-five; and I have been married to her
+for thirteen years. You know all that--and you only suspect I am tired
+of her. Bless your innocence! Have you any thing more to say?"
+
+"If you force me to it, I take the freedom of an old friend, and I say
+you are not treating her fairly. It's nearly two years since you broke
+up your establishment abroad, and came to England on your father's
+death. With the exception of myself, and one or two other friends of
+former days, you have presented your wife to nobody. Your new position
+has smoothed the way for you into the best society. You never take your
+wife with you. You go out as if you were a single man. I have reason to
+know that you are actually believed to be a single man, among these
+new acquaintances of yours, in more than one quarter. Forgive me for
+speaking my mind bluntly--I say what I think. It's unworthy of you to
+keep your wife buried here, as if you were ashamed of her."
+
+"I _am_ ashamed of her."
+
+"Vanborough!"
+
+"Wait a little! you are not to have it all your own way, my good fellow.
+What are the facts? Thirteen years ago I fell in love with a handsome
+public singer, and married her. My father was angry with me; and I had
+to go and live with her abroad. It didn't matter, abroad. My father
+forgave me on his death-bed, and I had to bring her home again. It does
+matter, at home. I find myself, with a great career opening before me,
+tied to a woman whose relations are (as you well know) the lowest of
+the low. A woman without the slightest distinction of manner, or the
+slightest aspiration beyond her nursery and her kitchen, her piano
+and her books. Is _that_ a wife who can help me to make my place in
+society?--who can smooth my way through social obstacles and political
+obstacles, to the House of Lords? By Jupiter! if ever there was a woman
+to be 'buried' (as you call it), that woman is my wife. And, what's
+more, if you want the truth, it's because I _can't_ bury her here that
+I'm going to leave this house. She has got a cursed knack of making
+acquaintances wherever she goes. She'll have a circle of friends
+about her if I leave her in this neighborhood much longer. Friends
+who remember her as the famous opera-singer. Friends who will see her
+swindling scoundrel of a father (when my back is turned) coming drunk to
+the door to borrow money of her! I tell you, my marriage has wrecked
+my prospects. It's no use talking to me of my wife's virtues. She is a
+millstone round my neck, with all her virtues. If I had not been a born
+idiot I should have waited, and married a woman who would have been of
+some use to me; a woman with high connections--"
+
+Mr. Kendrew touched his host's arm, and suddenly interrupted him.
+
+"To come to the point," he said--"a woman like Lady Jane Parnell."
+
+Mr. Vanborough started. His eyes fell, for the first time, before the
+eyes of his friend.
+
+"What do you know about Lady Jane?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing. I don't move in Lady Jane's world--but I do go sometimes to
+the opera. I saw you with her last night in her box; and I heard what
+was said in the stalls near me. You were openly spoken of as the favored
+man who was singled out from the rest by Lady Jane. Imagine what would
+happen if your wife heard that! You are wrong, Vanborough--you are in
+every way wrong. You alarm, you distress, you disappoint me. I never
+sought this explanation--but now it has come, I won't shrink from it.
+Reconsider your conduct; reconsider what you have said to me--or you
+count me no longer among your friends. No! I want no farther talk about
+it now. We are both getting hot--we may end in saying what had better
+have been left unsaid. Once more, let us change the subject. You wrote
+me word that you wanted me here to-day, because you needed my advice on
+a matter of some importance. What is it?"
+
+Silence followed that question. Mr. Vanborough's face betrayed signs of
+embarrassment. He poured himself out another glass of wine, and drank it
+at a draught before he replied.
+
+"It's not so easy to tell you what I want," he said, "after the tone you
+have taken with me about my wife."
+
+Mr. Kendrew looked surprised.
+
+"Is Mrs. Vanborough concerned in the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does she know about it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you kept the thing a secret out of regard for _her?_"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have I any right to advise on it?"
+
+"You have the right of an old friend."
+
+"Then, why not tell me frankly what it is?"
+
+There was another moment of embarrassment on Mr. Vanborough's part.
+
+"It will come better," he answered, "from a third person, whom I expect
+here every minute. He is in possession of all the facts--and he is
+better able to state them than I am."
+
+"Who is the person?"
+
+"My friend, Delamayn."
+
+"Your lawyer?"
+
+"Yes--the junior partner in the firm of Delamayn, Hawke, and Delamayn.
+Do you know him?"
+
+"I am acquainted with him. His wife's family were friends of mine before
+he married. I don't like him."
+
+"You're rather hard to please to-day! Delamayn is a rising man, if ever
+there was one yet. A man with a career before him, and with courage
+enough to pursue it. He is going to leave the Firm, and try his luck at
+the Bar. Every body says he will do great things. What's your objection
+to him?"
+
+"I have no objection whatever. We meet with people occasionally whom
+we dislike without knowing why. Without knowing why, I dislike Mr.
+Delamayn."
+
+"Whatever you do you must put up with him this evening. He will be here
+directly."
+
+He was there at that moment. The servant opened the door, and
+announced--"Mr. Delamayn."
+
+III.
+
+Externally speaking, the rising solicitor, who was going to try his
+luck at the Bar, looked like a man who was going to succeed. His hard,
+hairless face, his watchful gray eyes, his thin, resolute lips, said
+plainly, in so many words, "I mean to get on in the world; and, if
+you are in my way, I mean to get on at your expense." Mr. Delamayn was
+habitually polite to every body--but he had never been known to say one
+unnecessary word to his dearest friend. A man of rare ability; a man of
+unblemished honor (as the code of the world goes); but not a man to be
+taken familiarly by the hand. You would never have borrowed money
+of him--but you would have trusted him with untold gold. Involved in
+private and personal troubles, you would have hesitated at asking him
+to help you. Involved in public and producible troubles, you would have
+said, Here is my man. Sure to push his way--nobody could look at him and
+doubt it--sure to push his way.
+
+"Kendrew is an old friend of mine," said Mr. Vanborough, addressing
+himself to the lawyer. "Whatever you have to say to _me_ you may say
+before _him._ Will you have some wine?"
+
+"No--thank you."
+
+"Have you brought any news?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you got the written opinions of the two barristers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"'Because nothing of the sort is necessary. If the facts of the case are
+correctly stated there is not the slightest doubt about the law."
+
+With that reply Mr. Delamayn took a written paper from his pocket, and
+spread it out on the table before him.
+
+"What is that?" asked Mr. Vanborough.
+
+"The case relating to your marriage."
+
+Mr. Kendrew started, and showed the first tokens of interest in the
+proceedings which had escaped him yet. Mr. Delamayn looked at him for a
+moment, and went on.
+
+"The case," he resumed, "as originally stated by you, and taken down in
+writing by our head-clerk."
+
+Mr. Vanborough's temper began to show itself again.
+
+"What have we got to do with that now?" he asked. "You have made your
+inquiries to prove the correctness of my statement--haven't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you have found out that I am right?"
+
+"I have found out that you are right--if the case is right. I wish to be
+sure that no mistake has occurred between you and the clerk. This is a
+very important matter. I am going to take the responsibility of giving
+an opinion which may be followed by serious consequences; and I mean to
+assure myself that the opinion is given on a sound basis, first. I have
+some questions to ask you. Don't be impatient, if you please. They won't
+take long."
+
+He referred to the manuscript, and put the first question.
+
+"You were married at Inchmallock, in Ireland, Mr. Vanborough, thirteen
+years since?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your wife--then Miss Anne Silvester--was a Roman Catholic?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Her father and mother were Roman Catholics?"
+
+"They were."
+
+"_Your_ father and mother were Protestants? and _you_ were baptized and
+brought up in the Church of England?"
+
+"All right!"
+
+"Miss Anne Silvester felt, and expressed, a strong repugnance to
+marrying you, because you and she belonged to different religious
+communities?"
+
+"She did."
+
+"You got over her objection by consenting to become a Roman Catholic,
+like herself?"
+
+"It was the shortest way with her and it didn't matter to _me_."
+
+"You were formally received into the Roman Catholic Church?"
+
+"I went through the whole ceremony."
+
+"Abroad or at home?"
+
+"Abroad."
+
+"How long was it before the date of your marriage?"
+
+"Six weeks before I was married."
+
+Referring perpetually to the paper in his hand, Mr. Delamayn was
+especially careful in comparing that last answer with the answer given
+to the head-clerk.
+
+"Quite right," he said, and went on with his questions.
+
+"The priest who married you was one Ambrose Redman--a young man recently
+appointed to his clerical duties?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he ask if you were both Roman Catholics?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he ask any thing more?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you sure he never inquired whether you had both been Catholics _for
+more than one year before you came to him to be married?_"
+
+"I am certain of it."
+
+"He must have forgotten that part of his duty--or being only a beginner,
+he may well have been ignorant of it altogether. Did neither you nor the
+lady think of informing him on the point?"
+
+"Neither I nor the lady knew there was any necessity for informing him."
+
+Mr. Delamayn folded up the manuscript, and put it back in his pocket.
+
+"Right," he said, "in every particular."
+
+Mr. Vanborough's swarthy complexion slowly turned pale. He cast one
+furtive glance at Mr. Kendrew, and turned away again.
+
+"Well," he said to the lawyer, "now for your opinion! What is the law?"
+
+"The law," answered Mr. Delamayn, "is beyond all doubt or dispute. Your
+marriage with Miss Anne Silvester is no marriage at all."
+
+Mr. Kendrew started to his feet.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked, sternly.
+
+The rising solicitor lifted his eyebrows in polite surprise. If Mr.
+Kendrew wanted information, why should Mr. Kendrew ask for it in that
+way? "Do you wish me to go into the law of the case?" he inquired.
+
+"I do."
+
+Mr. Delamayn stated the law, as that law still stands--to the disgrace
+of the English Legislature and the English Nation.
+
+"By the Irish Statute of George the Second," he said, "every marriage
+celebrated by a Popish priest between two Protestants, or between a
+Papist and any person who has been a Protestant within twelve months
+before the marriage, is declared null and void. And by two other Acts
+of the same reign such a celebration of marriage is made a felony on
+the part of the priest. The clergy in Ireland of other religious
+denominations have been relieved from this law. But it still remains in
+force so far as the Roman Catholic priesthood is concerned."
+
+"Is such a state of things possible in the age we live in!" exclaimed
+Mr. Kendrew.
+
+Mr. Delamayn smiled. He had outgrown the customary illusions as to the
+age we live in.
+
+"There are other instances in which the Irish marriage-law presents some
+curious anomalies of its own," he went on. "It is felony, as I have just
+told you, for a Roman Catholic priest to celebrate a marriage which may
+be lawfully celebrated by a parochial clergyman, a Presbyterian mini
+ster, and a Non-conformist minister. It is also felony (by another law)
+on the part of a parochial clergyman to celebrate a marriage that may be
+lawfully celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest. And it is again felony
+(by yet another law) for a Presbyterian minister and a Non-conformist
+minister to celebrate a marriage which may be lawfully celebrated by a
+clergyman of the Established Church. An odd state of things. Foreigners
+might possibly think it a scandalous state of things. In this country
+we don't appear to mind it. Returning to the present case, the results
+stand thus: Mr. Vanborough is a single man; Mrs. Vanborough is a single
+woman; their child is illegitimate, and the priest, Ambrose Redman, is
+liable to be tried, and punished, as a felon, for marrying them."
+
+"An infamous law!" said Mr. Kendrew.
+
+"It _is_ the law," returned Mr. Delamayn, as a sufficient answer to him.
+
+Thus far not a word had escaped the master of the house. He sat with his
+lips fast closed and his eyes riveted on the table, thinking.
+
+Mr. Kendrew turned to him, and broke the silence.
+
+"Am I to understand," he asked, "that the advice you wanted from me
+related to _this?_"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You mean to tell me that, foreseeing the present interview and the
+result to which it might lead, you felt any doubt as to the course you
+were bound to take? Am I really to understand that you hesitate to set
+this dreadful mistake right, and to make the woman who is your wife in
+the sight of Heaven your wife in the sight of the law?"
+
+"If you choose to put it in that light," said Mr. Vanborough; "if you
+won't consider--"
+
+"I want a plain answer to my question--'yes, or no.'"
+
+"Let me speak, will you! A man has a right to explain himself, I
+suppose?"
+
+Mr. Kendrew stopped him by a gesture of disgust.
+
+"I won't trouble you to explain yourself," he said. "I prefer to leave
+the house. You have given me a lesson, Sir, which I shall not forget.
+I find that one man may have known another from the days when they were
+both boys, and may have seen nothing but the false surface of him in
+all that time. I am ashamed of having ever been your friend. You are a
+stranger to me from this moment."
+
+With those words he left the room.
+
+"That is a curiously hot-headed man," remarked Mr. Delamayn. "If you
+will allow me, I think I'll change my mind. I'll have a glass of wine."
+
+Mr. Vanborough rose to his feet without replying, and took a turn in
+the room impatiently. Scoundrel as he was--in intention, if not yet in
+act--the loss of the oldest friend he had in the world staggered him for
+the moment.
+
+"This is an awkward business, Delamayn," he said. "What would you advise
+me to do?"
+
+Mr. Delamayn shook his head, and sipped his claret.
+
+"I decline to advise you," he answered. "I take no responsibility,
+beyond the responsibility of stating the law as it stands, in your
+case."
+
+Mr. Vanborough sat down again at the table, to consider the alternative
+of asserting or not asserting his freedom from the marriage tie. He had
+not had much time thus far for turning the matter over in his mind.
+But for his residence on the Continent the question of the flaw in his
+marriage might no doubt have been raised long since. As things were,
+the question had only taken its rise in a chance conversation with Mr.
+Delamayn in the summer of that year.
+
+For some minutes the lawyer sat silent, sipping his wine, and the
+husband sat silent, thinking his own thoughts. The first change that
+came over the scene was produced by the appearance of a servant in the
+dining-room.
+
+Mr. Vanborough looked up at the man with a sudden outbreak of anger.
+
+"What do you want here?"
+
+The man was a well-bred English servant. In other words, a human
+machine, doing its duty impenetrably when it was once wound up. He had
+his words to speak, and he spoke them.
+
+"There is a lady at the door, Sir, who wishes to see the house."
+
+"The house is not to be seen at this time of the evening."
+
+The machine had a message to deliver, and delivered it.
+
+"The lady desired me to present her apologies, Sir. I was to tell you
+she was much pressed for time. This was the last house on the house
+agent's list, and her coachman is stupid about finding his way in
+strange places."
+
+"Hold your tongue, and tell the lady to go to the devil!"
+
+Mr. Delamayn interfered--partly in the interests of his client, partly
+in the interests of propriety.
+
+"You attach some importance, I think, to letting this house as soon as
+possible?" he said.
+
+"Of course I do!"
+
+"Is it wise--on account of a momentary annoyance--to lose an opportunity
+of laying your hand on a tenant?"
+
+"Wise or not, it's an infernal nuisance to be disturbed by a stranger."
+
+"Just as you please. I don't wish to interfere. I only wish to say--in
+case you are thinking of my convenience as your guest--that it will be
+no nuisance to _me._"
+
+The servant impenetrably waited. Mr. Vanborough impatiently gave way.
+
+"Very well. Let her in. Mind, if she comes here, she's only to look into
+the room, and go out again. If she wants to ask questions, she must go
+to the agent."
+
+Mr. Delamayn interfered once more, in the interests, this time, of the
+lady of the house.
+
+"Might it not be desirable," he suggested, "to consult Mrs. Vanborough
+before you quite decide?"
+
+"Where's your mistress?"
+
+"In the garden, or the paddock, Sir--I am not sure which."
+
+"We can't send all over the grounds in search of her. Tell the
+house-maid, and show the lady in."
+
+The servant withdrew. Mr. Delamayn helped himself to a second glass of
+wine.
+
+"Excellent claret," he said. "Do you get it direct from Bordeaux?"
+
+There was no answer. Mr. Vanborough had returned to the contemplation of
+the alternative between freeing himself or not freeing himself from the
+marriage tie. One of his elbows was on the table, he bit fiercely at his
+finger-nails. He muttered between his teeth, "What am I to do?"
+
+A sound of rustling silk made itself gently audible in the passage
+outside. The door opened, and the lady who had come to see the house
+appeared in the dining-room.
+
+IV.
+
+She was tall and elegant; beautifully dressed, in the happiest
+combination of simplicity and splendor. A light summer veil hung over
+her face. She lifted it, and made her apologies for disturbing the
+gentlemen over their wine, with the unaffected ease and grace of a
+highly-bred woman.
+
+"Pray accept my excuses for this intrusion. I am ashamed to disturb you.
+One look at the room will be quite enough."
+
+Thus far she had addressed Mr. Delamayn, who happened to be nearest to
+her. Looking round the room her eye fell on Mr. Vanborough. She started,
+with a loud exclamation of astonishment. _"You!"_ she said. "Good
+Heavens! who would have thought of meeting _you_ here?"
+
+Mr. Vanborough, on his side, stood petrified.
+
+"Lady Jane!" he exclaimed. "Is it possible?"
+
+He barely looked at her while she spoke. His eyes wandered guiltily
+toward the window which led into the garden. The situation was a
+terrible one--equally terrible if his wife discovered Lady Jane, or if
+Lady Jane discovered his wife. For the moment nobody was visible on the
+lawn. There was time, if the chance only offered--there was time for
+him to get the visitor out of the house. The visitor, innocent of all
+knowledge of the truth, gayly offered him her hand.
+
+"I believe in mesmerism for the first time," she said. "This is an
+instance of magnetic sympathy, Mr. Vanborough. An invalid friend of mine
+wants a furnished house at Hampstead. I undertake to find one for her,
+and the day _I_ select to make the discovery is the day _you_ select for
+dining with a friend. A last house at Hampstead is left on my list--and
+in that house I meet you. Astonishing!" She turned to Mr. Delamayn. "I
+presume I am addressing the owner of the house?" Before a word could
+be said by either of the gentlemen she noticed the garden. "What pretty
+grounds! Do I see a lady in the garden? I hope I have not driven her
+away." She looked round, and appealed to Mr. Vanborough. "Your friend's
+wife?" she asked, and, on this occasion, waited for a reply.
+
+In Mr. Vanborough's situation what reply was possible?
+
+Mrs. Vanborough was not only visible--but audible--in the garden; giving
+her orders to one of the out-of-door servants with the tone and manner
+which proclaimed the mistress of the house. Suppose he said, "She is
+_not_ my friend's wife?" Female curiosity would inevitably put the
+next question, "Who is she?" Suppose he invented an explanation? The
+explanation would take time, and time would give his wife an opportunity
+of discovering Lady Jane. Seeing all these considerations in one
+breathless moment, Mr. Vanborough took the shortest and the boldest
+way out of the difficulty. He answered silently by an affirmative
+inclination of the head, which dextrously turned Mrs. Vanborough into to
+Mrs. Delamayn without allowing Mr. Delamayn the opportunity of hearing
+it.
+
+But the lawyer's eye was habitually watchful, and the lawyer saw him.
+
+Mastering in a moment his first natural astonishment at the liberty
+taken with him, Mr. Delamayn drew the inevitable conclusion that there
+was something wrong, and that there was an attempt (not to be permitted
+for a moment) to mix him up in it. He advanced, resolute to contradict
+his client, to his client's own face.
+
+The voluble Lady Jane interrupted him before he could open his lips.
+
+"Might I ask one question? Is the aspect south? Of course it is! I ought
+to see by the sun that the aspect is south. These and the other two
+are, I suppose, the only rooms on the ground-floor? And is it quiet? Of
+course it's quiet! A charming house. Far more likely to suit my friend
+than any I have seen yet. Will you give me the refusal of it till
+to-morrow?" There she stopped for breath, and gave Mr. Delamayn his
+first opportunity of speaking to her.
+
+"I beg your ladyship's pardon," he began. "I really can't--"
+
+Mr. Vanborough--passing close behind him and whispering as he
+passed--stopped the lawyer before he could say a word more.
+
+"For God's sake, don't contradict me! My wife is coming this way!"
+
+At the same moment (still supposing that Mr. Delamayn was the master of
+the house) Lady Jane returned to the charge.
+
+"You appear to feel some hesitation," she said. "Do you want a
+reference?" She smiled satirically, and summoned her friend to her aid.
+"Mr. Vanborough!"
+
+Mr. Vanborough, stealing step by step nearer to the window--intent, come
+what might of it, on keeping his wife out of the room--neither heeded
+nor heard her. Lady Jane followed him, and tapped him briskly on the
+shoulder with her parasol.
+
+At that moment Mrs. Vanborough appeared on the garden side of the
+window.
+
+"Am I in the way?" she asked, addressing her husband, after one steady
+look at Lady Jane. "This lady appears to be an old friend of yours."
+There was a tone of sarcasm in that allusion to the parasol, which might
+develop into a tone of jealousy at a moment's notice.
+
+Lady Jane was not in the least disconcerted. She had her double
+privilege of familiarity with the men whom she liked--her privilege as
+a woman of high rank, and her privilege as a young widow. She bowed to
+Mrs. Vanborough, with all the highly-finished politeness of the order to
+which she belonged.
+
+"The lady of the house, I presume?" she said, with a gracious smile.
+
+Mrs. Vanborough returned the bow coldly--entered the room first--and
+then answered, "Yes."
+
+Lady Jane turned to Mr. Vanborough.
+
+"Present me!" she said, submitting resignedly to the formalities of the
+middle classes.
+
+Mr. Vanborough obeyed, without looking at his wife, and without
+mentioning his wife's name.
+
+"Lady Jane Parnell," he said, passing over the introduction as rapidly
+as possible. "Let me see you to your carriage," he added, offering his
+arm. "I will take care that you have the refusal of the house. You may
+trust it all to me."
+
+No! Lady Jane was accustomed to leave a favorable impression behind her
+wherever she went. It was a habit with her to be charming (in widely
+different ways) to both sexes. The social experience of the upper
+classes is, in England, an experience of universal welcome. Lady Jane
+declined to leave until she had thawed the icy reception of the lady of
+the house.
+
+"I must repeat my apologies," she said to Mrs. Vanborough, "for coming
+at this inconvenient time. My intrusion appears to have sadly disturbed
+the two gentlemen. Mr. Vanborough looks as if he wished me a hundred
+miles away. And as for your husband--" She stopped and glanced toward
+Mr. Delamayn. "Pardon me for speaking in that familiar way. I have not
+the pleasure of knowing your husband's name."
+
+In speechless amazement Mrs. Vanborough's eyes followed the direction of
+Lady Jane's eyes--and rested on the lawyer, personally a total stranger
+to her.
+
+Mr. Delamayn, resolutely waiting his opportunity to speak, seized it
+once more--and held it this time.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "There is some misapprehension here, for
+which I am in no way responsible. I am _not_ that lady's husband."
+
+It was Lady Jane's turn to be astonished. She looked at the lawyer.
+Useless! Mr. Delamayn had set himself right--Mr. Delamayn declined to
+interfere further. He silently took a chair at the other end of the
+room. Lady Jane addressed Mr. Vanborough.
+
+"Whatever the mistake may be," she said, "you are responsible for it.
+You certainly told me this lady was your friend's wife."
+
+"What!!!" cried Mrs. Vanborough--loudly, sternly, incredulously.
+
+The inbred pride of the great lady began to appear behind the thin outer
+veil of politeness that covered it.
+
+"I will speak louder if you wish it," she said. "Mr. Vanborough told me
+you were that gentleman's wife."
+
+Mr. Vanborough whispered fiercely to his wife through his clenched
+teeth.
+
+"The whole thing is a mistake. Go into the garden again!"
+
+Mrs. Vanborough's indignation was suspended for the moment in dread, as
+she saw the passion and the terror struggling in her husband's face.
+
+"How you look at me!" she said. "How you speak to me!"
+
+He only repeated, "Go into the garden!"
+
+Lady Jane began to perceive, what the lawyer had discovered some minutes
+previously--that there was something wrong in the villa at Hampstead.
+The lady of the house was a lady in an anomalous position of some
+kind. And as the house, to all appearance, belonged to Mr. Vanborough's
+friend, Mr. Vanborough's friend must (in spite of his recent disclaimer)
+be in some way responsible for it. Arriving, naturally enough, at this
+erroneous conclusion, Lady Jane's eyes rested for an instant on Mrs.
+Vanborough with a finely contemptuous expression of inquiry which would
+have roused the spirit of the tamest woman in existence. The implied
+insult stung the wife's sensitive nature to the quick. She turned once
+more to her husband--this time without flinching.
+
+"Who is that woman?" she asked.
+
+Lady Jane was equal to the emergency. The manner in which she wrapped
+herself up in her own virtue, without the slightest pretension on the
+one hand, and without the slightest compromise on the other, was a sight
+to see.
+
+"Mr. Vanborough," she said, "you offered to take me to my carriage just
+now. I begin to understand that I had better have accepted the offer at
+once. Give me your arm."
+
+"Stop!" said Mrs. Vanborough, "your ladyship's looks are looks of
+contempt; your ladyship's words can bear but one interpretation. I am
+innocently involved in some vile deception which I don't understand.
+But this I do know--I won't submit to be insulted in my own house. After
+what you have just said I forbid my husband to give you his arm."
+
+Her husband!
+
+Lady Jane looked at Mr. Vanborough--at Mr. Vanborough, whom she
+loved; whom she had honestly believed to be a single man; whom she had
+suspected, up to that moment, of nothing worse than of trying to screen
+the frailties of his friend. She dropped her highly-bred tone; she lost
+her highly-bred manners. The sense of her injury (if this was true), the
+pang of her jealousy (if that woman was his wife), stripped the human
+nature in her bare of all disguises, raised the angry color in her
+cheeks, and struck the angry fire out of her eyes.
+
+"If you can tell the truth, Sir," she said, haughtily, "be so good as
+to tell it now. Have you been falsely presenting yourself to the
+world--falsely presenting yourself to _me_--in the character and with
+the aspirations of a single man? Is that lady your wife?"
+
+"Do you hear her? do you see her?" cried Mrs. Vanborough, appealing to
+her husband, in her turn. She suddenly drew back from him, shuddering
+from head to foot. "He hesitates!" she said to herself, faintly. "Good
+God! he hesitates!"
+
+Lady Jane sternly repeated her question.
+
+"Is that lady your wife?"
+
+He roused his scoundrel-courage, and said the fatal word:
+
+"No!"
+
+Mrs. Vanborough staggered back. She caught at the white curtains of the
+window to save herself from falling, and tore them. She looked at her
+husband, with the torn curtain clenched fast in her hand. She asked
+herself, "Am I mad? or is he?"
+
+Lady Jane drew a deep breath of relief. He was not married! He was
+only a profligate single man. A profligate single man is shocking--but
+reclaimable. It is possible to blame him severely, and to insist on his
+reformation in the most uncompromising terms. It is also possible to
+forgive him, and marry him. Lady Jane took the necessary position
+under the circumstances with perfect tact. She inflicted reproof in the
+present without excluding hope in the future.
+
+"I have made a very painful discovery," she said, gravely, to
+Mr. Vanborough. "It rests with _you_ to persuade me to forget it!
+Good-evening!"
+
+She accompanied the last words by a farewell look which aroused Mrs.
+Vanborough to frenzy. She sprang forward and prevented Lady Jane from
+leaving the room.
+
+"No!" she said. "You don't go yet!"
+
+Mr. Vanborough came forward to interfere. His wife eyed him with a
+terrible look, and turned from him with a terrible contempt. "That man
+has lied!" she said. "In justice to myself, I insist on proving it!"
+She struck a bell on a table near her. The servant came in. "Fetch my
+writing-desk out of the next room." She waited--with her back turned on
+her husband, with her eyes fixed on Lady Jane. Defenseless and alone
+she stood on the wreck of her married life, superior to the husband's
+treachery, the lawyer's indifference, and her rival's contempt. At
+that dreadful moment her beauty shone out again with a gleam of its old
+glory. The grand woman, who in the old stage days had held thousands
+breathless over the mimic woes of the scene, stood there grander than
+ever, in her own woe, and held the three people who looked at her
+breathless till she spoke again.
+
+The servant came in with the desk. She took out a paper and handed it to
+Lady Jane.
+
+"I was a singer on the stage," she said, "when I was a single woman. The
+slander to which such women are exposed doubted my marriage. I provided
+myself with the paper in your hand. It speaks for itself. Even the
+highest society, madam, respects _that!_"
+
+Lady Jane examined the paper. It was a marriage-certificate. She turned
+deadly pale, and beckoned to Mr. Vanborough. "Are you deceiving me?" she
+asked.
+
+Mr. Vanborough looked back into the far corner of the room, in which the
+lawyer sat, impenetrably waiting for events. "Oblige me by coming here
+for a moment," he said.
+
+Mr. Delamayn rose and complied with the request. Mr. Vanborough
+addressed himself to Lady Jane.
+
+"I beg to refer you to my man of business. _He_ is not interested in
+deceiving you."
+
+"Am I required simply to speak to the fact?" asked Mr. Delamayn. "I
+decline to do more."
+
+"You are not wanted to do more."
+
+Listening intently to that interchange of question and answer, Mrs.
+Vanborough advanced a step in silence. The high courage that had
+sustained her against outrage which had openly declared itself shrank
+under the sense of something coming which she had not foreseen. A
+nameless dread throbbed at her heart and crept among the roots of her
+hair.
+
+Lady Jane handed the certificate to the lawyer.
+
+"In two words, Sir," she said, impatiently, "what is this?"
+
+"In two words, madam," answered Mr. Delamayn; "waste paper."
+
+"He is _not_ married?"
+
+"He is _not_ married."
+
+After a moment's hesitation Lady Jane looked round at Mrs. Vanborough,
+standing silent at her side--looked, and started back in terror. "Take
+me away!" she cried, shrinking from the ghastly face that confronted her
+with the fixed stare of agony in the great, glittering eyes. "Take me
+away! That woman will murder me!"
+
+Mr. Vanborough gave her his arm and led her to the door. There was dead
+silence in the room as he did it. Step by step the wife's eyes followed
+them with the same dreadful stare, till the door closed and shut them
+out. The lawyer, left alone with the disowned and deserted woman, put
+the useless certificate silently on the table. She looked from him to
+the paper, and dropped, without a cry to warn him, without an effort to
+save herself, senseless at his feet.
+
+He lifted her from the floor and placed her on the sofa, and waited
+to see if Mr. Vanborough would come back. Looking at the beautiful
+face--still beautiful, even in the swoon--he owned it was hard on her.
+Yes! in his own impenetrable way, the rising lawyer owned it was hard on
+her.
+
+But the law justified it. There was no doubt in this case. The law
+justified it.
+
+The trampling of horses and the grating of wheels sounded outside. Lady
+Jane's carriage was driving away. Would the husband come back? (See what
+a thing habit is! Even Mr. Delamayn still mechanically thought of him as
+the husband--in the face of the law! in the face of the facts!)
+
+No. Then minutes passed. And no sign of the husband coming back.
+
+It was not wise to make a scandal in the house. It was not desirable (on
+his own sole responsibility) to let the servants see what had happened.
+Still, there she lay senseless. The cool evening air came in through
+the open window and lifted the light ribbons in her lace cap, lifted
+the little lock of hair that had broken loose and drooped over her neck.
+Still, there she lay--the wife who had loved him, the mother of his
+child--there she lay.
+
+He stretched out his hand to ring the bell and summon help.
+
+At the same moment the quiet of the summer evening was once more
+disturbed. He held his hand suspended over the bell. The noise outside
+came nearer. It was again the trampling of horses and the grating of
+wheels. Advancing--rapidly advancing--stopping at the house.
+
+Was Lady Jane coming back?
+
+Was the husband coming back?
+
+There was a loud ring at the bell--a quick opening of the house-door--a
+rustling of a woman's dress in the passage. The door of the room opened,
+and the woman appeared--alone. Not Lady Jane. A stranger--older, years
+older, than Lady Jane. A plain woman, perhaps, at other times. A woman
+almost beautiful now, with the eager happiness that beamed in her face.
+
+She saw the figure on the sofa. She ran to it with a cry--a cry of
+recognition and a cry of terror in one. She dropped on her knees--and
+laid that helpless head on her bosom, and kissed, with a sister's
+kisses, that cold, white cheek.
+
+"Oh, my darling!" she said. "Is it thus we meet again?"
+
+Yes! After all the years that had passed since the parting in the cabin
+of the ship, it was thus the two school-friends met again.
+
+
+Part the Second.
+
+
+THE MARCH OF TIME.
+
+V.
+
+ADVANCING from time past to time present, the Prologue leaves the date
+last attained (the summer of eighteen hundred and fifty-five), and
+travels on through an interval of twelve years--tells who lived, who
+died, who prospered, and who failed among the persons concerned in the
+tragedy at the Hampstead villa--and, this done, leaves the reader at the
+opening of THE STORY in the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight.
+
+The record begins with a marriage--the marriage of Mr. Vanborough and
+Lady Jane Parnell.
+
+In three months from the memorable day when his solicitor had informed
+him that he was a free man, Mr. Vanborough possessed the wife he
+desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his fortunes in the
+world--the Legislature of Great Britain being the humble servant of his
+treachery, and the respectable accomplice of his crime.
+
+He entered Parliament. He gave (thanks to his wife) six of the grandest
+dinners, and two of the most crowded balls of the season. He made a
+successful first speech in the House of Commons. He endowed a church in
+a poor neighborhood. He wrote an article which attracted attention in a
+quarterly review. He discovered, denounced, and remedied a crying abuse
+in the administration of a public charity. He received (thanks once
+more to his wife) a member of the Royal family among the visitors at his
+country house in the autumn recess. These were his triumphs, and this
+his rate of progress on the way to the peerage, during the first year of
+his life as the husband of Lady Jane.
+
+There was but one more favor that Fortune could confer on her spoiled
+child--and Fortune bestowed it. There was a spot on Mr. Vanborough's
+past life as long as the woman lived whom he had disowned and deserted.
+At the end of the first year Death took her--and the spot was rubbed
+out.
+
+She had met the merciless injury inflicted on her with a rare patience,
+with an admirable courage. It is due to Mr. Vanborough to admit that he
+broke her heart, with the strictest attention to propriety. He offered
+(through his lawyer ) a handsome provision for her and for her child.
+It was rejected, without an instant's hesitation. She repudiated his
+money--she repudiated his name. By the name which she had borne in her
+maiden days--the name which she had made illustrious in her Art--the
+mother and daughter were known to all who cared to inquire after them
+when they had sunk in the world.
+
+There was no false pride in the resolute attitude which she thus assumed
+after her husband had forsaken her. Mrs. Silvester (as she was now
+called) gratefully accepted for herself, and for Miss Silvester,
+the assistance of the dear old friend who had found her again in her
+affliction, and who remained faithful to her to the end. They lived with
+Lady Lundie until the mother was strong enough to carry out the plan of
+life which she had arranged for the future, and to earn her bread as a
+teacher of singing. To all appearance she rallied, and became herself
+again, in a few months' time. She was making her way; she was winning
+sympathy, confidence, and respect every where--when she sank suddenly
+at the opening of her new life. Nobody could account for it. The doctors
+themselves were divided in opinion. Scientifically speaking, there was
+no reason why she should die. It was a mere figure of speech--in no
+degree satisfactory to any reasonable mind--to say, as Lady Lundie said,
+that she had got her death-blow on the day when her husband deserted
+her. The one thing certain was the fact--account for it as you might.
+In spite of science (which meant little), in spite of her own courage
+(which meant much), the woman dropped at her post and died.
+
+In the latter part of her illness her mind gave way. The friend of her
+old school-days, sitting at the bedside, heard her talking as if she
+thought herself back again in the cabin of the ship. The poor soul found
+the tone, almost the look, that had been lost for so many years--the
+tone of the past time when the two girls had gone their different ways
+in the world. She said, "we will meet, darling, with all the old love
+between us," just as she had said almost a lifetime since. Before the
+end her mind rallied. She surprised the doctor and the nurse by begging
+them gently to leave the room. When they had gone she looked at Lady
+Lundie, and woke, as it seemed, to consciousness from a dream.
+
+"Blanche," she said, "you will take care of my child?"
+
+"She shall be _my_ child, Anne, when you are gone."
+
+The dying woman paused, and thought for a little. A sudden trembling
+seized her.
+
+"Keep it a secret!" she said. "I am afraid for my child."
+
+"Afraid? After what I have promised you?"
+
+She solemnly repeated the words, "I am afraid for my child."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My Anne is my second self--isn't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She is as fond of your child as I was of you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She is not called by her father's name--she is called by mine. She is
+Anne Silvester as I was. Blanche! _Will she end like Me?_"
+
+The question was put with the laboring breath, with the heavy accents
+which tell that death is near. It chilled the living woman who heard it
+to the marrow of her bones.
+
+"Don't think that!" she cried, horror-struck. "For God's sake, don't
+think that!"
+
+The wildness began to appear again in Anne Silvester's eyes. She made
+feebly impatient signs with her hands. Lady Lundie bent over her, and
+heard her whisper, "Lift me up."
+
+She lay in her friend's arms; she looked up in her friend's face; she
+went back wildly to her fear for her child.
+
+"Don't bring her up like Me! She must be a governess--she must get her
+bread. Don't let her act! don't let her sing! don't let her go on the
+stage!" She stopped--her voice suddenly recovered its sweetness of
+tone--she smiled faintly--she said the old girlish words once more,
+in the old girlish way, "Vow it, Blanche!" Lady Lundie kissed her, and
+answered, as she had answered when they parted in the ship, "I vow it,
+Anne!"
+
+The head sank, never to be lifted more. The last look of life flickered
+in the filmy eyes and went out. For a moment afterward her lips moved.
+Lady Lundie put her ear close to them, and heard the dreadful question
+reiterated, in the same dreadful words: "She is Anne Silvester--as I
+was. _Will she end like Me?_"
+
+VI.
+
+Five years passed--and the lives of the three men who had sat at the
+dinner-table in the Hampstead villa began, in their altered aspects, to
+reveal the progress of time and change.
+
+Mr. Kendrew; Mr. Delamayn; Mr. Vanborough. Let the order in which they
+are here named be the order in which their lives are reviewed, as seen
+once more after a lapse of five years.
+
+How the husband's friend marked his sense of the husband's treachery has
+been told already. How he felt the death of the deserted wife is still
+left to tell. Report, which sees the inmost hearts of men, and delights
+in turning them outward to the public view, had always declared that
+Mr. Kendrew's life had its secret, and that the secret was a hopeless
+passion for the beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint
+ever dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman
+herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the woman
+lived. When she died Report started up again more confidently than ever,
+and appealed to the man's own conduct as proof against the man himself.
+
+He attended the funeral--though he was no relation. He took a few
+blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her grave--when he
+thought that nobody was looking at him. He disappeared from his club.
+He traveled. He came back. He admitted that he was weary of England.
+He applied for, and obtained, an appointment in one of the colonies.
+To what conclusion did all this point? Was it not plain that his usual
+course of life had lost its attraction for him, when the object of his
+infatuation had ceased to exist? It might have been so--guesses less
+likely have been made at the truth, and have hit the mark. It is, at any
+rate, certain that he left England, never to return again. Another man
+lost, Report said. Add to that, a man in ten thousand--and, for once,
+Report might claim to be right.
+
+Mr. Delamayn comes next.
+
+The rising solicitor was struck off the roll, at his own request--and
+entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of Court. For three
+years nothing was known of him but that he was reading hard and keeping
+his terms. He was called to the Bar. His late partners in the firm knew
+they could trust him, and put business into his hands. In two years he
+made himself a position in Court. At the end of the two years he made
+himself a position out of Court. He appeared as "Junior" in "a famous
+case," in which the honor of a great family, and the title to a great
+estate were concerned. His "Senior" fell ill on the eve of the trial.
+He conducted the case for the defendant and won it. The defendant
+said, "What can I do for you?" Mr. Delamayn answered, "Put me into
+Parliament." Being a landed gentleman, the defendant had only to issue
+the necessary orders--and behold, Mr. Delamayn was in Parliament!
+
+In the House of Commons the new member and Mr. Vanborough met again.
+
+They sat on the same bench, and sided with the same party. Mr. Delamayn
+noticed that Mr. Vanborough was looking old and worn and gray. He put a
+few questions to a well-informed person. The well-informed person shook
+his head. Mr. Vanborough was rich; Mr. Vanborough was well-connected
+(through his wife); Mr. Van borough was a sound man in every sense of
+the word; _but_--nobody liked him. He had done very well the first year,
+and there it had ended. He was undeniably clever, but he produced a
+disagreeable impression in the House. He gave splendid entertainments,
+but he wasn't popular in society. His party respected him, but when they
+had any thing to give they passed him over. He had a temper of his
+own, if the truth must be told; and with nothing against him--on the
+contrary, with every thing in his favor--he didn't make friends. A
+soured man. At home and abroad, a soured man.
+
+VII.
+
+Five years more passed, dating from the day when the deserted wife was
+laid in her grave. It was now the year eighteen hundred and sixty six.
+
+On a certain day in that year two special items of news appeared in
+the papers--the news of an elevation to the peerage, and the news of a
+suicide.
+
+Getting on well at the Bar, Mr. Delamayn got on better still in
+Parliament. He became one of the prominent men in the House. Spoke
+clearly, sensibly, and modestly, and was never too long. Held the House,
+where men of higher abilities "bored" it. The chiefs of his party said
+openly, "We must do something for Delamayn," The opportunity offered,
+and the chiefs kept their word. Their Solicitor-General was advanced
+a step, and they put Delamayn in his place. There was an outcry on the
+part of the older members of the Bar. The Ministry answered, "We want
+a man who is listened to in the House, and we have got him." The papers
+supported the new nomination. A great debate came off, and the new
+Solicitor-General justified the Ministry and the papers. His enemies
+said, derisively, "He will be Lord Chancellor in a year or two!" His
+friends made genial jokes in his domestic circle, which pointed to the
+same conclusion. They warned his two sons, Julius and Geoffrey (then at
+college), to be careful what acquaintances they made, as they might find
+themselves the sons of a lord at a moment's notice. It really began to
+look like something of the sort. Always rising, Mr. Delamayn rose next
+to be Attorney-General. About the same time--so true it is that "nothing
+succeeds like success"--a childless relative died and left him a
+fortune. In the summer of 'sixty-six a Chief Judgeship fell vacant.
+The Ministry had made a previous appointment which had been universally
+unpopular. They saw their way to supplying the place of their
+Attorney-General, and they offered the judicial appointment to Mr.
+Delamayn. He preferred remaining in the House of Commons, and refused
+to accept it. The Ministry declined to take No for an answer. They
+whispered confidentially, "Will you take it with a peerage?" Mr.
+Delamayn consulted his wife, and took it with a peerage. The London
+_Gazette_ announced him to the world as Baron Holchester of Holchester.
+And the friends of the family rubbed their hands and said, "What did we
+tell you? Here are our two young friends, Julius and Geoffrey, the sons
+of a lord!"
+
+And where was Mr. Vanborough all this time? Exactly where we left him
+five years since.
+
+He was as rich, or richer, than ever. He was as well-connected as ever.
+He was as ambitious as ever. But there it ended. He stood still in the
+House; he stood still in society; nobody liked him; he made no friends.
+It was all the old story over again, with this difference, that the
+soured man was sourer; the gray head, grayer; and the irritable temper
+more unendurable than ever. His wife had her rooms in the house and he
+had his, and the confidential servants took care that they never met
+on the stairs. They had no children. They only saw each other at their
+grand dinners and balls. People ate at their table, and danced on their
+floor, and compared notes afterward, and said how dull it was. Step by
+step the man who had once been Mr. Vanborough's lawyer rose, till the
+peerage received him, and he could rise no longer; while Mr. Vanborough,
+on the lower round of the ladder, looked up, and noted it, with no more
+chance (rich as he was and well-connected as he was) of climbing to the
+House of Lords than your chance or mine.
+
+The man's career was ended; and on the day when the nomination of the
+new peer was announced, the man ended with it.
+
+He laid the newspaper aside without making any remark, and went out.
+His carriage set him down, where the green fields still remain, on the
+northwest of London, near the foot-path which leads to Hampstead. He
+walked alone to the villa where he had once lived with the woman whom he
+had so cruelly wronged. New houses had risen round it, part of the old
+garden had been sold and built on. After a moment's hesitation he
+went to the gate and rang the bell. He gave the servant his card. The
+servant's master knew the name as the name of a man of great wealth,
+and of a Member of Parliament. He asked politely to what fortunate
+circumstance he owed the honor of that visit. Mr. Vanborough answered,
+briefly and simply, "I once lived here; I have associations with the
+place with which it is not necessary for me to trouble you. Will you
+excuse what must seem to you a very strange request? I should like
+to see the dining-room again, if there is no objection, and if I am
+disturbing nobody."
+
+The "strange requests" of rich men are of the nature of "privileged
+communications," for this excellent reason, that they are sure not to be
+requests for money. Mr. Vanborough was shown into the dining-room. The
+master of the house, secretly wondering, watched him.
+
+He walked straight to a certain spot on the carpet, not far from the
+window that led into the garden, and nearly opposite the door. On that
+spot he stood silently, with his head on his breast--thinking. Was it
+_there_ he had seen her for the last time, on the day when he left the
+room forever? Yes; it was there. After a minute or so he roused himself,
+but in a dreamy, absent manner. He said it was a pretty place, and
+expressed his thanks, and looked back before the door closed, and then
+went his way again. His carriage picked him up where it had set him
+down. He drove to the residence of the new Lord Holchester, and left
+a card for him. Then he went home. Arrived at his house, his secretary
+reminded him that he had an appointment in ten minutes' time. He thanked
+the secretary in the same dreamy, absent manner in which he had thanked
+the owner of the villa, and went into his dressing-room. The person with
+whom he had made the appointment came, and the secretary sent the valet
+up stairs to knock at the door. There was no answer. On trying the lock
+it proved to be turned inside. They broke open the door, and saw him
+lying on the sofa. They went close to look--and found him dead by his
+own hand.
+
+VIII.
+
+Drawing fast to its close, the Prologue reverts to the two girls--and
+tells, in a few words, how the years passed with Anne and Blanche.
+
+Lady Lundie more than redeemed the solemn pledge that she had given to
+her friend. Preserved from every temptation which might lure her into
+a longing to follow her mother's career; trained for a teacher's life,
+with all the arts and all the advantages that money could procure,
+Anne's first and only essays as a governess were made, under Lady
+Lundie's own roof, on Lady Lundie's own child. The difference in the
+ages of the girls--seven years--the love between them, which seemed,
+as time went on, to grow with their growth, favored the trial of the
+experiment. In the double relation of teacher and friend to little
+Blanche, the girlhood of Anne Silvester the younger passed safely,
+happily, uneventfully, in the modest sanctuary of home. Who could
+imagine a contrast more complete than the contrast between her early
+life and her mother's? Who could see any thing but a death-bed delusion
+in the terrible question which had tortured the mother's last moments:
+"Will she end like Me?"
+
+But two events of importance occurred in the quiet family circle during
+the lapse of years which is now under review. In eighteen hundred and
+fifty-eight the household was enlivened by the arrival of Sir Thomas
+Lundie. In eighteen hundred and sixty-five the household was broken up
+by the return of Sir Thomas to India, accompanied by his wife.
+
+Lady Lundie's health had b een failing for some time previously. The
+medical men, consulted on the case, agreed that a sea-voyage was the one
+change needful to restore their patient's wasted strength--exactly at
+the time, as it happened, when Sir Thomas was due again in India. For
+his wife's sake, he agreed to defer his return, by taking the sea-voyage
+with her. The one difficulty to get over was the difficulty of leaving
+Blanche and Anne behind in England.
+
+Appealed to on this point, the doctors had declared that at Blanche's
+critical time of life they could not sanction her going to India with
+her mother. At the same time, near and dear relatives came forward, who
+were ready and anxious to give Blanche and her governess a home--Sir
+Thomas, on his side, engaging to bring his wife back in a year and a
+half, or, at most, in two years' time. Assailed in all directions, Lady
+Lundie's natural unwillingness to leave the girls was overruled. She
+consented to the parting--with a mind secretly depressed, and secretly
+doubtful of the future.
+
+At the last moment she drew Anne Silvester on one side, out of hearing
+of the rest. Anne was then a young woman of twenty-two, and Blanche a
+girl of fifteen.
+
+"My dear," she said, simply, "I must tell _you_ what I can not tell Sir
+Thomas, and what I am afraid to tell Blanche. I am going away, with
+a mind that misgives me. I am persuaded I shall not live to return to
+England; and, when I am dead, I believe my husband will marry again.
+Years ago your mother was uneasy, on her death-bed, about _your_ future.
+I am uneasy, now, about Blanche's future. I promised my dear dead friend
+that you should be like my own child to me--and it quieted her
+mind. Quiet my mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever happens in years to
+come--promise me to be always, what you are now, a sister to Blanche."
+
+She held out her hand for the last time. With a full heart Anne
+Silvester kissed it, and gave the promise.
+
+IX.
+
+In two months from that time one of the forebodings which had weighed on
+Lady Lundie's mind was fulfilled. She died on the voyage, and was buried
+at sea.
+
+In a year more the second misgiving was confirmed. Sir Thomas Lundie
+married again. He brought his second wife to England toward the close of
+eighteen hundred and sixty six.
+
+Time, in the new household, promised to pass as quietly as in the old.
+Sir Thomas remembered and respected the trust which his first wife had
+placed in Anne. The second Lady Lundie, wisely guiding her conduct in
+this matter by the conduct of her husband, left things as she found them
+in the new house. At the opening of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven the
+relations between Anne and Blanche were relations of sisterly sympathy
+and sisterly love. The prospect in the future was as fair as a prospect
+could be.
+
+At this date, of the persons concerned in the tragedy of twelve years
+since at the Hampstead villa, three were dead; and one was self-exiled
+in a foreign land. There now remained living Anne and Blanche, who had
+been children at the time; and the rising solicitor who had discovered
+the flaw in the Irish marriage--once Mr. Delamayn: now Lord Holchester.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST SCENE.--THE SUMMER-HOUSE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST.
+
+
+THE OWLS.
+
+IN the spring of the year eighteen hundred and sixty-eight there lived,
+in a certain county of North Britain, two venerable White Owls.
+
+The Owls inhabited a decayed and deserted summer-house. The summer-house
+stood in grounds attached to a country seat in Perthshire, known by the
+name of Windygates.
+
+The situation of Windygates had been skillfully chosen in that part
+of the county where the fertile lowlands first begin to merge into the
+mountain region beyond. The mansion-house was intelligently laid out,
+and luxuriously furnished. The stables offered a model for ventilation
+and space; and the gardens and grounds were fit for a prince.
+
+Possessed of these advantages, at starting, Windygates, nevertheless,
+went the road to ruin in due course of time. The curse of litigation
+fell on house and lands. For more than ten years an interminable lawsuit
+coiled itself closer and closer round the place, sequestering it from
+human habitation, and even from human approach. The mansion was closed.
+The garden became a wilderness of weeds. The summer-house was choked up
+by creeping plants; and the appearance of the creepers was followed by
+the appearance of the birds of night.
+
+For years the Owls lived undisturbed on the property which they had
+acquired by the oldest of all existing rights--the right of taking.
+Throughout the day they sat peaceful and solemn, with closed eyes, in
+the cool darkness shed round them by the ivy. With the twilight they
+roused themselves softly to the business of life. In sage and silent
+companionship of two, they went flying, noiseless, along the quiet lanes
+in search of a meal. At one time they would beat a field like a setter
+dog, and drop down in an instant on a mouse unaware of them. At another
+time--moving spectral over the black surface of the water--they would
+try the lake for a change, and catch a perch as they had caught the
+mouse. Their catholic digestions were equally tolerant of a rat or an
+insect. And there were moments, proud moments, in their lives, when they
+were clever enough to snatch a small bird at roost off his perch. On
+those occasions the sense of superiority which the large bird feels
+every where over the small, warmed their cool blood, and set them
+screeching cheerfully in the stillness of the night.
+
+So, for years, the Owls slept their happy sleep by day, and found their
+comfortable meal when darkness fell. They had come, with the creepers,
+into possession of the summer-house. Consequently, the creepers were a
+part of the constitution of the summer-house. And consequently the Owls
+were the guardians of the Constitution. There are some human owls who
+reason as they did, and who are, in this respect--as also in respect of
+snatching smaller birds off their roosts--wonderfully like them.
+
+The constitution of the summer-house had lasted until the spring of the
+year eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, when the unhallowed footsteps
+of innovation passed that way; and the venerable privileges of the Owls
+were assailed, for the first time, from the world outside.
+
+Two featherless beings appeared, uninvited, at the door of the
+summer-house, surveyed the constitutional creepers, and said, "These
+must come down"--looked around at the horrid light of noonday, and
+said, "That must come in"--went away, thereupon, and were heard, in the
+distance, agreeing together, "To-morrow it shall be done."
+
+And the Owls said, "Have we honored the summer-house by occupying it all
+these years--and is the horrid light of noonday to be let in on us at
+last? My lords and gentlemen, the Constitution is destroyed!"
+
+They passed a resolution to that effect, as is the manner of their kind.
+And then they shut their eyes again, and felt that they had done their
+duty.
+
+The same night, on their way to the fields, they observed with dismay a
+light in one of the windows of the house. What did the light mean?
+
+It meant, in the first place, that the lawsuit was over at last. It
+meant, in the second place that the owner of Windygates, wanting money,
+had decided on letting the property. It meant, in the third place, that
+the property had found a tenant, and was to be renovated immediately out
+of doors and in. The Owls shrieked as they flapped along the lanes in
+the darkness, And that night they struck at a mouse--and missed him.
+
+The next morning, the Owls--fast asleep in charge of the
+Constitution--were roused by voices of featherless beings all round
+them. They opened their eyes, under protest, and saw instruments of
+destruction attacking the creepers. Now in one direction, and now in
+another, those instruments let in on the summer-house the horrid light
+of day. But the Owls were equal to the occasion. They ruffled their
+feathers, and cried, "No surrender!" The featherless beings plied their
+work cheerfully, and answered, "Reform!" The creepers were torn down
+this way and that. The horrid daylight poured in brighter and brighter.
+The Owls had barely time to pass a new resolution, namely, "That we do
+stand by the Constitution," when a ray of the outer sunlight flashed
+into their eyes, and sent them flying headlong to the nearest shade.
+There they sat winking, while the summer-house was cleared of the rank
+growth that had choked it up, while the rotten wood-work was renewed,
+while all the murky place was purified with air and light. And when the
+world saw it, and said, "Now we shall do!" the Owls shut their eyes
+in pious remembrance of the darkness, and answered, "My lords and
+gentlemen, the Constitution is destroyed!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND.
+
+THE GUESTS.
+
+Who was responsible for the reform of the summer-house? The new tenant
+at Windygates was responsible.
+
+And who was the new tenant?
+
+Come, and see.
+
+
+
+In the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight the summer-house had
+been the dismal dwelling-place of a pair of owls. In the autumn of the
+same year the summer-house was the lively gathering-place of a crowd
+of ladies and gentlemen, assembled at a lawn party--the guests of the
+tenant who had taken Windygates.
+
+The scene--at the opening of the party--was as pleasant to look at as
+light and beauty and movement could make it.
+
+Inside the summer-house the butterfly-brightness of the women in their
+summer dresses shone radiant out of the gloom shed round it by the
+dreary modern clothing of the men. Outside the summer-house, seen
+through three arched openings, the cool green prospect of a lawn led
+away, in the distance, to flower-beds and shrubberies, and, farther
+still, disclosed, through a break in the trees, a grand stone house
+which closed the view, with a fountain in front of it playing in the
+sun.
+
+They were half of them laughing, they were all of them talking--the
+comfortable hum of their voices was at its loudest; the cheery pealing
+of the laughter was soaring to its highest notes--when one dominant
+voice, rising clear and shrill above all the rest, called imperatively
+for silence. The moment after, a young lady stepped into the vacant
+space in front of the summer-house, and surveyed the throng of guests as
+a general in command surveys a regiment under review.
+
+She was young, she was pretty, she was plump, she was fair. She was not
+the least embarrassed by her prominent position. She was dressed in the
+height of the fashion. A hat, like a cheese-plate, was tilted over her
+forehead. A balloon of light brown hair soared, fully inflated, from the
+crown of her head. A cataract of beads poured over her bosom. A pair of
+cock-chafers in enamel (frightfully like the living originals) hung at
+her ears. Her scanty skirts shone splendid with the blue of heaven. Her
+ankles twinkled in striped stockings. Her shoes were of the sort called
+"Watteau." And her heels were of the height at which men shudder, and
+ask themselves (in contemplating an otherwise lovable woman), "Can this
+charming person straighten her knees?"
+
+The young lady thus presenting herself to the general view was Miss
+Blanche Lundie--once the little rosy Blanche whom the Prologue has
+introduced to the reader. Age, at the present time, eighteen. Position,
+excellent. Money, certain. Temper, quick. Disposition, variable. In a
+word, a child of the modern time--with the merits of the age we live in,
+and the failings of the age we live in--and a substance of sincerity and
+truth and feeling underlying it all.
+
+"Now then, good people," cried Miss Blanche, "silence, if you please! We
+are going to choose sides at croquet. Business, business, business!"
+
+Upon this, a second lady among the company assumed a position of
+prominence, and answered the young person who had just spoken with a
+look of mild reproof, and in a tone of benevolent protest.
+
+The second lady was tall, and solid, and five-and-thirty. She presented
+to the general observation a cruel aquiline nose, an obstinate straight
+chin, magnificent dark hair and eyes, a serene splendor of fawn-colored
+apparel, and a lazy grace of movement which was attractive at
+first sight, but inexpressibly monotonous and wearisome on a longer
+acquaintance. This was Lady Lundie the Second, now the widow (after four
+months only of married life) of Sir Thomas Lundie, deceased. In other
+words, the step-mother of Blanche, and the enviable person who had taken
+the house and lands of Windygates.
+
+"My dear," said Lady Lundie, "words have their meanings--even on a young
+lady's lips. Do you call Croquet, 'business?'"
+
+"You don't call it pleasure, surely?" said a gravely ironical voice in
+the back-ground of the summer-house.
+
+The ranks of the visitors parted before the last speaker, and disclosed
+to view, in the midst of that modern assembly, a gentleman of the bygone
+time.
+
+The manner of this gentleman was distinguished by a pliant grace and
+courtesy unknown to the present generation. The attire of this gentleman
+was composed of a many-folded white cravat, a close-buttoned blue
+dress-coat, and nankeen trousers with gaiters to match, ridiculous
+to the present generation. The talk of this gentleman ran in an
+easy flow--revealing an independent habit of mind, and exhibiting a
+carefully-polished capacity for satirical retort--dreaded and disliked
+by the present generation. Personally, he was little and wiry and
+slim--with a bright white head, and sparkling black eyes, and a wry
+twist of humor curling sharply at the corners of his lips. At his lower
+extremities, he exhibited the deformity which is popularly known as "a
+club-foot." But he carried his lameness, as he carried his years, gayly.
+He was socially celebrated for his ivory cane, with a snuff-box artfully
+let into the knob at the top--and he was socially dreaded for a hatred
+of modern institutions, which expressed itself in season and out of
+season, and which always showed the same, fatal knack of hitting smartly
+on the weakest place. Such was Sir Patrick Lundie; brother of the late
+baronet, Sir Thomas; and inheritor, at Sir Thomas's death, of the title
+and estates.
+
+Miss Blanche--taking no notice of her step-mother's reproof, or of her
+uncle's commentary on it--pointed to a table on which croquet mallets
+and balls were laid ready, and recalled the attention of the company to
+the matter in hand.
+
+"I head one side, ladies and gentlemen," she resumed. "And Lady Lundie
+heads the other. We choose our players turn and turn about. Mamma has
+the advantage of me in years. So mamma chooses first."
+
+With a look at her step-daughter--which, being interpreted, meant, "I
+would send you back to the nursery, miss, if I could!"--Lady Lundie
+turned and ran her eye over her guests. She had evidently made up her
+mind, beforehand, what player to pick out first.
+
+"I choose Miss Silvester," she said--with a special emphasis laid on the
+name.
+
+At that there was another parting among the crowd. To us (who know her),
+it was Anne who now appeared. Strangers, who saw her for the first
+time, saw a lady in the prime of her life--a lady plainly dressed in
+unornamented white--who advanced slowly, and confronted the mistress of
+the house.
+
+A certain proportion--and not a small one--of the men at the lawn-party
+had been brought there by friends who were privileged to introduce
+them. The moment she appeared every one of those men suddenly became
+interested in the lady who had been chosen first.
+
+"That's a very charming woman," whispered one of the strangers at the
+house to one of the friends of the house. "Who is she?"
+
+The friend whispered back.
+
+"Miss Lundie's governess--that's all."
+
+The moment during which the question was put and answered was also the
+moment which brought Lady Lundie and Miss Silvester face to face in the
+presence of the company.
+
+The stranger at the house looked at the two women, and whispered again.
+
+"Something wrong between the lady and the governess," he said.
+
+The friend looked also, and answered, in one emphatic word:
+
+"Evidently!"
+
+There are certain women whose influence over men is an unfathomable
+mystery to observers of their own sex. The governess was one of those
+women. She had inherited the charm, but not the beauty, of her unhappy
+mother. Judge her by the standard set up in the illustrated gift-books
+and the print-shop windows--and the sentence must have inevitably
+followed. "She has not a single good feature in her face."
+
+There was nothing individually remarkable about Miss Silvester, seen in
+a state of repose. She was of the average height. She was as well made
+as most women. In hair and complexion she was neither light nor dark,
+but provokingly neutral just between the two. Worse even than this,
+there were positive defects in her face, which it was impossible to
+deny. A nervous contraction at one corner of her mouth drew up the
+lips out of the symmetrically right line, when, they moved. A nervous
+uncertainty in the eye on the same side narrowly escaped presenting the
+deformity of a "cast." And yet, with these indisputable drawbacks, here
+was one of those women--the formidable few--who have the hearts of men
+and the peace of families at their mercy. She moved--and there was some
+subtle charm, Sir, in the movement, that made you look back, and suspend
+your conversation with your friend, and watch her silently while she
+walked. She sat by you and talked to you--and behold, a sensitive
+something passed into that little twist at the corner of the mouth, and
+into that nervous uncertainty in the soft gray eye, which turned defect
+into beauty--which enchained your senses--which made your nerves thrill
+if she touched you by accident, and set your heart beating if you looked
+at the same book with her, and felt her breath on your face. All this,
+let it be well understood, only happened if you were a man.
+
+If you saw her with the eyes of a woman, the results were of quite
+another kind. In that case you merely turned to your nearest female
+friend, and said, with unaffected pity for the other sex, "What _can_
+the men see in her!"
+
+The eyes of the lady of the house and the eyes of the governess met,
+with marked distrust on either side. Few people could have failed to
+see what the stranger and the friend had noticed alike--that there was
+something smoldering under the surface here. Miss Silvester spoke first.
+
+"Thank you, Lady Lundie," she said. "I would rather not play."
+
+Lady Lundie assumed an extreme surprise which passed the limits of
+good-breeding.
+
+"Oh, indeed?" she rejoined, sharply. "Considering that we are all here
+for the purpose of playing, that seems rather remarkable. Is any thing
+wrong, Miss Silvester?"
+
+A flush appeared on the delicate paleness of Miss Silvester's face.
+But she did her duty as a woman and a governess. She submitted, and so
+preserved appearances, for that time.
+
+"Nothing is the matter," she answered. "I am not very well this morning.
+But I will play if you wish it."
+
+"I do wish it," answered Lady Lundie.
+
+Miss Silvester turned aside toward one of the entrances into the
+summer-house. She waited for events, looking out over the lawn, with a
+visible inner disturbance, marked over the bosom by the rise and fall of
+her white dress.
+
+It was Blanche's turn to select the next player.
+
+In some preliminary uncertainty as to her choice she looked about among
+the guests, and caught the eye of a gentleman in the front ranks. He
+stood side by side with Sir Patrick--a striking representative of the
+school that is among us--as Sir Patrick was a striking representative of
+the school that has passed away.
+
+The modern gentleman was young and florid, tall and strong. The parting
+of his curly Saxon locks began in the center of his forehead, traveled
+over the top of his head, and ended, rigidly-central, at the ruddy nape
+of his neck. His features were as perfectly regular and as perfectly
+unintelligent as human features can be. His expression preserved an
+immovable composure wonderful to behold. The muscles of his brawny arms
+showed through the sleeves of his light summer coat. He was deep in the
+chest, thin in the flanks, firm on the legs--in two words a magnificent
+human animal, wrought up to the highest pitch of physical development,
+from head to foot. This was Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn--commonly called "the
+honorable;" and meriting that distinction in more ways than one. He was
+honorable, in the first place, as being the son (second son) of that
+once-rising solicitor, who was now Lord Holchester. He was honorable,
+in the second place, as having won the highest popular distinction which
+the educational system of modern England can bestow--he had pulled the
+stroke-oar in a University boat-race. Add to this, that nobody had ever
+seen him read any thing but a newspaper, and that nobody had ever
+known him to be backward in settling a bet--and the picture of this
+distinguished young Englishman will be, for the present, complete.
+
+Blanche's eye naturally rested on him. Blanche's voice naturally picked
+him out as the first player on her side.
+
+"I choose Mr. Delamayn," she said.
+
+As the name passed her lips the flush on Miss Silvester's face died
+away, and a deadly paleness took its place. She made a movement to leave
+the summer-house--checked herself abruptly--and laid one hand on the
+back of a rustic seat at her side. A gentleman behind her, looking at
+the hand, saw it clench itself so suddenly and so fiercely that
+the glove on it split. The gentleman made a mental memorandum, and
+registered Miss Silvester in his private books as "the devil's own
+temper."
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Delamayn, by a strange coincidence, took exactly the same
+course which Miss Silvester had taken before him. He, too, attempted to
+withdraw from the coming game.
+
+"Thanks very much," he said. "Could you additionally honor me by
+choosing somebody else? It's not in my line."
+
+Fifty years ago such an answer as this, addressed to a lady, would have
+been considered inexcusably impertinent. The social code of the present
+time hailed it as something frankly amusing. The company laughed.
+Blanche lost her temper.
+
+"Can't we interest you in any thing but severe muscular exertion,
+Mr. Delamayn?" she asked, sharply. "Must you always be pulling in a
+boat-race, or flying over a high jump? If you had a mind, you would want
+to relax it. You have got muscles instead. Why not relax _them_?"
+
+The shafts of Miss Lundie's bitter wit glided off Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn
+like water off a duck's back.
+
+"Just as you please," he said, with stolid good-humor. "Don't be
+offended. I came here with ladies--and they wouldn't let me smoke. I
+miss my smoke. I thought I'd slip away a bit and have it. All right!
+I'll play."
+
+"Oh! smoke by all means!" retorted Blanche. "I shall choose somebody
+else. I won't have you!"
+
+The honorable young gentleman looked unaffectedly relieved. The petulant
+young lady turned her back on him, and surveyed the guests at the other
+extremity of the summer-house.
+
+"Who shall I choose?" she said to herself.
+
+A dark young man--with a face burned gipsy-brown by the sun; with
+something in his look and manner suggestive of a roving life, and
+perhaps of a familiar acquaintance with the sea--advanced shyly, and
+said, in a whisper:
+
+"Choose me!"
+
+Blanche's face broke prettily into a charming smile. Judging from
+appearances, the dark young man had a place in her estimation peculiarly
+his own.
+
+"You!" she said, coquettishly. "You are going to leave us in an hour's
+time!"
+
+He ventured a step nearer. "I am coming back," he pleaded, "the day
+after to-morrow."
+
+"You play very badly!"
+
+"I might improve--if you would teach me."
+
+"Might you? Then I will teach you!" She turned, bright and rosy, to her
+step-mother. "I choose Mr. Arnold Brinkworth," she said.
+
+Here, again, there appeared to be something in a name unknown to
+celebrity, which nevertheless produced its effect--not, this time, on
+Miss Silvester, but on Sir Patrick. He looked at Mr. Brinkworth with a
+sudden interest and curiosity. If the lady of the house had not claimed
+his attention at the moment he would evidently have spoken to the dark
+young man.
+
+But it was Lady Lundie's turn to choose a second player on her side.
+Her brother-in-law was a person of some importance; and she had her
+own motives for ingratiating herself with the head of the family. She
+surprised the whole company by choosing Sir Patrick.
+
+"Mamma!" cried Blanche. "What can you be thinking of? Sir Patrick won't
+play. Croquet wasn't discovered in his time."
+
+Sir Patrick never allowed "his time" to be made the subject of
+disparaging remarks by the younger generation without paying the
+younger generation back in its own coin.
+
+"In _my_ time, my dear," he said to his niece, "people were expected to
+bring some agreeable quality with them to social meetings of this sort.
+In your time you have dispensed with all that. Here," remarked the old
+gentleman, taking up a croquet mallet from the table near him, "is
+one of the qualifications for success in modern society. And here," he
+added, taking up a ball, "is another. Very good. Live and learn. I'll
+play! I'll play!"
+
+Lady Lundie (born impervious to all sense of irony) smiled graciously.
+
+"I knew Sir Patrick would play," she said, "to please me."
+
+Sir Patrick bowed with satirical politeness.
+
+"Lady Lundie," he answered, "you read me like a book." To the
+astonishment of all persons present under forty he emphasized those
+words by laying his hand on his heart, and quoting poetry. "I may say
+with Dryden," added the gallant old gentleman:
+
+     "'Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
+     The power of beauty I remember yet.'"
+
+Lady Lundie looked unaffectedly shocked. Mr. Delamayn went a step
+farther. He interfered on the spot--with the air of a man who feels
+himself imperatively called upon to perform a public duty.
+
+"Dryden never said that," he remarked, "I'll answer for it."
+
+Sir Patrick wheeled round with the help of his ivory cane, and looked
+Mr. Delamayn hard in the face.
+
+"Do you know Dryden, Sir, better than I do?" he asked.
+
+The Honorable Geoffrey answered, modestly, "I should say I did. I have
+rowed three races with him, and we trained together."
+
+Sir Patrick looked round him with a sour smile of triumph.
+
+"Then let me tell you, Sir," he said, "that you trained with a man who
+died nearly two hundred years ago."
+
+Mr. Delamayn appealed, in genuine bewilderment, to the company
+generally:
+
+"What does this old gentleman mean?" he asked. "I am speaking of Tom
+Dryden, of Corpus. Every body in the University knows _him._"
+
+"I am speaking," echoed Sir Patrick, "of John Dryden the Poet.
+Apparently, every body in the University does _not_ know _him!"_
+
+Mr. Delamayn answered, with a cordial earnestness very pleasant to see:
+
+"Give you my word of honor, I never heard of him before in my life!
+Don't be angry, Sir. _I'm_ not offended with _you._" He smiled, and took
+out his brier-wood pipe. "Got a light?" he asked, in the friendliest
+possible manner.
+
+Sir Patrick answered, with a total absence of cordiality:
+
+"I don't smoke, Sir."
+
+Mr. Delamayn looked at him, without taking the slightest offense:
+
+"You don't smoke!" he repeated. "I wonder how you get through your spare
+time?"
+
+Sir Patrick closed the conversation:
+
+"Sir," he said, with a low bow, "you _may_ wonder."
+
+While this little skirmish was proceeding Lady Lundie and her
+step-daughter had organized the game; and the company, players and
+spectators, were beginning to move toward the lawn. Sir Patrick stopped
+his niece on her way out, with the dark young man in close attendance on
+her.
+
+"Leave Mr. Brinkworth with me," he said. "I want to speak to him."
+
+Blanche issued her orders immediately. Mr. Brinkworth was sentenced to
+stay with Sir Patrick until she wanted him for the game. Mr. Brinkworth
+wondered, and obeyed.
+
+During the exercise of this act of authority a circumstance occurred
+at the other end of the summer-house. Taking advantage of the confusion
+caused by the general movement to the lawn, Miss Silvester suddenly
+placed herself close to Mr. Delamayn.
+
+"In ten minutes," she whispered, "the summer-house will be empty. Meet
+me here."
+
+The Honorable Geoffrey started, and looked furtively at the visitors
+about him.
+
+"Do you think it's safe?" he whispered back.
+
+The governess's sensitive lips trembled, with fear or with anger, it was
+hard to say which.
+
+"I insist on it!" she answered, and left him.
+
+Mr. Delamayn knitted his handsome eyebrows as he looked after her, and
+then left the summer-house in his turn. The rose-garden at the back of
+the building was solitary for the moment. He took out his pipe and hid
+himself among the roses. The smoke came from his mouth in hot and hasty
+puffs. He was usually the gentlest of masters--to his pipe. When he
+hurried that confidential servant, it was a sure sign of disturbance in
+the inner man.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD.
+
+THE DISCOVERIES.
+
+BUT two persons were now left in the summer-house--Arnold Brinkworth and
+Sir Patrick Lundie.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth," said the old gentleman, "I have had no opportunity of
+speaking to you before this; and (as I hear that you are to leave us,
+to-day) I may find no opportunity at a later time. I want to introduce
+myself. Your father was one of my dearest friends--let me make a friend
+of your father's son."
+
+He held out his hands, and mentioned his name.
+
+Arnold recognized it directly. "Oh, Sir Patrick!" he said, warmly, "if
+my poor father had only taken your advice--"
+
+"He would have thought twice before he gambled away his fortune on the
+turf; and he might have been alive here among us, instead of dying an
+exile in a foreign land," said Sir Patrick, finishing the sentence which
+the other had begun. "No more of that! Let's talk of something else.
+Lady Lundie wrote to me about you the other day. She told me your aunt
+was dead, and had left you heir to her property in Scotland. Is that
+true?--It is?--I congratulate you with all my heart. Why are you
+visiting here, instead of looking after your house and lands? Oh! it's
+only three-and-twenty miles from this; and you're going to look after
+it to-day, by the next train? Quite right. And--what? what?--coming back
+again the day after to-morrow? Why should you come back? Some special
+attraction here, I suppose? I hope it's the right sort of attraction.
+You're very young--you're exposed to all sorts of temptations. Have you
+got a solid foundation of good sense at the bottom of you? It is not
+inherited from your poor father, if you have. You must have been a mere
+boy when he ruined his children's prospects. How have you lived from
+that time to this? What were you doing when your aunt's will made an
+idle man of you for life?"
+
+The question was a searching one. Arnold answered it, without the
+slightest hesitation; speaking with an unaffected modesty and simplicity
+which at once won Sir Patrick's heart.
+
+"I was a boy at Eton, Sir," he said, "when my father's losses ruined
+him. I had to leave school, and get my own living; and I have got it,
+in a roughish way, from that time to this. In plain English, I have
+followed the sea--in the merchant-service."
+
+"In plainer English still, you met adversity like a brave lad, and you
+have fairly earned the good luck that has fallen to you," rejoined Sir
+Patrick. "Give me your hand--I have taken a liking to you. You're not
+like the other young fellows of the present time. I shall call you
+'Arnold.' You mus'n't return the compliment and call me 'Patrick,'
+mind--I'm too old to be treated in that way. Well, and how do you get on
+here? What sort of a woman is my sister-in-law? and what sort of a house
+is this?"
+
+Arnold burst out laughing.
+
+"Those are extraordinary questions for you to put to me," he said. "You
+talk, Sir, as if you were a stranger here!"
+
+Sir Patrick touched a spring in the knob of his ivory cane. A little
+gold lid flew up, and disclosed the snuff-box hidden inside. He took a
+pinch, and chuckled satirically over some passing thought, which he did
+not think it necessary to communicate to his young friend.
+
+"I talk as if I was a stranger here, do I?" he resumed. "That's exactly
+what I am. Lady Lundie and I correspond on excellent terms; but we run
+in different grooves, and we see each other as seldom as possible. My
+story," continued the pleasant old man, with a charming frankness which
+leveled all differences of age and rank between Arnold and himself,
+"is not entirely unlike yours; though I _am_ old enough to be your
+grandfather. I was getting my living, in my way (as a crusty old Scotch
+lawyer), when my brother married again. His death, without leaving a son
+by either of his wives, gave me a lift in the world, like you. Here I
+am (to my own sincere regret) the present baronet. Yes, to my sincere
+regret! All sorts of responsibilities which I never bargained for are
+thrust on my shoulders. I am the head of the family; I am my niece's
+guardian; I am compelled to appear at this lawn-party--and (between
+ourselves) I am as completely out of my element as a man can be. Not a
+single familiar face meets _me_ among all these fine people. Do you know
+any body here?"
+
+"I have one friend at Windygates," said Arnold. "He came here this
+morning, like you. Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+As he made the reply, Miss Silvester appeared at the entrance to the
+summer-house. A shadow of annoyance passed over her face when she saw
+that the place was occupied. She vanished, unnoticed, and glided back to
+the game.
+
+Sir Patrick looked at the son of his old friend, with every appearance
+of being disappointed in the young man for the first time.
+
+"Your choice of a friend rather surprises me," he said.
+
+Arnold artlessly accepted the words as an appeal to him for information.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir--there's nothing surprising in it," he returned.
+"We were school-fellows at Eton, in the old times. And I have met
+Geoffrey since, when he was yachting, and when I was with my ship.
+Geoffrey saved my life, Sir Patrick," he added, his voice rising, and
+his eyes brightening with honest admiration of his friend. "But for
+him, I should have been drowned in a boat-accident. Isn't _that_ a good
+reason for his being a friend of mine?"
+
+"It depends entirely on the value you set on your life," said Sir
+Patrick.
+
+"The value I set on my life?" repeated Arnold. "I set a high value on
+it, of course!"
+
+"In that case, Mr. Delamayn has laid you under an obligation."
+
+"Which I can never repay!"
+
+"Which you will repay one of these days, with interest--if I know any
+thing of human nature," answered Sir Patrick.
+
+He said the words with the emphasis of strong conviction. They were
+barely spoken when Mr. Delamayn appeared (exactly as Miss Silvester
+had appeared) at the entrance to the summer-house. He, too, vanished,
+unnoticed--like Miss Silvester again. But there the parallel stopped.
+The Honorable Geoffrey's expression, on discovering the place to be
+occupied, was, unmistakably an expression of relief.
+
+Arnold drew the right inference, this time, from Sir Patrick's language
+and Sir Patrick's tones. He eagerly took up the defense of his friend.
+
+"You said that rather bitterly, Sir," he remarked. "What has Geoffrey
+done to offend you?"
+
+"He presumes to exist--that's what he has done," retorted Sir Patrick.
+"Don't stare! I am speaking generally. Your friend is the model young
+Briton of the present time. I don't like the model young Briton. I
+don't see the sense of crowing over him as a superb national production,
+because he is big and strong, and drinks beer with impunity, and takes a
+cold shower bath all the year round. There is far too much glorification
+in England, just now, of the mere physical qualities which an Englishman
+shares with the savage and the brute. And the ill results are beginning
+to show themselves already! We are readier than we ever were to practice
+all that is rough in our national customs, and to excuse all that is
+violent and brutish in our national acts. Read the popular books--attend
+the popular amusements; and you will find at the bottom of them all a
+lessening regard for the gentler graces of civilized life, and a growing
+admiration for the virtues of the aboriginal Britons!"
+
+Arnold listened in blank amazement. He had been the innocent means
+of relieving Sir Patrick's mind of an accumulation of social protest,
+unprovided with an issue for some time past. "How hot you are over it,
+Sir!" he exclaimed, in irrepressible astonishment.
+
+Sir Patrick instantly recovered himself. The genuine wonder expressed in
+the young man's face was irresistible.
+
+"Almost as hot," he said, "as if I was cheering at a boat-race, or
+wrangling over a betting-book--eh? Ah, we were so easily heated when
+I was a young man! Let's change the subject. I know nothing to the
+prejudice of your friend, Mr. Delamayn. It's the cant of the day," cried
+Sir Patrick, relapsing again, "to take these physically-wholesome men
+for granted as being morally-wholesome men into the bargain. Time will
+show whether the cant of the day is right.--So you are actually coming
+back to Lady Lundie's after a mere flying visit to your own property? I
+repeat, that is a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of a landed
+gentleman like you. What's the attraction here--eh?"
+
+Before Arnold could reply Blanche called to him from the lawn. His color
+rose, and he turned eagerly to go out. Sir Patrick nodded his head with
+the air of a man who had been answered to his own entire satisfaction.
+"Oh!" he said, "_that's_ the attraction, is it?"
+
+Arnold's life at sea had left him singularly ignorant of the ways of the
+world on shore. Instead of taking the joke, he looked confused. A deeper
+tinge of color reddened his dark cheeks. "I didn't say so," he answered,
+a little irritably.
+
+Sir Patrick lifted two of his white, wrinkled old fingers, and
+good-humoredly patted the young sailor on the cheek.
+
+"Yes you did," he said. "In red letters."
+
+The little gold lid in the knob of the ivory cane flew up, and the old
+gentleman rewarded himself for that neat retort with a pinch of snuff.
+At the same moment Blanche made her appearance on the scene.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth," she said, "I shall want you directly. Uncle, it's your
+turn to play."
+
+"Bless my soul!" cried Sir Patrick, "I forgot the game." He looked about
+him, and saw his mallet and ball left waiting on the table. "Where are
+the modern substitutes for conversation? Oh, here they are!" He bowled
+the ball out before him on to the lawn, and tucked the mallet, as if it
+was an umbrella, under his arm. "Who was the first mistaken person," he
+said to himself, as he briskly hobbled out, "who discovered that human
+life was a serious thing? Here am I, with one foot in the grave; and the
+most serious question before me at the present moment is, Shall I get
+through the Hoops?"
+
+Arnold and Blanche were left together.
+
+Among the personal privileges which Nature has accorded to women, there
+are surely none more enviable than their privilege of always looking
+their best when they look at the man they love. When Blanche's eyes
+turned on Arnold after her uncle had gone out, not even the hideous
+fashionable disfigurements of the inflated "chignon" and the tilted hat
+could destroy the triple charm of youth, beauty, and tenderness beaming
+in her face. Arnold looked at her--and remembered, as he had never
+remembered yet, that he was going by the next train, and that he was
+leaving her in the society of more than one admiring man of his own age.
+The experience of a whole fortnight passed under the same roof with her
+had proved Blanche to be the most charming girl in existence. It was
+possible that she might not be mortally offended with him if he told her
+so. He determined that he _would_ tell her so at that auspicious moment.
+
+But who shall presume to measure the abyss that lies between the
+Intention and the Execution? Arnold's resolution to speak was as firmly
+settled as a resolution could be. And what came of it? Alas for human
+infirmity! Nothing came of it but silence.
+
+"You don't look quite at your ease, Mr. Brinkworth," said Blanche. "What
+has Sir Patrick been saying to you? My uncle sharpens his wit on every
+body. He has been sharpening it on _you?"_
+
+Arnold began to see his way. At an immeasurable distance--but still he
+saw it.
+
+"Sir Patrick is a terrible old man," he answered. "Just before you
+came in he discovered one of my secrets by only looking in my face." He
+paused, rallied his courage, pushed on at all hazards, and came headlong
+to the point. "I wonder," he asked, bluntly, "whether you take after
+your uncle?"
+
+Blanche instantly understood him. With time at her disposal, she would
+have taken him lightly in hand, and led him, by fine gradations, to the
+object in view. But in two minutes or less it would be Arnold's turn to
+play. "He is going to make me an offer," thought Blanche; "and he has
+about a minute to do it in. He _shall_ do it!"
+
+"What!" she exclaimed, "do you think the gift of discovery runs in the
+family?"
+
+Arnold made a plunge.
+
+"I wish it did!" he said.
+
+Blanche looked the picture of astonishment.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"If you could see in my face what Sir Patrick saw--"
+
+He had only to finish the sentence, and the thing was done. But the
+tender passion perversely delights in raising obstacles to itself. A
+sudden timidity seized on Arnold exactly at the wrong moment. He stopped
+short, in the most awkward manner possible.
+
+Blanche heard from the lawn the blow of the mallet on the ball, and the
+laughter of the company at some blunder of Sir Patrick's. The precious
+seconds were slipping away. She could have boxed Arnold on both ears for
+being so unreasonably afraid of her.
+
+"Well," she said, impatiently, "if I did look in your face, what should
+I see?"
+
+Arnold made another plunge. He answered: "You would see that I want a
+little encouragement."
+
+"From _me?_"
+
+"Yes--if you please."
+
+Blanche looked back over her shoulder. The summer-house stood on an
+eminence, approached by steps. The players on the lawn beneath were
+audible, but not visible. Any one of them might appear, unexpectedly, at
+a moment's notice. Blanche listened. There was no sound of approaching
+footsteps--there was a general hush, and then another bang of the mallet
+on the ball and then a clapping of hands. Sir Patrick was a privileged
+person. He had been allowed, in all probability, to try again; and he
+was succeeding at the second effort. This implied a reprieve of some
+seconds. Blanche looked back again at Arnold.
+
+"Consider yourself encouraged," she whispered; and instantly added, with
+the ineradicable female instinct of self-defense, "within limits!"
+
+Arnold made a last plunge--straight to the bottom, this time.
+
+"Consider yourself loved," he burst out, "without any limits at all."
+
+It was all over--the words were spoken--he had got her by the hand.
+Again the perversity of the tender passion showed itself more strongly
+than ever. The confession which Blanche had been longing to hear, had
+barely escaped her lover's lips before Blanche protested against it! She
+struggled to release her hand. She formally appealed to Arnold to let
+her go.
+
+Arnold only held her the tighter.
+
+"Do try to like me a little!" he pleaded. "I am so fond of _you!_"
+
+Who was to resist such wooing as this?--when you were privately fond of
+him yourself, remember, and when you were certain to be interrupted in
+another moment! Blanche left off struggling, and looked up at her young
+sailor with a smile.
+
+"Did you learn this method of making love in the merchant-service?" she
+inquired, saucily.
+
+Arnold persisted in contemplating his prospects from the serious point
+of view.
+
+"I'll go back to the merchant-service," he said, "if I have made you
+angry with me."
+
+Blanche administered another dose of encouragement.
+
+"Anger, Mr. Brinkworth, is one of the bad passions," she answered,
+demurely. "A young lady who has been properly brought up has no bad
+passions."
+
+There was a sudden cry from the players on the lawn--a cry for "Mr.
+Brinkworth." Blanche tried to push him out. Arnold was immovable.
+
+"Say something to encourage me before I go," he pleaded. "One word will
+do. Say, Yes."
+
+Blanche shook her head. Now she had got him, the temptation to tease him
+was irresistible.
+
+"Quite impossible!" she rejoined. "If you want any more encouragement,
+you must speak to my uncle."
+
+"I'll speak to him," returned Arnold, "before I leave the house."
+
+There was another cry for "Mr. Brinkworth." Blanche made another effort
+to push him out.
+
+"Go!" she said. "And mind you get through the hoop!"
+
+She had both hands on his shoulders--her face was close to his--she was
+simply irresistible. Arnold caught her round the waist and kissed her.
+Needless to tell him to get through the hoop. He had surely got through
+it already! Blanche was speechless. Arnold's last effort in the art of
+courtship had taken away her breath. Before she could recover herself a
+sound of approaching footsteps became plainly audible. Arnold gave her a
+last squeeze, and ran out.
+
+She sank on the nearest chair, and closed her eyes in a flutter of
+delicious confusion.
+
+The footsteps ascending to the summer-house came nearer. Blanche opened
+her eyes, and saw Anne Silvester, standing alone, looking at her. She
+sprang to her feet, and threw her arms impulsively round Anne's neck.
+
+"You don't know what has happened," she whispered. "Wish me joy,
+darling. He has said the words. He is mine for life!"
+
+All the sisterly love and sisterly confidence of many years was
+expressed in that embrace, and in the tone in which the words were
+spoken. The hearts of the mothers, in the past time, could hardly
+have been closer to each other--as it seemed--than the hearts of the
+daughters were now. And yet, if Blanche had looked up in Anne's face at
+that moment, she must have seen that Anne's mind was far away from her
+little love-story.
+
+"You know who it is?" she went on, after waiting for a reply.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth?"
+
+"Of course! Who else should it be?"
+
+"And you are really happy, my love?"
+
+"Happy?" repeated Blanche "Mind! this is strictly between ourselves. I
+am ready to jump out of my skin for joy. I love him! I love him! I love
+him!" she cried, with a childish pleasure in repeating the words. They
+were echoed by a heavy sigh. Blanche instantly looked up into Anne's
+face. "What's the matter?" she asked, with a sudden change of voice and
+manner.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Blanche's observation saw too plainly to be blinded in that way.
+
+"There _is_ something the matter," she said. "Is it money?" she added,
+after a moment's consideration. "Bills to pay? I have got plenty of
+money, Anne. I'll lend you what you like."
+
+"No, no, my dear!"
+
+Blanche drew back, a little hurt. Anne was keeping her at a distance for
+the first time in Blanche's experience of her.
+
+"I tell you all my secrets," she said. "Why are _you_ keeping a secret
+from _me?_ Do you know that you have been looking anxious and out of
+spirits for some time past? Perhaps you don't like Mr. Brinkworth? No?
+you _do_ like him? Is it my marrying, then? I believe it is! You fancy
+we shall be parted, you goose? As if I could do without you! Of course,
+when I am married to Arnold, you will come and live with us. That's
+quite understood between us--isn't it?"
+
+Anne drew herself suddenly, almost roughly, away from Blanche, and
+pointed out to the steps.
+
+"There is somebody coming," she said. "Look!"
+
+The person coming was Arnold. It was Blanche's turn to play, and he had
+volunteered to fetch her.
+
+Blanche's attention--easily enough distracted on other
+occasions--remained steadily fixed on Anne.
+
+"You are not yourself," she said, "and I must know the reason of it. I
+will wait till to-night; and then you will tell me, when you come into
+my room. Don't look like that! You _shall_ tell me. And there's a kiss
+for you in the mean time!"
+
+She joined Arnold, and recovered her gayety the moment she looked at
+him.
+
+"Well? Have you got through the hoops?"
+
+"Never mind the hoops. I have broken the ice with Sir Patrick."
+
+"What! before all the company!"
+
+"Of course not! I have made an appointment to speak to him here."
+
+They went laughing down the steps, and joined the game.
+
+Left alone, Anne Silvester walked slowly to the inner and darker part of
+the summer-house. A glass, in a carved wooden frame, was fixed
+against one of the side walls. She stopped and looked into it--looked,
+shuddering, at the reflection of herself.
+
+"Is the time coming," she said, "when even Blanche will see what I am in
+my face?"
+
+She turned aside from the glass. With a sudden cry of despair she flung
+up her arms and laid them heavily against the wall, and rested her head
+on them with her back to the light. At the same moment a man's figure
+appeared--standing dark in the flood of sunshine at the entrance to the
+summer-house. The man was Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
+
+THE TWO.
+
+He advanced a few steps, and stopped. Absorbed in herself, Anne failed
+to hear him. She never moved.
+
+"I have come, as you made a point of it," he said, sullenly. "But, mind
+you, it isn't safe."
+
+At the sound of his voice, Anne turned toward him. A change of
+expression appeared in her face, as she slowly advanced from the back
+of the summer-house, which revealed a likeness to her moth er, not
+perceivable at other times. As the mother had looked, in by-gone days,
+at the man who had disowned her, so the daughter looked at Geoffrey
+Delamayn--with the same terrible composure, and the same terrible
+contempt.
+
+"Well?" he asked. "What have you got to say to me?"
+
+"Mr. Delamayn," she answered, "you are one of the fortunate people of
+this world. You are a nobleman's son. You are a handsome man. You are
+popular at your college. You are free of the best houses in England.
+Are you something besides all this? Are you a coward and a scoundrel as
+well?"
+
+He started--opened his lips to speak--checked himself--and made an
+uneasy attempt to laugh it off. "Come!" he said, "keep your temper."
+
+The suppressed passion in her began to force its way to the surface.
+
+"Keep my temper?" she repeated. "Do _you_ of all men expect me to
+control myself? What a memory yours must be! Have you forgotten the time
+when I was fool enough to think you were fond of me? and mad enough to
+believe you could keep a promise?"
+
+He persisted in trying to laugh it off. "Mad is a strongish word to use,
+Miss Silvester!"
+
+"Mad is the right word! I look back at my own infatuation--and I can't
+account for it; I can't understand myself. What was there in _you_,"
+she asked, with an outbreak of contemptuous surprise, "to attract such a
+woman as I am?"
+
+His inexhaustible good-nature was proof even against this. He put his
+hands in his pockets, and said, "I'm sure I don't know."
+
+She turned away from him. The frank brutality of the answer had not
+offended her. It forced her, cruelly forced her, to remember that she
+had nobody but herself to blame for the position in which she stood at
+that moment. She was unwilling to let him see how the remembrance
+hurt her--that was all. A sad, sad story; but it must be told. In her
+mother's time she had been the sweetest, the most lovable of children.
+In later days, under the care of her mother's friend, her girlhood
+had passed so harmlessly and so happily--it seemed as if the sleeping
+passions might sleep forever! She had lived on to the prime of her
+womanhood--and then, when the treasure of her life was at its richest,
+in one fatal moment she had flung it away on the man in whose presence
+she now stood.
+
+
+
+Was she without excuse? No: not utterly without excuse.
+
+She had seen him under other aspects than the aspect which he presented
+now. She had seen him, the hero of the river-race, the first and
+foremost man in a trial of strength and skill which had roused the
+enthusiasm of all England. She had seen him, the central object of the
+interest of a nation; the idol of the popular worship and the popular
+applause. _His_ were the arms whose muscle was celebrated in the
+newspapers. _He_ was first among the heroes hailed by ten thousand
+roaring throats as the pride and flower of England. A woman, in an
+atmosphere of red-hot enthusiasm, witnesses the apotheosis of Physical
+Strength. Is it reasonable--is it just--to expect her to ask herself,
+in cold blood, What (morally and intellectually) is all this worth?--and
+that, when the man who is the object of the apotheosis, notices her, is
+presented to her, finds her to his taste, and singles her out from the
+rest? No. While humanity is humanity, the woman is not utterly without
+excuse.
+
+Has she escaped, without suffering for it?
+
+Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own
+secret--the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl,
+whom she loves with a sister's love. Look at her, bowed down under a
+humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the
+surface--now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value--now,
+when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was
+there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken,
+who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so
+cultivated, so refined--what, in Heaven's name, could _you_ see in him?
+Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even
+remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too--that you
+waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took
+his seat, with the others, in the boat--that your heart was like to jump
+out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last
+hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her
+remorse, she will not even seek for _that_ excuse for herself. Is there
+no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from
+such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the
+pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere
+and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has
+repented--you have the authority of the Divine Teacher for it--is
+your fellow-creature, purified and ennobled. A joy among the angels of
+heaven--oh, my brothers and sisters of the earth, have I not laid my
+hand on a fit companion for You?
+
+
+
+There was a moment of silence in the summer-house. The cheerful tumult
+of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the
+hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet
+against the ball. Inside, nothing but a woman forcing back the bitter
+tears of sorrow and shame--and a man who was tired of her.
+
+She roused herself. She was her mother's daughter; and she had a
+spark of her mother's spirit. Her life depended on the issue of that
+interview. It was useless--without father or brother to take her
+part--to lose the last chance of appealing to him. She dashed away
+the tears--time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman's
+existence--she dashed away the tears, and spoke to him again, more
+gently than she had spoken yet.
+
+"You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius's place,
+not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me.
+You would not have come to-day, if I had not written to you to insist on
+it. Is that the treatment I have deserved?"
+
+She paused. There was no answer.
+
+"Do you hear me?" she asked, advancing and speaking in louder tones.
+
+He was still silent. It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt.
+The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face. He
+met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front. Feeling nervous about
+the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden--now that he
+stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself. He
+was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its
+case--composed enough to set that little matter right before other
+matters went any farther. He took the case out of one pocket, and the
+pipe out of another.
+
+"Go on," he said, quietly. "I hear you."
+
+She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow. If she had had the
+strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the
+summer-house.
+
+"How dare you use me in this way?" she burst out, vehemently. "Your
+conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!"
+
+He made no attempt to defend it. He looked, with an expression of
+genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe. It was beautifully colored--it had
+cost him ten shillings. "I'll pick up my pipe first," he said. His face
+brightened pleasantly--he looked handsomer than ever--as he examined the
+precious object, and put it back in the case. "All right," he said to
+himself. "She hasn't broken it." His attitude as he looked at her again,
+was the perfection of easy grace--the grace that attends on cultivated
+strength in a state of repose. "I put it to your own common-sense," he
+said, in the most reasonable manner, "what's the good of bullying me?
+You don't want them to hear you, out on the lawn there--do you? You
+women are all alike. There's no beating a little prudence into your
+heads, try how one may."
+
+There he waited, expecting her to speak. She waited, on her side, and
+forced him to go on.
+
+"Look here," he said, "there's no need to quarrel, you know. I don't
+want to break my promise; but what can I do? I'm not the eldest son.
+I'm dependent on my father for every farthing I have; and I'm on bad
+terms with him already. Can't you see it yourself? You're a lady, and
+all that, I know. But you're only a governess. It's your interest as
+well as mine to wait till my father has provided for me. Here it is in a
+nut-shell: if I marry you now, I'm a ruined man."
+
+The answer came, this time.
+
+"You villain if you _don't_ marry me, I am a ruined woman!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You know what I mean. Don't look at me in that way."
+
+"How do you expect me to look at a woman who calls me a villain to my
+face?"
+
+She suddenly changed her tone. The savage element in humanity--let the
+modern optimists who doubt its existence look at any uncultivated man
+(no matter how muscular), woman (no matter how beautiful), or child (no
+matter how young)--began to show itself furtively in his eyes, to utter
+itself furtively in his voice. Was he to blame for the manner in which
+he looked at her and spoke to her? Not he! What had there been in the
+training of _his_ life (at school or at college) to soften and subdue
+the savage element in him? About as much as there had been in the
+training of his ancestors (without the school or the college) five
+hundred years since.
+
+It was plain that one of them must give way. The woman had the most at
+stake--and the woman set the example of submission.
+
+"Don't be hard on me," she pleaded. "I don't mean to be hard on _you._
+My temper gets the better of me. You know my temper. I am sorry I forgot
+myself. Geoffrey, my whole future is in your hands. Will you do me
+justice?"
+
+She came nearer, and laid her hand persuasively on his arm.
+
+"Haven't you a word to say to me? No answer? Not even a look?" She
+waited a moment more. A marked change came over her. She turned slowly
+to leave the summer-house. "I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr.
+Delamayn. I won't detain you any longer."
+
+He looked at her. There was a tone in her voice that he had never heard
+before. There was a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them
+before. Suddenly and fiercely he reached out his hand, and stopped her.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+She answered, looking him straight in the face, "Where many a miserable
+woman has gone before me. Out of the world."
+
+He drew her nearer to him, and eyed her closely. Even _his_ intelligence
+discovered that he had brought her to bay, and that she really meant it!
+
+"Do you mean you will destroy yourself?" he said.
+
+"Yes. I mean I will destroy myself."
+
+He dropped her arm. "By Jupiter, she _does_ mean it!"
+
+With that conviction in him, he pushed one of the chairs in the
+summer-house to her with his foot, and signed to her to take it. "Sit
+down!" he said, roughly. She had frightened him--and fear comes seldom
+to men of his type. They feel it, when it does come, with an angry
+distrust; they grow loud and brutal, in instinctive protest against it.
+"Sit down!" he repeated. She obeyed him. "Haven't you got a word to say
+to me?" he asked, with an oath. No! there she sat, immovable, reckless
+how it ended--as only women can be, when women's minds are made up.
+He took a turn in the summer-house and came back, and struck his hand
+angrily on the rail of her chair. "What do you want?"
+
+"You know what I want."
+
+He took another turn. There was nothing for it but to give way on
+his side, or run the risk of something happening which might cause an
+awkward scandal, and come to his father's ears.
+
+"Look here, Anne," he began, abruptly. "I have got something to
+propose."
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"What do you say to a private marriage?"
+
+Without asking a single question, without making objections, she
+answered him, speaking as bluntly as he had spoken himself:
+
+"I consent to a private marriage."
+
+He began to temporize directly.
+
+"I own I don't see how it's to be managed--"
+
+She stopped him there.
+
+"I do!"
+
+"What!" he cried out, suspiciously. "You have thought of it yourself,
+have you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And planned for it?"
+
+"And planned for it!"
+
+"Why didn't you tell me so before?"
+
+She answered haughtily; insisting on the respect which is due to
+women--the respect which was doubly due from _him,_ in her position.
+
+"Because _you_ owed it to _me,_ Sir, to speak first."
+
+"Very well. I've spoken first. Will you wait a little?"
+
+"Not a day!"
+
+The tone was positive. There was no mistaking it. Her mind was made up.
+
+"Where's the hurry?"
+
+"Have you eyes?" she asked, vehemently. "Have you ears? Do you see how
+Lady Lundie looks at me? Do you hear how Lady Lundie speaks to me? I am
+suspected by that woman. My shameful dismissal from this house may be
+a question of a few hours." Her head sunk on her bosom; she wrung her
+clasped hands as they rested on her lap. "And, oh, Blanche!" she
+moaned to herself, the tears gathering again, and falling, this time,
+unchecked. "Blanche, who looks up to me! Blanche, who loves me! Blanche,
+who told me, in this very place, that I was to live with her when she
+was married!" She started up from the chair; the tears dried suddenly;
+the hard despair settled again, wan and white, on her face. "Let me
+go! What is death, compared to such a life as is waiting for _me?_" She
+looked him over, in one disdainful glance from head to foot; her voice
+rose to its loudest and firmest tones. "Why, even _you_; would have the
+courage to die if you were in my place!"
+
+Geoffrey glanced round toward the lawn.
+
+"Hush!" he said. "They will hear you!"
+
+"Let them hear me! When _I_ am past hearing _them_, what does it
+matter?"
+
+He put her back by main force on the chair. In another moment they must
+have heard her, through all the noise and laughter of the game.
+
+"Say what you want," he resumed, "and I'll do it. Only be reasonable. I
+can't marry you to-day."
+
+"You can!"
+
+"What nonsense you talk! The house and grounds are swarming with
+company. It can't be!"
+
+"It can! I have been thinking about it ever since we came to this house.
+I have got something to propose to you. Will you hear it, or not?"
+
+"Speak lower!"
+
+"Will you hear it, or not?"
+
+"There's somebody coming!"
+
+"Will you hear it, or not?"
+
+"The devil take your obstinacy! Yes!"
+
+The answer had been wrung from him. Still, it was the answer she
+wanted--it opened the door to hope. The instant he had consented to hear
+her her mind awakened to the serious necessity of averting discovery by
+any third person who might stray idly into the summer-house. She held
+up her hand for silence, and listened to what was going forward on the
+lawn.
+
+The dull thump of the croquet-mallet against the ball was no longer to
+be heard. The game had stopped.
+
+In a moment more she heard her own name called. An interval of another
+instant passed, and a familiar voice said, "I know where she is. I'll
+fetch her."
+
+She turned to Geoffrey, and pointed to the back of the summer-house.
+
+"It's my turn to play," she said. "And Blanche is coming here to look
+for me. Wait there, and I'll stop her on the steps."
+
+She went out at once. It was a critical moment. Discovery, which meant
+moral-ruin to the woman, meant money-ruin to the man. Geoffrey had not
+exaggerated his position with his father. Lord Holchester had twice paid
+his debts, and had declined to see him since. One more outrage on his
+father's rigid sense of propriety, and he would be left out of the will
+as well as kept out of the house. He looked for a means of retreat,
+in case there was no escaping unperceived by the front entrance.
+A door--intended for the use of servants, when picnics and gipsy
+tea-parties were given in the summer-house--had been made in the back
+wall. It opened outward, and it was locked. With his strength it was
+easy to remove that obstacle. He put his shoulder to the door. At the
+moment when he burst it open he felt a hand on his arm. Anne was behind
+him, alone.
+
+"You may want it before long," she said, observing the open door,
+without expressing any surprise, "You don't want it now. Another person
+will play for me--I have told Blanche I am not well. Sit down. I have
+secured a respite of five minutes, and I must make the most of it. In
+that time, or less, Lady Lundie's suspicions will bring her here--to see
+how I am. For the present, shut the door."
+
+She seated herself, and pointed to a second chair. He took it--with his
+eye on the closed door.
+
+"Come to the point!" he said, impatiently. "What is it?"
+
+"You can marry me privately to-day," she answered. "Lis ten--and I will
+tell you how!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
+
+THE PLAN.
+
+SHE took his hand, and began with all the art of persuasion that she
+possessed.
+
+"One question, Geoffrey, before I say what I want to say. Lady Lundie
+has invited you to stay at Windygates. Do you accept her invitation? or
+do you go back to your brother's in the evening?"
+
+"I can't go back in the evening--they've put a visitor into my room. I'm
+obliged to stay here. My brother has done it on purpose. Julius helps me
+when I'm hard up--and bullies me afterward. He has sent me here, on
+duty for the family. Somebody must be civil to Lady Lundie--and I'm the
+sacrifice."
+
+She took him up at his last word. "Don't make the sacrifice," she said.
+"Apologize to Lady Lundie, and say you are obliged to go back."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we must both leave this place to-day."
+
+There was a double objection to that. If he left Lady Lundie's, he would
+fail to establish a future pecuniary claim on his brother's indulgence.
+And if he left with Anne, the eyes of the world would see them, and the
+whispers of the world might come to his father's ears.
+
+"If we go away together," he said, "good-by to my prospects, and yours
+too."
+
+"I don't mean that we shall leave together," she explained. "We will
+leave separately--and I will go first."
+
+"There will be a hue and cry after you, when you are missed."
+
+"There will be a dance when the croquet is over. I don't dance--and I
+shall not be missed. There will be time, and opportunity to get to
+my own room. I shall leave a letter there for Lady Lundie, and a
+letter"--her voice trembled for a moment--"and a letter for Blanche.
+Don't interrupt me! I have thought of this, as I have thought of every
+thing else. The confession I shall make will be the truth in a few
+hours, if it's not the truth now. My letters will say I am privately
+married, and called away unexpectedly to join my husband. There will be
+a scandal in the house, I know. But there will be no excuse for sending
+after me, when I am under my husband's protection. So far as you are
+personally concerned there are no discoveries to fear--and nothing which
+it is not perfectly safe and perfectly easy to do. Wait here an hour
+after I have gone to save appearances; and then follow me."
+
+"Follow you?" interposed Geoffrey. "Where?" She drew her chair nearer to
+him, and whispered the next words in his ear.
+
+"To a lonely little mountain inn--four miles from this."
+
+"An inn!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"An inn is a public place."
+
+A movement of natural impatience escaped her--but she controlled
+herself, and went on as quietly as before:
+
+"The place I mean is the loneliest place in the neighborhood. You have
+no prying eyes to dread there. I have picked it out expressly for that
+reason. It's away from the railway; it's away from the high-road: it's
+kept by a decent, respectable Scotchwoman--"
+
+"Decent, respectable Scotchwomen who keep inns," interposed Geoffrey,
+"don't cotton to young ladies who are traveling alone. The landlady
+won't receive you."
+
+It was a well-aimed objection--but it missed the mark. A woman bent on
+her marriage is a woman who can meet the objections of the whole world,
+single-handed, and refute them all.
+
+"I have provided for every thing," she said, "and I have provided for
+that. I shall tell the landlady I am on my wedding-trip. I shall say
+my husband is sight-seeing, on foot, among the mountains in the
+neighborhood--"
+
+"She is sure to believe that!" said Geoffrey.
+
+"She is sure to _dis_believe it, if you like. Let her! You have only
+to appear, and to ask for your wife--and there is my story proved to be
+true! She may be the most suspicious woman living, as long as I am alone
+with her. The moment you join me, you set her suspicions at rest. Leave
+me to do my part. My part is the hard one. Will you do yours?"
+
+It was impossible to say No: she had fairly cut the ground from under
+his feet. He shifted his ground. Any thing rather than say Yes!
+
+"I suppose _you_ know how we are to be married?" he asked. "All I can
+say is--_I_ don't."
+
+"You do!" she retorted. "You know that we are in Scotland. You know that
+there are neither forms, ceremonies, nor delays in marriage, here. The
+plan I have proposed to you secures my being received at the inn, and
+makes it easy and natural for you to join me there afterward. The
+rest is in our own hands. A man and a woman who wish to be married (in
+Scotland) have only to secure the necessary witnesses and the thing is
+done. If the landlady chooses to resent the deception practiced on her,
+after that, the landlady may do as she pleases. We shall have gained
+our object in spite of her--and, what is more, we shall have gained it
+without risk to _you._"
+
+"Don't lay it all on my shoulders," Geoffrey rejoined. "You women
+go headlong at every thing. Say we are married. We must separate
+afterward--or how are we to keep it a secret?"
+
+"Certainly. You will go back, of course, to your brother's house, as if
+nothing had happened."
+
+"And what is to become of _you?_"
+
+"I shall go to London."
+
+"What are you to do in London?"
+
+"Haven't I already told you that I have thought of every thing? When I
+get to London I shall apply to some of my mother's old friends--friends
+of hers in the time when she was a musician. Every body tells me I have
+a voice--if I had only cultivated it. I _will_ cultivate it! I can live,
+and live respectably, as a concert singer. I have saved money enough to
+support me, while I am learning--and my mother's friends will help me,
+for her sake."
+
+So, in the new life that she was marking out, was she now unconsciously
+reflecting in herself the life of her mother before her. Here was the
+mother's career as a public singer, chosen (in spite of all efforts to
+prevent it) by the child! Here (though with other motives, and under
+other circumstances) was the mother's irregular marriage in Ireland,
+on the point of being followed by the daughter's irregular marriage in
+Scotland! And here, stranger still, was the man who was answerable for
+it--the son of the man who had found the flaw in the Irish marriage, and
+had shown the way by which her mother was thrown on the world! "My Anne
+is my second self. She is not called by her father's name; she is called
+by mine. She is Anne Silvester as I was. Will she end like Me?"--The
+answer to those words--the last words that had trembled on the dying
+mother's lips--was coming fast. Through the chances and changes of many
+years, the future was pressing near--and Anne Silvester stood on the
+brink of it.
+
+"Well?" she resumed. "Are you at the end of your objections? Can you
+give me a plain answer at last?"
+
+No! He had another objection ready as the words passed her lips.
+
+"Suppose the witnesses at the inn happen to know me?" he said. "Suppose
+it comes to my father's ears in that way?"
+
+"Suppose you drive me to my death?" she retorted, starting to her feet.
+"Your father shall know the truth, in that case--I swear it!"
+
+He rose, on his side, and drew back from her. She followed him up. There
+was a clapping of hands, at the same moment, on the lawn. Somebody had
+evidently made a brilliant stroke which promised to decide the game.
+There was no security now that Blanche might not return again. There
+was every prospect, the game being over, that Lady Lundie would be free.
+Anne brought the interview to its crisis, without wasting a moment more.
+
+"Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn," she said. "You have bargained for a private
+marriage, and I have consented. Are you, or are you not, ready to marry
+me on your own terms?"
+
+"Give me a minute to think!"
+
+"Not an instant. Once for all, is it Yes, or No?"
+
+He couldn't say "Yes," even then. But he said what was equivalent to it.
+He asked, savagely, "Where is the inn?"
+
+She put her arm in his, and whispered, rapidly, "Pass the road on the
+right that leads to the railway. Follow the path over the moor, and the
+sheep-track up the hill. The first house you come to after that is the
+inn. You understand!"
+
+He nodded his head, with a sullen frown, and took his pipe out of his
+pocket again.
+
+"Let it alone this time," he said, meeting her eye. "My mind's upset.
+When a man's mind's upset, a man can't smoke. What's the name of the
+place?"
+
+"Craig Fernie."
+
+"Who am I to ask for at the door?"
+
+"For your wife."
+
+"Suppose they want you to give your name when you get there?"
+
+"If I must give a name, I shall call myself Mrs., instead of Miss,
+Silvester. But I shall do my best to avoid giving any name. And you will
+do your best to avoid making a mistake, by only asking for me as your
+wife. Is there any thing else you want to know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Be quick about it! What is it?"
+
+"How am I to know you have got away from here?"
+
+"If you don't hear from me in half an hour from the time when I have
+left you, you may be sure I have got away. Hush!"
+
+Two voices, in conversation, were audible at the bottom of the
+steps--Lady Lundie's voice and Sir Patrick's. Anne pointed to the door
+in the back wall of the summer-house. She had just pulled it to again,
+after Geoffrey had passed through it, when Lady Lundie and Sir Patrick
+appeared at the top of the steps.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
+
+THE SUITOR.
+
+LADY LUNDIE pointed significantly to the door, and addressed herself to
+Sir Patrick's private ear.
+
+"Observe!" she said. "Miss Silvester has just got rid of somebody."
+
+Sir Patrick deliberately looked in the wrong direction, and (in the
+politest possible manner) observed--nothing.
+
+Lady Lundie advanced into the summer-house. Suspicious hatred of the
+governess was written legibly in every line of her face. Suspicious
+distrust of the governess's illness spoke plainly in every tone of her
+voice.
+
+"May I inquire, Miss Silvester, if your sufferings are relieved?"
+
+"I am no better, Lady Lundie."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I said I was no better."
+
+"You appear to be able to stand up. When _I_ am ill, I am not so
+fortunate. I am obliged to lie down."'
+
+"I will follow your example, Lady Lundie. If you will be so good as to
+excuse me, I will leave you, and lie down in my own room."
+
+She could say no more. The interview with Geoffrey had worn her out;
+there was no spirit left in her to resist the petty malice of the woman,
+after bearing, as she had borne it, the brutish indifference of the man.
+In another moment the hysterical suffering which she was keeping down
+would have forced its way outward in tears. Without waiting to know
+whether she was excused or not, without stopping to hear a word more,
+she left the summer-house.
+
+Lady Lundie's magnificent black eyes opened to their utmost width, and
+blazed with their most dazzling brightness. She appealed to Sir Patrick,
+poised easily on his ivory cane, and looking out at the lawn-party, the
+picture of venerable innocence.
+
+"After what I have already told you, Sir Patrick, of Miss Silvester's
+conduct, may I ask whether you consider _that_ proceeding at all
+extraordinary?"
+
+The old gentleman touched the spring in the knob of his cane, and
+answered, in the courtly manner of the old school:
+
+"I consider no proceeding extraordinary Lady Lundie, which emanates from
+your enchanting sex."
+
+He bowed, and took his pinch. With a little jaunty flourish of the hand,
+he dusted the stray grains of snuff off his finger and thumb, and looked
+back again at the lawn-party, and became more absorbed in the diversions
+of his young friends than ever.
+
+Lady Lundie stood her ground, plainly determined to force a serious
+expression of opinion from her brother-in-law. Before she could speak
+again, Arnold and Blanche appeared together at the bottom of the steps.
+"And when does the dancing begin?" inquired Sir Patrick, advancing to
+meet them, and looking as if he felt the deepest interest in a speedy
+settlement of the question.
+
+"The very thing I was going to ask mamma," returned Blanche. "Is she in
+there with Anne? Is Anne better?"
+
+Lady Lundie forthwith appeared, and took the answer to that inquiry on
+herself.
+
+"Miss Silvester has retired to her room. Miss Silvester persists in
+being ill. Have you noticed, Sir Patrick, that these half-bred sort of
+people are almost invariably rude when they are ill?"
+
+Blanche's bright face flushed up. "If you think Anne a half-bred person,
+Lady Lundie, you stand alone in your opinion. My uncle doesn't agree
+with you, I'm sure."
+
+Sir Patrick's interest in the first quadrille became almost painful to
+see. "_Do_ tell me, my dear, when _is_ the dancing going to begin?"
+
+"The sooner the better," interposed Lady Lundie; "before Blanche picks
+another quarrel with me on the subject of Miss Silvester."
+
+Blanche looked at her uncle. "Begin! begin! Don't lose time!" cried the
+ardent Sir Patrick, pointing toward the house with his cane. "Certainly,
+uncle! Any thing that _you_ wish!" With that parting shot at her
+step-mother, Blanche withdrew. Arnold, who had thus far waited in
+silence at the foot of the steps, looked appealingly at Sir Patrick. The
+train which was to take him to his newly inherited property would start
+in less than an hour; and he had not presented himself to Blanche's
+guardian in the character of Blanche's suitor yet! Sir Patrick's
+indifference to all domestic claims on him--claims of persons who
+loved, and claims of persons who hated, it didn't matter which--remained
+perfectly unassailable. There he stood, poised on his cane, humming an
+old Scotch air. And there was Lady Lundie, resolute not to leave him
+till he had seen the governess with _her_ eyes and judged the governess
+with _her_ mind. She returned to the charge--in spite of Sir Patrick,
+humming at the top of the steps, and of Arnold, waiting at the bottom.
+(Her enemies said, "No wonder poor Sir Thomas died in a few months after
+his marriage!" And, oh dear me, our enemies _are_ sometimes right!)
+
+"I must once more remind you, Sir Patrick, that I have serious reason
+to doubt whether Miss Silvester is a fit companion for Blanche. My
+governess has something on her mind. She has fits of crying in private.
+She is up and walking about her room when she ought to be asleep. She
+posts her own letters--_and,_ she has lately been excessively insolent
+to Me. There is something wrong. I must take some steps in the
+matter--and it is only proper that I should do so with your sanction, as
+head of the family."
+
+"Consider me as abdicating my position, Lady Lundie, in your favor."
+
+"Sir Patrick, I beg you to observe that I am speaking seriously, and
+that I expect a serious reply."
+
+"My good lady, ask me for any thing else and it is at your service. I
+have not made a serious reply since I gave up practice at the
+Scottish Bar. At my age," added Sir Patrick, cunningly drifting into
+generalities, "nothing is serious--except Indigestion. I say, with the
+philosopher, 'Life is a comedy to those who think, and tragedy to those
+who feel.'" He took his sister-in-law's hand, and kissed it. "Dear Lady
+Lundie, why feel?"
+
+Lady Lundie, who had never "felt" in her life, appeared perversely
+determined to feel, on this occasion. She was offended--and she showed
+it plainly.
+
+"When you are next called on, Sir Patrick, to judge of Miss Silvester's
+conduct," she said, "unless I am entirely mistaken, you will find
+yourself _compelled_ to consider it as something beyond a joke." With
+those words, she walked out of the summer-house--and so forwarded
+Arnold's interests by leaving Blanche's guardian alone at last.
+
+It was an excellent opportunity. The guests were safe in the
+house--there was no interruption to be feared, Arnold showed himself.
+Sir Patrick (perfectly undisturbed by Lady Lundie's parting speech) sat
+down in the summer-house, without noticing his young friend, and asked
+himself a question founded on profound observation of the female sex.
+"Were there ever two women yet with a quarrel between them," thought
+the old gentleman, "who didn't want to drag a man into it? Let them drag
+_me_ in, if they can!"
+
+Arnold advanced a step, and modestly announced himself. "I hope I am not
+in the way, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"In the way? of course not! Bless my soul, how serious the boy looks!
+Are _you_ going to appeal to me as the head of the family next?"
+
+It was exactly what Arnold was about to do. But it was plain that if he
+admitted it just then Sir Patrick (for some unintelligible reason) would
+decline to listen to him. He answered cautiously, "I asked leave to
+consult you in private, Sir; and you kindly said you would give me the
+opportunity before I left Windygates?"
+
+"Ay! ay! to be sure. I remember. We were both engaged in the serious
+business of croquet at the time--and it was doubtful which of us did
+that business most clumsily. Well, here is the opportunity; and here
+am I, with all my worldly experience, at your service. I have only one
+caution to give you. Don't appeal to me as 'the head of the family.' My
+resignation is in Lady Lundie's hands."
+
+He was, as usual, half in jest, half in earnest. The wry twist of humor
+showed itself at the corners of his lips. Arnold was at a loss how to
+approach Sir Patrick on the subject of his niece without reminding him
+of his domestic responsibilities on the one hand, and without setting
+himself up as a target for the shafts of Sir Patrick's wit on the other.
+In this difficulty, he committed a mistake at the outset. He hesitated.
+
+"Don't hurry yourself," said Sir Patrick. "Collect your ideas. I can
+wait! I can wait!"
+
+Arnold collected his ideas--and committed a second mistake. He
+determined on feeling his way cautiously at first. Under the
+circumstances (and with such a man as he had now to deal with), it
+was perhaps the rashest resolution at which he could possibly have
+arrived--it was the mouse attempting to outmanoeuvre the cat.
+
+"You have been very kind, Sir, in offering me the benefit of your
+experience," he began. "I want a word of advice."
+
+"Suppose you take it sitting?" suggested Sir Patrick. "Get a chair." His
+sharp eyes followed Arnold with an expression of malicious enjoyment.
+"Wants my advice?" he thought. "The young humbug wants nothing of the
+sort--he wants my niece."
+
+Arnold sat down under Sir Patrick's eye, with a well-founded suspicion
+that he was destined to suffer, before he got up again, under Sir
+Patrick's tongue.
+
+"I am only a young man," he went on, moving uneasily in his chair, "and
+I am beginning a new life--"
+
+"Any thing wrong with the chair?" asked Sir Patrick. "Begin your new
+life comfortably, and get another."
+
+"There's nothing wrong with the chair, Sir. Would you--"
+
+"Would I keep the chair, in that case? Certainly."
+
+"I mean, would you advise me--"
+
+"My good fellow, I'm waiting to advise you. (I'm sure there's something
+wrong with that chair. Why be obstinate about it? Why not get another?)"
+
+"Please don't notice the chair, Sir Patrick--you put me out. I want--in
+short--perhaps it's a curious question--"
+
+"I can't say till I have heard it," remarked Sir Patrick. "However,
+we will admit it, for form's sake, if you like. Say it's a curious
+question. Or let us express it more strongly, if that will help you.
+Say it's the most extraordinary question that ever was put, since the
+beginning of the world, from one human being to another."
+
+"It's this!" Arnold burst out, desperately. "I want to be married!"
+
+"That isn't a question," objected Sir Patrick. "It's an assertion. You
+say, I want to be married. And I say, Just so! And there's an end of
+it."
+
+Arnold's head began to whirl. "Would you advise me to get married, Sir?"
+he said, piteously. "That's what I meant."
+
+"Oh! That's the object of the present interview, is it? Would I advise
+you to marry, eh?"
+
+(Having caught the mouse by this time, the cat lifted his paw and
+let the luckless little creature breathe again. Sir Patrick's manner
+suddenly freed itself from any slight signs of impatience which it might
+have hitherto shown, and became as pleasantly easy and confidential as
+a manner could be. He touched the knob of his cane, and helped himself,
+with infinite zest and enjoyment, to a pinch of snuff.)
+
+"Would I advise you to marry?" repeated Sir Patrick. "Two courses
+are open to us, Mr. Arnold, in treating that question. We may put it
+briefly, or we may put it at great length. I am for putting it briefly.
+What do you say?"
+
+"What you say, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Very good. May I begin by making an inquiry relating to your past
+life?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"Very good again. When you were in the merchant service, did you ever
+have any experience in buying provisions ashore?"
+
+Arnold stared. If any relation existed between that question and the
+subject in hand it was an impenetrable relation to _him_. He answered,
+in unconcealed bewilderment, "Plenty of experience, Sir."
+
+"I'm coming to the point," pursued Sir Patrick. "Don't be astonished.
+I'm coming to the point. What did you think of your moist sugar when you
+bought it at the grocer's?"
+
+"Think?" repeated Arnold. "Why, I thought it was moist sugar, to be
+sure!"
+
+"Marry, by all means!" cried Sir Patrick. "You are one of the few men
+who can try that experiment with a fair chance of success."
+
+The suddenness of the answer fairly took away Arnold's breath. There was
+something perfectly electric in the brevity of his venerable friend. He
+stared harder than ever.
+
+"Don't you understand me?" asked Sir Patrick.
+
+"I don't understand what the moist sugar has got to do with it, Sir."
+
+"You don't see that?"
+
+"Not a bit!"
+
+"Then I'll show you," said Sir Patrick, crossing his legs, and setting
+in comfortably for a good talk "You go to the tea-shop, and get your
+moist sugar. You take it on the understanding that it is moist sugar.
+But it isn't any thing of the sort. It's a compound of adulterations
+made up to look like sugar. You shut your eyes to that awkward fact, and
+swallow your adulterated mess in various articles of food; and you and
+your sugar get on together in that way as well as you can. Do you follow
+me, so far?"
+
+Yes. Arnold (quite in the dark) followed, so far.
+
+"Very good," pursued Sir Patrick. "You go to the marriage-shop, and
+get a wife. You take her on the understanding--let us say--that she
+has lovely yellow hair, that she has an exquisite complexion, that her
+figure is the perfection of plumpness, and that she is just tall enough
+to carry the plumpness off. You bring her home, and you discover that
+it's the old story of the sugar over again. Your wife is an adulterated
+article. Her lovely yellow hair is--dye. Her exquisite skin is--pearl
+powder. Her plumpness is--padding. And three inches of her height
+are--in the boot-maker's heels. Shut your eyes, and swallow your
+adulterated wife as you swallow your adulterated sugar--and, I tell you
+again, you are one of the few men who can try the marriage experiment
+with a fair chance of success."
+
+With that he uncrossed his legs again, and looked hard at Arnold. Arnold
+read the lesson, at last, in the right way. He gave up the hopeless
+attempt to circumvent Sir Patrick, and--come what might of it--dashed at
+a direct allusion to Sir Patrick's niece.
+
+"That may be all very true, Sir, of some young ladies," he said. "There
+is one I know of, who is nearly related to you, and who doesn't deserve
+what you have said of the rest of them."
+
+This was coming to the point. Sir Patrick showed his approval of
+Arnold's frankness by coming to the point himself, as readily as his own
+whimsical humor would let him.
+
+"Is this female phenomenon my niece?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick."
+
+"May I ask how you know that my niece is not an adulterated article,
+like the rest of them?"
+
+Arnold's indignation loosened the last restraints that tied Arnold's
+tongue. He exploded in the three words which mean three volumes in every
+circulating library in the kingdom.
+
+"I love her."
+
+Sir Patrick sat back in his chair, and stretched out his legs
+luxuriously.
+
+"That's the most convincing answer I ever heard in my life," he said.
+
+"I'm in earnest!" cried Arnold, reckless by this time of every
+consideration but one. "Put me to the test, Sir! put me to the test!"
+
+"Oh, very well. The test is easily put." He looked at Arnold, with the
+irrepressible humor twinkling merrily in his eyes, and twitching sharply
+at the corners of his lips. "My niece has a beautiful complexion. Do you
+believe in her complexion?"
+
+"There's a beautiful sky above our heads," returned Arnold. "I believe
+in the sky."
+
+"Do you?" retorted Sir Patrick. "You were evidently never caught in a
+shower. My niece has an immense quantity of hair. Are you convinced that
+it all grows on her head?"
+
+"I defy any other woman's head to produce the like of it!"
+
+"My dear Arnold, you greatly underrate the existing resources of the
+trade in hair! Look into the shop-windows. When you next go to London
+pray look into the show-windows. In the mean time, what do you think of
+my niece's figure?"
+
+"Oh, come! there can't be any doubt about _that!_ Any man, with eyes in
+his head, can see it's the loveliest figure in the world."
+
+Sir Patrick laughed softly, and crossed his legs again.
+
+"My good fellow, of course it is! The loveliest figure in the world
+is the commonest thing in the world. At a rough guess, there are forty
+ladies at this lawn-party. Every one of them possesses a beautiful
+figure. It varies in price; and when it's particularly seductive you may
+swear it comes from Paris. Why, how you stare! When I asked you what you
+thought of my niece's figure, I meant--how much of it comes from Nature,
+and how much of it comes from the Shop? I don't know, mind! Do you?"
+
+"I'll take my oath to every inch of it!"
+
+"Shop?"
+
+"Nature!"
+
+Sir Patrick rose to his feet; his satirical humor was silenced at last.
+
+"If ever I have a son," he thought to himself, "that son shall go
+to sea!" He took Arnold's arm, as a preliminary to putting an end to
+Arnold's suspense. "If I _can_ be serious about any thing," he resumed,
+"it's time to be serious with you. I am convinced of the sincerity of
+your attachment. All I know of you is in your favor, and your birth and
+position are beyond dispute. If you have Blanche's consent, you have
+mine." Arnold attempted to express his gratitude. Sir Patrick, declining
+to hear him, went on. "And remember this, in the future. When you next
+want any thing that I can give you, ask for it plainly. Don't attempt to
+mystify _me_ on the next occasion, and I will promise, on my side, not
+to mystify _you._ There, that's understood. Now about this journey of
+yours to see your estate. Property has its duties, Master Arnold, as
+well as its rights. The time is fast coming when its rights will be
+disputed, if its duties are not performed. I have got a new interest in
+you, and I mean to see that you do your duty. It's settled you are to
+leave Windygates to-day. Is it arranged how you are to go?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie has kindly ordered the gig to take me to
+the station, in time for the next train."
+
+"When are you to be ready?"
+
+Arnold looked at his watch. "In a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Very good. Mind you _are_ ready. Stop a minute! you will have plenty of
+time to speak to Blanche when I have done with you. You don't appear to
+me to be sufficiently anxious about seeing your own property."
+
+"I am not very anxious to leave Blanche, Sir--that's the truth of it."
+
+"Never mind Blanche. Blanche is not business. They both begin with a
+B--and that's the only connection between them. I hear you have got one
+of the finest houses in this part of Scotland. How long are you going to
+stay in Scotland? How long are you going to stay in it?"
+
+"I have arranged (as I have already told you, Sir) to return to
+Windygates the day after to-morrow."
+
+"What! Here is a man with a palace waiting to receive him--and he is
+only going to stop one clear day in it!"
+
+"I am not going to stop in it at all, Sir Patrick--I am going to stay
+with the steward. I'm only wanted to be present to-morrow at a dinner
+to my tenants--and, when that's over, there's nothing in the world to
+prevent my coming back here. The steward himself told me so in his last
+letter."
+
+"Oh, if the steward told you so, of course there is nothing more to be
+said!"
+
+"Don't object to my coming back! pray don't, Sir Patrick! I'll promise
+to live in my new house when I have got Blanche to live in it with me.
+If you won't mind, I'll go and tell her at once that it all belongs to
+her as well as to me."
+
+"Gently! gently! you talk as if you were married to her already!"
+
+"It's as good as done, Sir! Where's the difficulty in the way now?"
+
+As he asked the question the shadow of some third person, advancing
+from the side of the summer-house, was thrown forward on the open sunlit
+space at the top of the steps. In a moment more the shadow was followed
+by the substance--in the shape of a groom in his riding livery. The man
+was plainly a stranger to the place. He started, and touched his hat,
+when he saw the two gentlemen in the summer-house.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Sir Patrick
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir; I was sent by my master--"
+
+"Who is your master?"
+
+"The Honorable Mr. Delamayn, Sir."
+
+"Do you mean Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?" asked Arnold.
+
+"No, Sir. Mr. Geoffrey's brother--Mr. Julius. I have ridden over from
+the house, Sir, with a message from my master to Mr. Geoffrey."
+
+"Can't you find him?"
+
+"They told me I should find him hereabouts, Sir. But I'm a stranger, and
+don't rightly know where to look." He stopped, and took a card out of
+his pocket. "My master said it was very important I should deliver this
+immediately. Would you be pleased to tell me, gentlemen, if you happen
+to know where Mr. Geoffrey is?"
+
+Arnold turned to Sir Patrick. "I haven't seen him. Have you?"
+
+"I have smelt him," answered Sir Patrick, "ever since I have been in
+the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the
+air--suggestive (disagreeably suggestive to _my_ mind) of your friend,
+Mr. Delamayn."
+
+Arnold laughed, and stepped outside the summer-house.
+
+"If you are right, Sir Patrick, we will find him at once." He looked
+around, and shouted, "Geoffrey!"
+
+A voice from the rose-garden shouted back, "Hullo!"
+
+"You're wanted. Come here!"
+
+Geoffrey appeared, sauntering doggedly, with his pipe in his mouth, and
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Who wants me?"
+
+"A groom--from your brother."
+
+That answer appeared to electrify the lounging and lazy athlete.
+Geoffrey hurried, with eager steps, to the summer-house. He addressed
+the groom before the man had time to speak With horror and dismay in his
+face, he exclaimed:
+
+"By Jupiter! Ratcatcher has relapsed!"
+
+Sir Patrick and Arnold looked at each other in blank amazement.
+
+"The best horse in my brother's stables!" cried Geoffrey, explaining,
+and appealing to them, in a breath. "I left written directions with the
+coachman, I measured out his physic for three days; I bled him," said
+Geoffrey, in a voice broken by emotion--"I bled him myself, last night."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir--" began the groom.
+
+"What's the use of begging my pardon? You're a pack of infernal
+fools! Where's your horse? I'll ride back, and break every bone in the
+coachman's skin! Where's your horse?"
+
+"If you please, Sir, it isn't Ratcatcher. Ratcatcher's all right."
+
+"Ratcatcher's all right? Then what the devil is it?"
+
+"It's a message, Sir."
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About my lord."
+
+"Oh! About my father?" He took out his handkerchief, and passed it over
+his forehead, with a deep gasp of relief. "I thought it was Ratcatcher,"
+he said, looking at Arnold, with a smile. He put his pipe into his
+mouth, and rekindled the dying ashes of the tobacco. "Well?" he went on,
+when the pipe was in working order, and his voice was composed again:
+"What's up with my father?"
+
+"A telegram from London, Sir. Bad news of my lord."
+
+The man produced his master's card.
+
+Geoffrey read on it (written in his brother's handwriting) these words:
+
+"I have only a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is
+dangerously ill--his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by
+the first train. Meet at the junction."
+
+Without a word to any one of the three persons present, all silently
+looking at him, Geoffrey consulted his watch. Anne had told him to wait
+half an hour, and to assume that she had gone if he failed to hear from
+her in that time. The interval had passed--and no communication of
+any sort had reached him. The flight from the house had been safely
+accomplished. Anne Silvester was, at that moment, on her way to the
+mountain inn.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
+
+THE DEBT.
+
+ARNOLD was the first who broke the silence. "Is your father seriously
+ill?" he asked.
+
+Geoffrey answered by handing him the card.
+
+Sir Patrick, who had stood apart (while the question of Ratcatcher's
+relapse was under discussion) sardonically studying the manners and
+customs of modern English youth, now came forward, and took his part
+in the proceedings. Lady Lundie herself must have acknowledged that he
+spoke and acted as became the head of the family, on t his occasion.
+
+"Am I right in supposing that Mr. Delamayn's father is dangerously ill?"
+he asked, addressing himself to Arnold.
+
+"Dangerously ill, in London," Arnold answered. "Geoffrey must leave
+Windygates with me. The train I am traveling by meets the train his
+brother is traveling by, at the junction. I shall leave him at the
+second station from here."
+
+"Didn't you tell me that Lady Lundie was going to send you to the
+railway in a gig?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If the servant drives, there will be three of you--and there will be no
+room."
+
+"We had better ask for some other vehicle," suggested Arnold.
+
+Sir Patrick looked at his watch. There was no time to change the
+carriage. He turned to Geoffrey. "Can you drive, Mr. Delamayn?"
+
+Still impenetrably silent, Geoffrey replied by a nod of the head.
+
+Without noticing the unceremonious manner in which he had been answered,
+Sir Patrick went on:
+
+"In that case, you can leave the gig in charge of the station-master.
+I'll tell the servant that he will not be wanted to drive."
+
+"Let me save you the trouble, Sir Patrick," said Arnold.
+
+Sir Patrick declined, by a gesture. He turned again, with undiminished
+courtesy, to Geoffrey. "It is one of the duties of hospitality, Mr.
+Delamayn, to hasten your departure, under these sad circumstances. Lady
+Lundie is engaged with her guests. I will see myself that there is no
+unnecessary delay in sending you to the station." He bowed--and left the
+summer-house.
+
+Arnold said a word of sympathy to his friend, when they were alone.
+
+"I am sorry for this, Geoffrey. I hope and trust you will get to London
+in time."
+
+He stopped. There was something in Geoffrey's face--a strange mixture of
+doubt and bewilderment, of annoyance and hesitation--which was not to
+be accounted for as the natural result of the news that he had received.
+His color shifted and changed; he picked fretfully at his finger-nails;
+he looked at Arnold as if he was going to speak--and then looked away
+again, in silence.
+
+"Is there something amiss, Geoffrey, besides this bad news about your
+father?" asked Arnold.
+
+"I'm in the devil's own mess," was the answer.
+
+"Can I do any thing to help you?"
+
+Instead of making a direct reply, Geoffrey lifted his mighty hand, and
+gave Arnold a friendly slap on the shoulder which shook him from head
+to foot. Arnold steadied himself, and waited--wondering what was coming
+next.
+
+"I say, old fellow!" said Geoffrey.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you remember when the boat turned keel upward in Lisbon Harbor?"
+
+Arnold started. If he could have called to mind his first interview in
+the summer-house with his father's old friend he might have remembered
+Sir Patrick's prediction that he would sooner or later pay, with
+interest, the debt he owed to the man who had saved his life. As it was
+his memory reverted at a bound to the time of the boat-accident. In
+the ardor of his gratitude and the innocence of his heart, he almost
+resented his friend's question as a reproach which he had not deserved.
+
+"Do you think I can ever forget," he cried, warmly, "that you swam
+ashore with me and saved my life?"
+
+Geoffrey ventured a step nearer to the object that he had in view.
+
+"One good turn deserves another," he said, "don't it?"
+
+Arnold took his hand. "Only tell me!" he eagerly rejoined--"only tell me
+what I can do!"
+
+"You are going to-day to see your new place, ain't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you put off going till to-morrow?"
+
+"If it's any thing serious--of course I can!"
+
+Geoffrey looked round at the entrance to the summer-house, to make sure
+that they were alone.
+
+"You know the governess here, don't you?" he said, in a whisper.
+
+"Miss Silvester?"
+
+"Yes. I've got into a little difficulty with Miss Silvester. And there
+isn't a living soul I can ask to help me but _you._"
+
+"You know I will help you. What is it?"
+
+"It isn't so easy to say. Never mind--you're no saint either, are
+you? You'll keep it a secret, of course? Look here! I've acted like an
+infernal fool. I've gone and got the girl into a scrape--"
+
+Arnold drew back, suddenly understanding him.
+
+"Good heavens, Geoffrey! You don't mean--"
+
+"I do! Wait a bit--that's not the worst of it. She has left the house."
+
+"Left the house?"
+
+"Left, for good and all. She can't come back again."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because she's written to her missus. Women (hang 'em!) never do these
+things by halves. She's left a letter to say she's privately married,
+and gone off to her husband. Her husband is--Me. Not that I'm married to
+her yet, you understand. I have only promised to marry her. She has gone
+on first (on the sly) to a place four miles from this. And we settled I
+was to follow, and marry her privately this afternoon. That's out of
+the question now. While she's expecting me at the inn I shall be bowling
+along to London. Somebody must tell her what has happened--or she'll
+play the devil, and the whole business will burst up. I can't trust any
+of the people here. I'm done for, old chap, unless you help me."
+
+Arnold lifted his hands in dismay. "It's the most dreadful situation,
+Geoffrey, I ever heard of in my life!"
+
+Geoffrey thoroughly agreed with him. "Enough to knock a man over," he
+said, "isn't it? I'd give something for a drink of beer." He produced
+his everlasting pipe, from sheer force of habit. "Got a match?" he
+asked.
+
+Arnold's mind was too preoccupied to notice the question.
+
+"I hope you won't think I'm making light of your father's illness," he
+said, earnestly. "But it seems to me--I must say it--it seems to me that
+the poor girl has the first claim on you."
+
+Geoffrey looked at him in surly amazement.
+
+"The first claim on me? Do you think I'm going to risk being cut out of
+my father's will? Not for the best woman that ever put on a petticoat!"
+
+Arnold's admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration
+of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle,
+jump--above all, who could swim--as few other men could perform those
+exercises in contemporary England. But that answer shook his faith. Only
+for the moment--unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.
+
+"You know best," he returned, a little coldly. "What can I do?"
+
+Geoffrey took his arm--roughly as he took every thing; but in a
+companionable and confidential way.
+
+"Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened. We'll start
+from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I'll drop you at
+the foot-path, in the gig. You can get on to your own place afterward by
+the evening train. It puts you to no inconvenience, and it's doing the
+kind thing by an old friend. There's no risk of being found out. I'm
+to drive, remember! There's no servant with us, old boy, to notice, and
+tell tales."
+
+Even Arnold began to see dimly by this time that he was likely to pay
+his debt of obligation with interest--as Sir Patrick had foretold.
+
+"What am I to say to her?" he asked. "I'm bound to do all I can do to
+help you, and I will. But what am I to say?"
+
+It was a natural question to put. It was not an easy question to answer.
+What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person
+living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn. Of what a man, under given
+social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.
+
+"Say?" he repeated. "Look here! say I'm half distracted, and all that.
+And--wait a bit--tell her to stop where she is till I write to her."
+
+Arnold hesitated. Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of
+knowledge which is called "knowledge of the world," his inbred delicacy
+of mind revealed to him the serious difficulty of the position which his
+friend was asking him to occupy as plainly as if he was looking at it
+through the warily-gathered experience of society of a man of twice his
+age.
+
+"Can't you write to her now, Geoffrey?" he asked.
+
+"What's the good of that?"
+
+"Consider for a minute, and you will see. You have trusted me with a
+very awkward secret. I may be wrong--I never was mixed up in such a
+matter before--but to present myself to this lady as your messenger
+seems exposing her to a dreadful humiliation. Am I to go and tell her
+to her face: 'I know what you are hiding from the knowledge of all the
+world;' and is she to be expected to endure it?"
+
+"Bosh!" said Geoffrey. "They can endure a deal more than you think.
+I wish you had heard how she bullied me, in this very place. My good
+fellow, you don't understand women. The grand secret, in dealing with a
+woman, is to take her as you take a cat, by the scruff of the neck--"
+
+"I can't face her--unless you will help me by breaking the thing to
+her first. I'll stick at no sacrifice to serve you; but--hang it!--make
+allowances, Geoffrey, for the difficulty you are putting me in. I am
+almost a stranger; I don't know how Miss Silvester may receive me,
+before I can open my lips."
+
+Those last words touched the question on its practical side. The
+matter-of-fact view of the difficulty was a view which Geoffrey
+instantly recognized and understood.
+
+"She has the devil's own temper," he said. "There's no denying that.
+Perhaps I'd better write. Have we time to go into the house?"
+
+"No. The house is full of people, and we haven't a minute to spare.
+Write at once, and write here. I have got a pencil."
+
+"What am I to write on?"
+
+"Any thing--your brother's card."
+
+Geoffrey took the pencil which Arnold offered to him, and looked at the
+card. The lines his brother had written covered it. There was no room
+left. He felt in his pocket, and produced a letter--the letter which
+Anne had referred to at the interview between them--the letter which she
+had written to insist on his attending the lawn-party at Windygates.
+
+"This will do," he said. "It's one of Anne's own letters to me. There's
+room on the fourth page. If I write," he added, turning suddenly on
+Arnold, "you promise to take it to her? Your hand on the bargain!"
+
+He held out the hand which had saved Arnold's life in Lisbon Harbor, and
+received Arnold's promise, in remembrance of that time.
+
+"All right, old fellow. I can tell you how to find the place as we go
+along in the gig. By-the-by, there's one thing that's rather important.
+I'd better mention it while I think of it."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"You mustn't present yourself at the inn in your own name; and you
+mustn't ask for her by _her_ name."
+
+"Who am I to ask for?"
+
+"It's a little awkward. She has gone there as a married woman, in case
+they're particular about taking her in--"
+
+"I understand. Go on."
+
+"And she has planned to tell them (by way of making it all right and
+straight for both of us, you know) that she expects her husband to join
+her. If I had been able to go I should have asked at the door for 'my
+wife.' You are going in my place--"
+
+"And I must ask at the door for 'my wife,' or I shall expose Miss
+Silvester to unpleasant consequences?"
+
+"You don't object?"
+
+"Not I! I don't care what I say to the people of the inn. It's the
+meeting with Miss Silvester that I'm afraid of."
+
+"I'll put that right for you--never fear!"
+
+He went at once to the table and rapidly scribbled a few lines--then
+stopped and considered. "Will that do?" he asked himself. "No; I'd
+better say something spooney to quiet her." He considered again, added a
+line, and brought his hand down on the table with a cheery smack.
+"That will do the business! Read it yourself, Arnold--it's not so badly
+written."
+
+Arnold read the note without appearing to share his friend's favorable
+opinion of it.
+
+"This is rather short," he said.
+
+"Have I time to make it longer?"
+
+"Perhaps not. But let Miss Silvester see for herself that you have no
+time to make it longer. The train starts in less than half an hour. Put
+the time."
+
+"Oh, all right! and the date too, if you like."
+
+He had just added the desired words and figures, and had given the
+revised letter to Arnold, when Sir Patrick returned to announce that the
+gig was waiting.
+
+"Come!" he said. "You haven't a moment to lose!"
+
+Geoffrey started to his feet. Arnold hesitated.
+
+"I must see Blanche!" he pleaded. "I can't leave Blanche without saying
+good-by. Where is she?"
+
+Sir Patrick pointed to the steps, with a smile. Blanche had followed him
+from the house. Arnold ran out to her instantly.
+
+"Going?" she said, a little sadly.
+
+"I shall be back in two days," Arnold whispered. "It's all right! Sir
+Patrick consents."
+
+She held him fast by the arm. The hurried parting before other people
+seemed to be not a parting to Blanche's taste.
+
+"You will lose the train!" cried Sir Patrick.
+
+Geoffrey seized Arnold by the arm which Blanche was holding, and
+tore him--literally tore him--away. The two were out of sight, in the
+shrubbery, before Blanche's indignation found words, and addressed
+itself to her uncle.
+
+"Why is that brute going away with Mr. Brinkworth?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn is called to London by his father's illness," replied Sir
+Patrick. "You don't like him?"
+
+"I hate him!"
+
+Sir Patrick reflected a little.
+
+"She is a young girl of eighteen," he thought to himself. "And I am an
+old man of seventy. Curious, that we should agree about any thing. More
+than curious that we should agree in disliking Mr. Delamayn."
+
+He roused himself, and looked again at Blanche. She was seated at the
+table, with her head on her hand; absent, and out of spirits--thinking
+of Arnold, and set, with the future all smooth before them, not thinking
+happily.
+
+"Why, Blanche! Blanche!" cried Sir Patrick, "one would think he had gone
+for a voyage round the world. You silly child! he will be back again the
+day after to-morrow."
+
+"I wish he hadn't gone with that man!" said Blanche. "I wish he hadn't
+got that man for a friend!"
+
+"There! there! the man was rude enough I own. Never mind! he will leave
+the man at the second station. Come back to the ball-room with me. Dance
+it off, my dear--dance it off!"
+
+"No," returned Blanche. "I'm in no humor for dancing. I shall go up
+stairs, and talk about it to Anne."
+
+"You will do nothing of the sort!" said a third voice, suddenly joining
+in the conversation.
+
+Both uncle and niece looked up, and found Lady Lundie at the top of the
+summer-house steps.
+
+"I forbid you to mention that woman's name again in my hearing," pursued
+her ladyship. "Sir Patrick! I warned you (if you remember?) that the
+matter of the governess was not a matter to be trifled with. My worst
+anticipations are realized. Miss Silvester has left the house!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
+
+THE SCANDAL.
+
+IT was still early in the afternoon when the guests at Lady Lundie's
+lawn-party began to compare notes together in corners, and to agree in
+arriving at a general conviction that "some thing was wrong."
+
+Blanche had mysteriously disappeared from her partners in the dance.
+Lady Lundie had mysteriously abandoned her guests. Blanche had not
+come back. Lady Lundie had returned with an artificial smile, and a
+preoccupied manner. She acknowledged that she was "not very well." The
+same excuse had been given to account for Blanche's absence--and, again
+(some time previously), to explain Miss Silvester's withdrawal from the
+croquet! A wit among the gentlemen declared it reminded him of declining
+a verb. "I am not very well; thou art not very well; she is not very
+well"--and so on. Sir Patrick too! Only think of the sociable Sir
+Patrick being in a state of seclusion--pacing up and down by himself in
+the loneliest part of the garden. And the servants again! it had even
+spread to the servants! _They_ were presuming to whisper in corners,
+like their betters. The house-maids appeared, spasmodically, where house
+maids had no business to be. Doors banged and petticoats whisked in the
+upper regions. Something wrong--depend upon it, something wrong! "We
+had much better go away. My dear, order the carriage"--"Louisa, love,
+no more dancing; your papa is going."--"_Good_-afternoon, Lady
+Lundie!"--"Haw! thanks very much!"--"_So_ sorry for dear Blanche!"--"Oh,
+it's been _too_ charming!" So Society jabbered its poor, nonsensical
+little jargon, and got itself politely out of the way before the storm
+came.
+
+This was exactly the consummation of events for which Sir Patrick had
+been waiting in the seclusion of the garden.
+
+There was no evading the responsibility which was now thrust upon him.
+Lady Lundie had announced it as a settled resolution, on her part, to
+trace Anne to the place in which she had taken refuge, and discover
+(purely in the interests of virtue) whether she actually was married
+or not. Blanche (already overwrought by the excitement of the day) had
+broken into an hysterical passion of tears on hearing the news, and had
+then, on recovering, taken a view of her own of Anne's flight from the
+house. Anne would never have kept her marriage a secret from Blanche;
+Anne would never have written such a formal farewell letter as she had
+written to Blanche--if things were going as smoothly with her as she
+was trying to make them believe at Windygates. Some dreadful trouble
+had fallen on Anne and Blanche was determined (as Lady Lundie was
+determined) to find out where she had gone, and to follow, and help her.
+
+It was plain to Sir Patrick (to whom both ladies had opened their
+hearts, at separate interviews) that his sister-in-law, in one way, and
+his niece in another, were equally likely--if not duly restrained--to
+plunge headlong into acts of indiscretion which might lead to very
+undesirable results. A man in authority was sorely needed at Windygates
+that afternoon--and Sir Patrick was fain to acknowledge that he was the
+man.
+
+"Much is to be said for, and much is to be said against a single
+life," thought the old gentleman, walking up and down the sequestered
+garden-path to which he had retired, and applying himself at shorter
+intervals than usual to the knob of his ivory cane. "This, however,
+is, I take it, certain. A man's married friends can't prevent him from
+leading the life of a bachelor, if he pleases. But they can, and do,
+take devilish good care that he sha'n't enjoy it!"
+
+Sir Patrick's meditations were interrupted by the appearance of a
+servant, previously instructed to keep him informed of the progress of
+events at the house.
+
+"They're all gone, Sir Patrick," said the man.
+
+"That's a comfort, Simpson. We have no visitors to deal with now, except
+the visitors who are staying in the house?"
+
+"None, Sir Patrick."
+
+"They're all gentlemen, are they not?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick."
+
+"That's another comfort, Simpson. Very good. I'll see Lady Lundie
+first."
+
+Does any other form of human resolution approach the firmness of a
+woman who is bent on discovering the frailties of another woman whom she
+hates? You may move rocks, under a given set of circumstances. But here
+is a delicate being in petticoats, who shrieks if a spider drops on her
+neck, and shudders if you approach her after having eaten an onion. Can
+you move _her,_ under a given set of circumstances, as set forth above?
+Not you!
+
+Sir Patrick found her ladyship instituting her inquiries on the same
+admirably exhaustive system which is pursued, in cases of disappearance,
+by the police. Who was the last witness who had seen the missing person?
+Who was the last servant who had seen Anne Silvester? Begin with the
+men-servants, from the butler at the top to the stable boy at the
+bottom. Go on with the women-servants, from the cook in all her glory
+to the small female child who weeds the garden. Lady Lundie had
+cross-examined her way downward as far as the page, when Sir Patrick
+joined her.
+
+"My dear lady! pardon me for reminding you again, that this is a
+free country, and that you have no claim whatever to investigate Miss
+Silvester's proceedings after she has left your house."
+
+Lady Lundie raised her eyes, devotionally, to the ceiling. She looked
+like a martyr to duty. If you had seen her ladyship at that moment, you
+would have said yourself, "A martyr to duty."
+
+"No, Sir Patrick! As a Christian woman, that is not _my_ way of looking
+at it. This unhappy person has lived under my roof. This unhappy person
+has been the companion of Blanche. I am responsible--I am, in a manner,
+morally responsible. I would give the world to be able to dismiss it
+as you do. But no! I must be satisfied that she _is_ married. In the
+interests of propriety. For the quieting of my own conscience. Before I
+lay my head on my pillow to-night, Sir Patrick--before I lay my head on
+my pillow to-night!"
+
+"One word, Lady Lundie--"
+
+"No!" repeated her ladyship, with the most pathetic gentleness. "You
+are right, I dare say, from the worldly point of view. I can't take the
+worldly point of view. The worldly point of view hurts me." She turned,
+with impressive gravity, to the page. "You know where you will go,
+Jonathan, if you tell lies!"
+
+Jonathan was lazy, Jonathan was pimply, Jonathan was fat--_but_ Jonathan
+was orthodox. He answered that he did know; and, what is more, he
+mentioned the place.
+
+Sir Patrick saw that further opposition on his part, at that moment,
+would be worse than useless. He wisely determined to wait, before he
+interfered again, until Lady Lundie had thoroughly exhausted herself and
+her inquiries. At the same time--as it was impossible, in the present
+state of her ladyship's temper, to provide against what might happen
+if the inquiries after Anne unluckily proved successful--he decided on
+taking measures to clear the house of the guests (in the interests of
+all parties) for the next four-and-twenty hours.
+
+"I only want to ask you a question, Lady Lundie," he resumed. "The
+position of the gentlemen who are staying here is not a very pleasant
+one while all this is going on. If you had been content to let the
+matter pass without notice, we should have done very well. As things
+are, don't you think it will be more convenient to every body if I
+relieve you of the responsibility of entertaining your guests?"
+
+"As head of the family?" stipulated Lady Lundie.
+
+"As head of the family!" answered Sir Patrick.
+
+"I gratefully accept the proposal," said Lady Lundie.
+
+"I beg you won't mention it," rejoined Sir Patrick.
+
+He quitted the room, leaving Jonathan under examination. He and his
+brother (the late Sir Thomas) had chosen widely different paths in life,
+and had seen but little of each other since the time when they had been
+boys. Sir Patrick's recollections (on leaving Lady Lundie) appeared
+to have taken him back to that time, and to have inspired him with a
+certain tenderness for his brother's memory. He shook his head, and
+sighed a sad little sigh. "Poor Tom!" he said to himself, softly, after
+he had shut the door on his brother's widow. "Poor Tom!"
+
+On crossing the hall, he stopped the first servant he met, to inquire
+after Blanche. Miss Blanche was quiet, up stairs, closeted with her maid
+in her own room. "Quiet?" thought Sir Patrick. "That's a bad sign. I
+shall hear more of my niece."
+
+Pending that event, the next thing to do was to find the guests.
+Unerring instinct led Sir Patrick to the billiard-room. There he found
+them, in solemn conclave assembled, wondering what they had better do.
+Sir Patrick put them all at their ease in two minutes.
+
+"What do you say to a day's shooting to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+Every man present--sportsman or not--said yes.
+
+"You can start from this house," pursued Sir Patrick; "or you can start
+from a shooting-cottage which is on the Windygates property--among the
+woods, on the other side of the moor. The weather looks pretty well
+settled (for Scotland), and there are plenty of horses in the stables.
+It is useless to conceal from you, gentlemen, that events have taken a
+certain unexpected turn in my sister-in-law's family circle. You will
+be equally Lady Lundie's guests, whether you choose the cottage or the
+house. For the next twenty-four hours (let us say)--which shall it be?"
+
+Every body--with or without rheumatism--answered "the cottage."
+
+"Very good," pursued Sir Patrick, "It is arranged to ride over to the
+shooting-cottage this evening, and to try the moor, on that side, the
+first thing in the morning. If events here will allow me, I shall be
+delighted to accompany you, and do the honors as well as I can. If not,
+I am sure you will accept my apologies for to-night, and permit Lady
+Lundie's steward to see to your comfort in my place."
+
+Adopted unanimously. Sir Patrick left the guests to their billiards, and
+went out to give the necessary orders at the stables.
+
+
+
+In the mean time Blanche remained portentously quiet in the upper
+regions of the house; while Lady Lundie steadily pursued her inquiries
+down stairs. She got on from Jonathan (last of the males, indoors) to
+the coachman (first of the males, out-of-doors), and dug down, man by
+man, through that new stratum, until she struck the stable-boy at the
+bottom. Not an atom of information having been extracted in the house
+or out of the house, from man or boy, her ladyship fell back on
+the women next. She pulled the bell, and summoned the cook--Hester
+Dethridge.
+
+A very remarkable-looking person entered the room.
+
+Elderly and quiet; scrupulously clean; eminently respectable; her gray
+hair neat and smooth under her modest white cap; her eyes, set deep in
+their orbits, looking straight at any person who spoke to her--here,
+at a first view, was a steady, trust-worthy woman. Here also on closer
+inspection, was a woman with the seal of some terrible past suffering
+set on her for the rest of her life. You felt it, rather than saw it, in
+the look of immovable endurance which underlain her expression--in the
+deathlike tranquillity which never disappeared from her manner. Her
+story was a sad one--so far as it was known. She had entered Lady
+Lundie's service at the period of Lady Lundie's marriage to Sir Thomas.
+Her character (given by the clergyman of her parish) described her as
+having been married to an inveterate drunkard, and as having suffered
+unutterably during her husband's lifetime. There were drawbacks to
+engaging her, now that she was a widow. On one of the many occasions on
+which her husband had personally ill-treated her, he had struck her a
+blow which had produced very remarkable nervous results. She had lain
+insensible many days together, and had recovered with the total loss of
+her speech. In addition to this objection, she was odd, at times, in her
+manner; and she made it a condition of accepting any situation, that she
+should be privileged to sleep in a room by herself As a set-off against
+all this, it was to be said, on the other side of the question, that she
+was sober; rigidly honest in all her dealings; and one of the best cooks
+in England. In consideration of this last merit, the late Sir Thomas
+had decided on giving her a trial, and had discovered that he had never
+dined in his life as he dined when Hester Dethridge was at the head of
+his kitchen. She remained after his death in his widow's service. Lady
+Lundie was far from liking her. An unpleasant suspicion attached to the
+cook, which Sir Thomas had over-looked, but which persons less sensible
+of the immense importance of dining well could not fail to regard as
+a serious objection to her. Medical men, consulted about her case
+discovered certain physiological anomalies in it which led them to
+suspect the woman of feigning dumbness, for some reason best known
+to herself. She obstinately declined to learn the deaf and dumb
+alphabet--on the ground that dumbness was not associated with deafness
+in her case. Stratagems were invented (seeing that she really did
+possess the use of her ears) to entrap her into also using her speech,
+and failed. Efforts were made to induce her to answer questions relating
+to her past life in her husband's time. She flatly declined to reply
+to them, one and all. At certain intervals, strange impulses to get a
+holiday away from the house appeared to seize her. If she was resisted,
+she passively declined to do her work. If she was threatened with
+dismissal, she impenetrably bowed her head, as much as to say, "Give
+me the word, and I go." Over and over again, Lady Lundie had decided,
+naturally enough, on no longer keeping such a servant as this; but she
+had never yet carried the decision to execution. A cook who is a perfect
+mistress of her art, who asks for no perquisites, who allows no waste,
+who never quarrels with the other servants, who drinks nothing stronger
+than tea, who is to be trusted with untold gold--is not a cook easily
+replaced. In this mortal life we put up with many persons and things,
+as Lady Lundie put up with her cook. The woman lived, as it were, on the
+brink of dismissal--but thus far the woman kept her place--getting her
+holidays when she asked for them (which, to do her justice, was not
+often) and sleeping always (go where she might with the family) with a
+locked door, in a room by herself.
+
+Hester Dethridge advanced slowly to the table at which Lady Lundie was
+sitting. A slate and pencil hung at her side, which she used for making
+such replies as were not to be expressed by a gesture or by a motion
+of the head. She took up the slate and pencil, and waited with stony
+submission for her mistress to begin.
+
+Lady Lundie opened the proceedings with the regular formula of inquiry
+which she had used with all the other servants,
+
+"Do you know that Miss Silvester has left the house?"
+
+The cook nodded her head affirmatively.
+
+"Do you know at what time she left it?"
+
+Another affirmative reply. The first which Lady Lundie had received to
+that question yet. She eagerly went on to the next inquiry.
+
+"Have you seen her since she left the house?"
+
+A third affirmative reply.
+
+"Where?"
+
+Hester Dethridge wrote slowly on the slate, in singularly firm upright
+characters for a woman in her position of life, these words:
+
+"On the road that leads to the railway. Nigh to Mistress Chew's Farm."
+
+"What did you want at Chew's Farm?"
+
+Hester Dethridge wrote: "I wanted eggs for the kitchen, and a breath of
+fresh air for myself."
+
+"Did Miss Silvester see you?"
+
+A negative shake of the head.
+
+"Did she take the turning that leads to the railway?"
+
+Another negative shake of the head.
+
+"She went on, toward the moor?"
+
+An affirmative reply.
+
+"What did she do when she got to the moor?"
+
+Hester Dethridge wrote: "She took the footpath which leads to Craig
+Fernie."
+
+Lady Lundie rose excitedly to her feet. There was but one place that a
+stranger could go to at Craig Fernie. "The inn!" exclaimed her ladyship.
+"She has gone to the inn!"
+
+Hester Dethridge waited immovably. Lady Lundie put a last precautionary
+question, in these words:
+
+"Have you reported what you have seen to any body else?"
+
+An affirmative reply. Lady Lundie had not bargained for that. Hester
+Dethridge (she thought) must surely have misunderstood her.
+
+"Do you mean that you have told somebody else what you have just told
+me?"
+
+Another affirmative reply.
+
+"A person who questioned you, as I have done?"
+
+A third affirmative reply.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+Hester Dethridge wrote on her slate: "Miss Blanche."
+
+Lady Lundie stepped back, staggered by the discovery that Blanche's
+resolution to trace Anne Silvester was, to all appearance, as firmly
+settled as her own. Her step-daughter was keeping her own counsel, and
+acting on her own responsibility--her step-daughter might be an awkward
+obstacle in the way. The manner in which Anne had left the house had
+mortally offended Lady Lundie. An inveterately vindictive woman, she had
+resolved to discover whatever compromising elements might exist in the
+governess's secret, and to make them public property (from a paramount
+sense of duty, of course) among her own circle of friends. But to do
+this--with Blanche acting (as might certainly be anticipated) in direct
+opposition to her, and openly espousing Miss Silvester's interests--was
+manifestly impossible.
+
+The first thing to be done--and that instantly--was to inform Blanche
+that she was discovered, and to forbid her to stir in the matter.
+
+Lady Lundie rang the bell twice--thus intimating, according to the laws
+of the household, that she required the attendance of her own maid.
+She then turned to the cook--still waiting her pleasure, with stony
+composure, slate in hand.
+
+"You have done wrong," said her ladyship, severely. "I am your mistress.
+You are bound to answer your mistress--"
+
+Hester Dethridge bowed her head, in icy acknowledgment of the principle
+laid down--so far.
+
+The bow was an interruption. Lady Lundie resented it.
+
+"But Miss Blanche is _not_ your mistress," she went on, sternly. "You
+are very much to blame for answering Miss Blanche's inquiries about Miss
+Silvester."
+
+Hester Dethridge, perfectly unmoved, wrote her justification on her
+slate, in two stiff sentences: "I had no orders _not_ to answer. I keep
+nobody's secrets but my own."
+
+That reply settled the question of the cook's dismissal--the question
+which had been pending for months past.
+
+"You are an insolent woman! I have borne with you long enough--I will
+bear with you no longer. When your month is up, you go!"
+
+In those words Lady Lundie dismissed Hester Dethridge from her service.
+
+Not the slightest change passed over the sinister tranquillity of
+the cook. She bowed her head again, in acknowledgment of the sentence
+pronounced on her--dropped her slate at her side--turned about--and left
+the room. The woman was alive in the world, and working in the world;
+and yet (so far as all human interests were concerned) she was as
+completely out of the world as if she had been screwed down in her
+coffin, and laid in her grave.
+
+Lady Lundie's maid came into the room as Hester left it.
+
+"Go up stairs to Miss Blanche," said her mistress, "and say I want her
+here. Wait a minute!" She paused, and considered. Blanche might decline
+to submit to her step-mother's interference with her. It might be
+necessary to appeal to the higher authority of her guardian. "Do you
+know where Sir Patrick is?" asked Lady Lundie.
+
+"I heard Simpson say, my lady, that Sir Patrick was at the stables."
+
+"Send Simpson with a message. My compliments to Sir Patrick--and I wish
+to see him immediately."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The preparations for the departure to the shooting-cottage were just
+completed; and the one question that remained to be settled was, whether
+Sir Patrick could accompany the party--when the man-servant appeared
+with the message from his mistress.
+
+"Will you give me a quarter of an hour, gentlemen?" asked Sir Patrick.
+"In that time I shall know for certain whether I can go with you or
+not."
+
+As a matter of course, the guests decided to wait. The younger men
+among them (being Englishmen) naturally occupied their leisure time in
+betting. Would Sir Patrick get the better of the domestic crisis? or
+would the domestic crisis get the better of Sir Patrick? The domestic
+crisis was backed, at two to one, to win.
+
+Punctually at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, Sir Patrick
+reappeared. The domestic crisis had betrayed the blind confidence which
+youth and inexperience had placed in it. Sir Patrick had won the day.
+
+"Things are settled and quiet, gentlemen; and I am able to accompany
+you," he said. "There are two ways to the shooting-cottage. One--the
+longest--passes by the inn at Craig Fernie. I am compelled to ask you
+to go with me by that way. While you push on to the cottage, I must drop
+behind, and say a word to a person who is staying at the inn."
+
+He had quieted Lady Lundie--he had even quieted Blanche. But it was
+evidently on the condition that he was to go to Craig Fernie in their
+places, and to see Anne Silvester himself. Without a word more
+of explanation he mounted his horse, and led the way out. The
+shooting-party left Windygates.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND SCENE.--THE INN.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE NINTH.
+
+ANNE.
+
+"YE'LL just permit me to remind ye again, young leddy, that the hottle's
+full--exceptin' only this settin'-room, and the bedchamber yonder
+belonging to it."
+
+So spoke "Mistress Inchbare," landlady of the Craig Fernie Inn, to Anne
+Silvester, standing in the parlor, purse in hand, and offering the price
+of the two rooms before she claimed permission to occupy them.
+
+The time of the afternoon was about the time when Geoffrey Delamayn had
+started in the train, on his journey to London. About the time also,
+when Arnold Brinkworth had crossed the moor, and was mounting the first
+rising ground which led to the inn.
+
+Mistress Inchbare was tall and thin, and decent and dry. Mistress
+Inchbare's unlovable hair clung fast round her head in wiry little
+yellow curls. Mistress Inchbare's hard bones showed themselves, like
+Mistress Inchbare's hard Presbyterianism, without any concealment or
+compromise. In short, a savagely-respectable woman who plumed herself on
+presiding over a savagely-respectable inn.
+
+There was no competition to interfere with Mistress Inchbare. She
+regulated her own prices, and made her own rules. If you objected to
+her prices, and revolted from her rules, you were free to go. In other
+words, you were free to cast yourself, in the capacity of houseless
+wanderer, on the scanty mercy of a Scotch wilderness. The village of
+Craig Fernie was a collection of hovels. The country about Craig Fernie,
+mountain on one side and moor on the other, held no second house of
+public entertainment, for miles and miles round, at any point of the
+compass. No rambling individual but the helpless British Tourist wanted
+food and shelter from strangers in that part of Scotland; and nobody
+but Mistress Inchbare had food and shelter to sell. A more thoroughly
+independent person than this was not to be found on the face of the
+hotel-keeping earth. The most universal of all civilized terrors--the
+terror of appearing unfavorably in the newspapers--was a sensation
+absolutely unknown to the Empress of the Inn. You lost your temper,
+and threatened to send her bill for exhibition in the public journals.
+Mistress Inchbare raised no objection to your taking any course you
+pleased with it. "Eh, man! send the bill whar' ye like, as long as ye
+pay it first. There's nae such thing as a newspaper ever darkens my
+doors. Ye've got the Auld and New Testaments in your bedchambers, and
+the natural history o' Pairthshire on the coffee-room table--and if
+that's no' reading eneugh for ye, ye may een gae back South again, and
+get the rest of it there."
+
+This was the inn at which Anne Silvester had appeared alone, with
+nothing but a little bag in her hand. This was the woman whose
+reluctance to receive her she innocently expected to overcome by showing
+her purse.
+
+"Mention your charge for the rooms," she said. "I am willing to pay for
+them beforehand."
+
+Her majesty, Mrs. Inchbare, never even looked at her subject's poor
+little purse.
+
+"It just comes to this, mistress," she answered. "I'm no' free to tak'
+your money, if I'm no' free to let ye the last rooms left in the hoose.
+The Craig Fernie hottle is a faimily hottle--and has its ain gude name
+to keep up. Ye're ower-well-looking, my young leddy, to be traveling
+alone."
+
+The time had been when Anne would have answered sharply enough. The hard
+necessities of her position made her patient now.
+
+"I have already told you," she said, "my husband is coming here to
+join me." She sighed wearily as she repeated her ready-made story--and
+dropped into the nearest chair, from sheer inability to stand any
+longer.
+
+Mistress Inchbare looked at her, with the exact measure of compassionate
+interest which she might have shown if she had been looking at a stray
+dog who had fallen footsore at the door of the inn.
+
+"Weel! weel! sae let it be. Bide awhile, and rest ye. We'll no' chairge
+ye for that--and we'll see if your husband comes. I'll just let the
+rooms, mistress, to _him,_, instead o' lettin' them to _you._ And, sae,
+good-morrow t' ye." With that final announcement of her royal will and
+pleasure, the Empress of the Inn withdrew.
+
+Anne made no reply. She watched the landlady out of the room--and then
+struggled to control herself no longer. In her position, suspicion was
+doubly insult. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes; and the
+heart-ache wrung her, poor soul--wrung her without mercy.
+
+A trifling noise in the room startled her. She looked up, and detected
+a man in a corner, dusting the furniture, and apparently acting in the
+capacity of attendant at the inn. He had shown her into the parlor on
+her arrival; but he had remained so quietly in the room that she had
+never noticed him since, until that moment.
+
+He was an ancient man--with one eye filmy and blind, and one eye moist
+and merry. His head was bald; his feet were gouty; his nose was justly
+celebrated as the largest nose and the reddest nose in that part of
+Scotland. The mild wisdom of years was expressed mysteriously in his
+mellow smile. In contact with this wicked world, his manner revealed
+that happy mixture of two extremes--the servility which just
+touches independence, and the independence which just touches
+servility--attained by no men in existence but Scotchmen. Enormous
+native impudence, which amused but never offended; immeasurable cunning,
+masquerading habitually under the double disguise of quaint prejudice
+and dry humor, were the solid moral foundations on which the character
+of this elderly person was built. No amount of whisky ever made him
+drunk; and no violence of bell-ringing ever hurried his movements. Such
+was the headwaiter at the Craig Fernie Inn; known, far and wide, to
+local fame, as "Maister Bishopriggs, Mistress Inchbare's right-hand
+man."
+
+"What are you doing there?" Anne asked, sharply.
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs turned himself about on his gouty feet; waved his duster
+gently in the air; and looked at Anne, with a mild, paternal smile.
+
+"Eh! Am just doostin' the things; and setin' the room in decent order
+for ye."
+
+"For _me?_ Did you hear what the landlady said?"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs advanced confidentially, and pointed with a very
+unsteady forefinger to the purse which Anne still held in her hand.
+
+"Never fash yoursel' aboot the landleddy!" said the sage chief of the
+Craig Fernie waiters. "Your purse speaks for you, my lassie. Pet it up!"
+cried Mr. Bishopriggs, waving temptation away from him with the duster.
+"In wi' it into yer pocket! Sae long as the warld's the warld, I'll
+uphaud it any where--while there's siller in the purse, there's gude in
+the woman!"
+
+Anne's patience, which had resisted harder trials, gave way at this.
+
+"What do you mean by speaking to me in that familiar manner?" she asked,
+rising angrily to her feet again.
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs tucked his duster under his arm, and proceeded to
+satisfy Anne that he shared the landlady's view of her position, without
+sharing the severity of the landlady's principles. "There's nae man
+livin'," said Mr. Bishopriggs, "looks with mair indulgence at human
+frailty than my ain sel'. Am I no' to be familiar wi' ye--when I'm auld
+eneugh to be a fether to ye, and ready to be a fether to ye till further
+notice? Hech! hech! Order your bit dinner lassie. Husband or no husband,
+ye've got a stomach, and ye must een eat. There's fesh and there's
+fowl--or, maybe, ye'll be for the sheep's head singit, when they've done
+with it at the tabble dot?"
+
+There was but one way of getting rid of him: "Order what you like," Anne
+said, "and leave the room." Mr. Bishopriggs highly approved of the first
+half of the sentence, and totally overlooked the second.
+
+"Ay, ay--just pet a' yer little interests in my hands; it's the wisest
+thing ye can do. Ask for Maister Bishopriggs (that's me) when ye want a
+decent 'sponsible man to gi' ye a word of advice. Set ye doon again--set
+ye doon. And don't tak' the arm-chair. Hech! hech! yer husband will
+be coming, ye know, and he's sure to want it!" With that seasonable
+pleasantry the venerable Bishopriggs winked, and went out.
+
+Anne looked at her watch. By her calculation it was not far from the
+hour when Geoffrey might be expected to arrive at the inn, assuming
+Geoffrey to have left Windygates at the time agreed on. A little more
+patience, and the landlady's scruples would be satisfied, and the ordeal
+would be at an end.
+
+Could she have met him nowhere else than at this barbarous house, and
+among these barbarous people?
+
+No. Outside the doors of Windygates she had not a friend to help her in
+all Scotland. There was no place at her disposal but the inn; and she
+had only to be thankful that it occupied a sequestered situation, and
+was not likely to be visited by any of Lady Lundie's friends. Whatever
+the risk might be, the end in view justified her in confronting it. Her
+whole future depended on Geoffrey's making an honest woman of her. Not
+her future with _him_--that way there was no hope; that way her life was
+wasted. Her future with Blanche--she looked forward to nothing now but
+her future with Blanche.
+
+Her spirits sank lower and lower. The tears rose again. It would only
+irritate him if he came and found her crying. She tried to divert her
+mind by looking about the room.
+
+There was very little to see. Except that it was solidly built of good
+sound stone, the Craig Fernie hotel differed in no other important
+respect from the average of second-rate English inns. There was the
+usual slippery black sofa--constructed to let you slide when you wanted
+to rest. There was the usual highly-varnished arm-chair, expressly
+manufactured to test the endurance of the human spine. There was the
+usual paper on the walls, of the pattern designed to make your eyes ache
+and your head giddy. There were the usual engravings, which humanity
+never tires of contemplating. The Royal Portrait, in the first place of
+honor. The next greatest of all human beings--the Duke of Wellington--in
+the second place of honor. The third greatest of all human beings--the
+local member of parliament--in the third place of honor; and a hunting
+scene, in the dark. A door opposite the door of admission from the
+passage opened into the bedroom; and a window at the side looked out on
+the open space in front of the hotel, and commanded a view of the vast
+expanse of the Craig Fernie moor, stretching away below the rising
+ground on which the house was built.
+
+Anne turned in despair from the view in the room to the view from the
+window. Within the last half hour it had changed for the worse. The
+clouds had gathered; the sun was hidden; the light on the landscape was
+gray and dull. Anne turned from the window, as she had turned from the
+room. She was just making the hopeless attempt to rest her weary limbs
+on the sofa, when the sound of voices and footsteps in the passage
+caught her ear.
+
+Was Geoffrey's voice among them? No.
+
+Were the strangers coming in?
+
+The landlady had declined to let her have the rooms: it was quite
+possible that the strangers might be coming to look at them. There was
+no knowing who they might be. In the impulse of the moment she flew to
+the bedchamber and locked herself in.
+
+The door from the passage opened, and Arnold Brinkworth--shown in by Mr.
+Bishopriggs--entered the sitting-room.
+
+"Nobody here!" exclaimed Arnold, looking round. "Where is she?"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs pointed to the bedroom door. "Eh! yer good leddy's joost
+in the bedchamber, nae doot!"
+
+Arnold started. He had felt no difficulty (when he and Geoffrey had
+discussed the question at Windygates) about presenting himself at
+the inn in the assumed character of Anne's husband. But the result of
+putting the deception in practice was, to say the least of it, a little
+embarrassing at first. Here was the waiter describing Miss Silvester
+as his "good lady;" and leaving it (most naturally and properly) to the
+"good lady's" husband to knock at her bedroom door, and tell her that he
+was there. In despair of knowing what else to do at the moment, Arnold
+asked for the landlady, whom he had not seen on arriving at the inn.
+
+"The landleddy's just tottin' up the ledgers o' the hottle in her ain
+room," answered Mr. Bishopriggs. "She'll be here anon--the wearyful
+woman!--speerin' who ye are and what ye are, and takin' a' the business
+o' the hoose on her ain pair o' shouthers." He dropped the subject of
+the landlady, and put in a plea for himself. "I ha' lookit after a' the
+leddy's little comforts, Sir," he whispered. "Trust in me! trust in me!"
+
+Arnold's attention was absorbed in the very serious difficulty of
+announcing his arrival to Anne. "How am I to get her out?" he said to
+himself, with a look of perplexity directed at the bedroom door.
+
+He had spoken loud enough for the waiter to hear him. Arnold's look of
+perplexity was instantly reflected on the face of Mr. Bishopriggs.
+The head-waiter at Craig Fernie possessed an immense experience of the
+manners and customs of newly-married people on their honeymoon trip.
+He had been a second father (with excellent pecuniary results) to
+innumerable brides and bridegrooms. He knew young married couples in
+all their varieties:--The couples who try to behave as if they had been
+married for many years; the couples who attempt no concealment, and
+take advice from competent authorities about them. The couples who are
+bashfully talkative before third persons; the couples who are bashfully
+silent under similar circumstances. The couples who don't know what
+to do, the couples who wish it was over; the couples who must never
+be intruded upon without careful preliminary knocking at the door; the
+couples who _can_ eat and drink in the intervals of "bliss," and the
+other couples who _can't._ But the bridegroom who stood helpless on
+one side of the door, and the bride who remained locked in on the other,
+were new varieties of the nuptial species, even in the vast experience
+of Mr. Bishopriggs himself.
+
+"Hoo are ye to get her oot?" he repeated. "I'll show ye hoo!" He
+advanced as rapidly as his gouty feet would let him, and knocked at
+the bedroom door. "Eh, my leddy! here he is in flesh and bluid.
+Mercy preserve us! do ye lock the door of the nuptial chamber in your
+husband's face?"
+
+At that unanswerable appeal the lock was heard turning in the door. Mr.
+Bishopriggs winked at Arnold with his one available eye, and laid his
+forefinger knowingly along his enormous nose. "I'm away before she
+falls into your arms! Rely on it I'll no come in again without knocking
+first!"
+
+He left Arnold alone in the room. The bedroom door opened slowly by a
+few inches at a time. Anne's voice was just audible speaking cautiously
+behind it.
+
+"Is that you, Geoffrey?"
+
+Arnold's heart began to beat fast, in anticipation of the disclosure
+which was now close at hand. He knew neither what to say or do--he
+remained silent.
+
+Anne repeated the question in louder tones:
+
+"Is that you?"
+
+There was the certain prospect of alarming her, if some reply was not
+given. There was no help for it. Come what come might, Arnold answered,
+in a whisper:
+
+"Yes."
+
+The door was flung wide open. Anne Silvester appeared on the threshold,
+confronting him.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth!!!" she exclaimed, standing petrified with astonishment.
+
+For a moment more neither of them spoke. Anne advanced one step into
+the sitting-room, and put the next inevitable question, with an
+instantaneous change from surprise to suspicion.
+
+"What do you want here?"
+
+Geoffrey's letter represented the only possible excuse for Arnold's
+appearance in that place, and at that time.
+
+"I have got a letter for you," he said--and offered it to her.
+
+She was instantly on her guard. They were little better than strangers
+to each other, as Arnold had said. A sickening presentiment of some
+treachery on Geoffrey's part struck cold to her heart. She refused to
+take the letter.
+
+"I expect no letter," she said. "Who told you I was here?" She put
+the question, not only with a tone of suspicion, but with a look of
+contempt. The look was not an easy one for a man to bear. It required
+a momentary exertion of self-control on Arnold's part, before he could
+trust himself to answer with due consideration for her. "Is there a
+watch set on my actions?" she went on, with rising anger. "And are _you_
+the spy?"
+
+"You haven't known me very long, Miss Silvester," Arnold answered,
+quietly. "But you ought to know me better than to say that. I am the
+bearer of a letter from Geoffrey."
+
+She was an the point of following his example, and of speaking of
+Geoffrey by his Christian name, on her side. But she checked herself,
+before the word had passed her lips.
+
+"Do you mean Mr. Delamayn?" she asked, coldly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What occasion have _I_ for a letter from Mr. Delamayn?"
+
+She was determined to acknowledge nothing--she kept him obstinately at
+arm's-length. Arnold did, as a matter of instinct, what a man of larger
+experience would have done, as a matter of calculation--he closed with
+her boldly, then and there.
+
+"Miss Silvester! it's no use beating about the bush. If you won't take
+the letter, you force me to speak out. I am here on a very unpleasant
+errand. I begin to wish, from the bottom of my heart, I had never
+undertaken it."
+
+A quick spasm of pain passed across her face. She was beginning, dimly
+beginning, to understand him. He hesitated. His generous nature shrank
+from hurting her.
+
+"Go on," she said, with an effort.
+
+"Try not to be angry with me, Miss Silvester. Geoffrey and I are old
+friends. Geoffrey knows he can trust me--"
+
+"Trust you?" she interposed. "Stop!"
+
+Arnold waited. She went on, speaking to herself, not to him.
+
+"When I was in the other room I asked if Geoffrey was there. And this
+man answered for him." She sprang forward with a cry of horror.
+
+"Has he told you--"
+
+"For God's sake, read his letter!"
+
+She violently pushed back the hand with which Arnold once more offered
+the letter. "You don't look at me! He _has_ told you!"
+
+"Read his letter," persisted Arnold. "In justice to him, if you won't in
+justice to me."
+
+The situation was too painful to be endured. Arnold looked at her, this
+time, with a man's resolution in his eyes--spoke to her, this time, with
+a man's resolution in his voice. She took the letter.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir," she said, with a sudden humiliation of tone
+and manner, inexpressibly shocking, inexpressibly pitiable to see. "I
+understand my position at last. I am a woman doubly betrayed. Please to
+excuse what I said to you just now, when I supposed myself to have some
+claim on your respect. Perhaps you will grant me your pity? I can ask
+for nothing more."
+
+Arnold was silent. Words were useless in the face of such utter
+self-abandonment as this. Any man living--even Geoffrey himself--must
+have felt for her at that moment.
+
+She looked for the first time at the letter. She opened it on the wrong
+side. "My own letter!" she said to herself. "In the hands of another
+man!"
+
+"Look at the last page," said Arnold.
+
+She turned to the last page, and read the hurried penciled lines.
+"Villain! villain! villain!" At the third repetition of the word, she
+crushed the letter in the palm of her hand, and flung it from her to the
+other end of the room. The instant after, the fire that had flamed up in
+her died out. Feebly and slowly she reached out her hand to the nearest
+chair, and sat down in it with her back to Arnold. "He has deserted me!"
+was all she said. The words fell low and quiet on the silence: they were
+the utterance of an immeasurable despair.
+
+"You are wrong!" exclaimed Arnold. "Indeed, indeed you are wrong! It's
+no excuse--it's the truth. I was present when the message came about his
+father."
+
+She never heeded him, and never moved. She only repeated the words
+
+"He has deserted me!"
+
+"Don't take it in that way!" pleaded Arnold--"pray don't! It's dreadful
+to hear you; it is indeed. I am sure he has _not_ deserted you." There
+was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to
+stone. It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as
+this. In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair
+to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder. "Come!" he said, in
+his single-hearted, boyish way. "Cheer up a little!"
+
+She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.
+
+"Didn't you say he had told you every thing?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't you despise a woman like me?"
+
+Arnold's heart went back, at that dreadful question, to the one woman
+who was eternally sacred to him--to the woman from whose bosom he had
+drawn the breath of life.
+
+"Does the man live," he said, "who can think of his mother--and despise
+women?"
+
+That answer set the prisoned misery in her free. She gave him her
+hand--she faintly thanked him. The merciful tears came to her at last.
+
+Arnold rose, and turned away to the window in despair. "I mean well," he
+said. "And yet I only distress her!"
+
+She heard him, and straggled to compose herself "No," she answered, "you
+comfort me. Don't mind my crying--I'm the better for it." She looked
+round at him gratefully. "I won't distress you, Mr. Brinkworth. I ought
+to thank you--and I do. Come back or I shall think you are angry with
+me." Arnold went back to her. She gave him her hand once more. "One
+doesn't understand people all at once," she said, simply. "I thought you
+were like other men--I didn't know till to-day how kind you could be.
+Did you walk here?" she added, suddenly, with an effort to change
+the subject. "Are you tired? I have not been kindly received at this
+place--but I'm sure I may offer you whatever the inn affords."
+
+It was impossible not to feel for her--it was impossible not to be
+interested in her. Arnold's honest longing to help her expressed itself
+a little too openly when he spoke next. "All I want, Miss Silvester, is
+to be of some service to you, if I can," he said. "Is there any thing
+I can do to make your position here more comfortable? You will stay at
+this place, won't you? Geoffrey wishes it."
+
+She shuddered, and looked away. "Yes! yes!" she answered, hurriedly.
+
+"You will hear from Geoffrey," Arnold went on, "to-morrow or next day. I
+know he means to write."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, don't speak of him any more!" she cried out. "How do
+you think I can look you in the face--" Her cheeks flushed deep, and her
+eyes rested on him with a momentary firmness. "Mind this! I am his wife,
+if promises can make me his wife! He has pledged his word to me by all
+that is sacred!" She checked herself impatiently. "What am I saying?
+What interest can _you_ have in this miserable state of things? Don't
+let us talk of it! I have something else to say to you. Let us go back
+to my troubles here. Did you see the landlady when you came in?"
+
+"No. I only saw the waiter."
+
+"The landlady has made some absurd difficulty about letting me have
+these rooms because I came here alone."
+
+"She won't make any difficulty now," said Arnold. "I have settled that."
+
+"_You!_"
+
+Arnold smiled. After what had passed, it was an indescribable relief to
+him to see the humorous side of his own position at the inn.
+
+"Certainly," he answered. "When I asked for the lady who had arrived
+here alone this afternoon--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was told, in your interests, to ask for her as my wife."
+
+Anne looked at him--in alarm as well as in surprise.
+
+"You asked for me as your wife?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes. I haven't done wrong--have I? As I understood it, there was
+no alternative. Geoffrey told me you had settled with him to present
+yourself here as a married lady, whose husband was coming to join her."
+
+"I thought of _him_ when I said that. I never thought of _you_."
+
+"Natural enough. Still, it comes to the same thing (doesn't it?) with
+the people of this house."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I will try and explain myself a little better. Geoffrey said your
+position here depended on my asking for you at the door (as _he_ would
+have asked for you if he had come) in the character of your husband."
+
+"He had no right to say that."
+
+"No right? After what you have told me of the landlady, just think
+what might have happened if he had _not_ said it! I haven't had much
+experience myself of these things. But--allow me to ask--wouldn't it
+have been a little awkward (at my age) if I had come here and inquired
+for you as a friend? Don't you think, in that case, the landlady might
+have made some additional difficulty about letting you have the rooms?"
+
+It was beyond dispute that the landlady would have refused to let the
+rooms at all. It was equally plain that the deception which Arnold
+had practiced on the people of the inn was a deception which Anne had
+herself rendered necessary, in her own interests. She was not to blame;
+it was clearly impossible for her to have foreseen such an event as
+Geoffrey's departure for London. Still, she felt an uneasy sense
+of responsibility--a vague dread of what might happen next. She sat
+nervously twisting her handkerchief in her lap, and made no answer.
+
+"Don't suppose I object to this little stratagem," Arnold went on. "I am
+serving my old friend, and I am helping the lady who is soon to be his
+wife."
+
+Anne rose abruptly to her feet, and amazed him by a very unexpected
+question.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth," she said, "forgive me the rudeness of something I am
+about to say to you. When are you going away?"
+
+Arnold burst out laughing.
+
+"When I am quite sure I can do nothing more to assist you," he answered.
+
+"Pray don't think of _me_ any longer."
+
+"In your situation! who else am I to think of?"
+
+Anne laid her hand earnestly on his arm, and answered:
+
+"Blanche!"
+
+"Blanche?" repeated Arnold, utterly at a loss to understand her.
+
+"Yes--Blanche. She found time to tell me what had passed between you
+this morning before I left Windygates. I know you have made her an
+offer: I know you are engaged to be married to her."
+
+Arnold was delighted to hear it. He had been merely unwilling to leave
+her thus far. He was absolutely determined to stay with her now.
+
+"Don't expect me to go after that!" he said. "Come and sit down again,
+and let's talk about Blanche."
+
+Anne declined impatiently, by a gesture. Arnold was too deeply
+interested in the new topic to take any notice of it.
+
+"You know all about her habits and her tastes," he went on, "and what
+she likes, and what she dislikes. It's most important that I should talk
+to you about her. When we are husband and wife, Blanche is to have
+all her own way in every thing. That's my idea of the Whole Duty of
+Man--when Man is married. You are still standing? Let me give you a
+chair."
+
+It was cruel--under other circumstances it would have been
+impossible--to disappoint him. But the vague fear of consequences which
+had taken possession of Anne was not to be trifled with. She had no
+clear conception of the risk (and it is to be added, in justice to
+Geoffrey, that _he_ had no clear conception of the risk) on which
+Arnold had unconsciously ventured, in undertaking his errand to the inn.
+Neither of them had any adequate idea (few people have) of the infamous
+absence of all needful warning, of all decent precaution and restraint,
+which makes the marriage law of Scotland a trap to catch unmarried men
+and women, to this day. But, while Geoffrey's mind was incapable of
+looking beyond the present emergency, Anne's finer intelligence told her
+that a country which offered such facilities for private marriage as the
+facilities of which she had proposed to take advantage in her own case,
+was not a country in which a man could act as Arnold had acted, without
+danger of some serious embarrassment following as the possible result.
+With this motive to animate her, she resolutely declined to take the
+offered chair, or to enter into the proposed conversation.
+
+"Whatever we have to say about Blanche, Mr. Brinkworth, must be said at
+some fitter time. I beg you will leave me."
+
+"Leave you!"
+
+"Yes. Leave me to the solitude that is best for me, and to the sorrow
+that I have deserved. Thank you--and good-by."
+
+Arnold made no attempt to disguise his disappointment and surprise.
+
+"If I must go, I must," he said, "But why are you in such a hurry?"
+
+"I don't want you to call me your wife again before the people of this
+inn."
+
+"Is _that_ all? What on earth are you afraid of?"
+
+She was unable fully to realize her own apprehensions. She was doubly
+unable to express them in words. In her anxiety to produce some reason
+which might prevail on him to go, she drifted back into that very
+conversation about Blanche into which she had declined to enter but the
+moment before.
+
+"I have reasons for being afraid," she said. "One that I can't give; and
+one that I can. Suppose Blanche heard of what you have done? The longer
+you stay here--the more people you see--the more chance there is that
+she _might_ hear of it."
+
+"And what if she did?" asked Arnold, in his own straightforward way. "Do
+you think she would be angry with me for making myself useful to _you?_"
+
+"Yes," rejoined Anne, sharply, "if she was jealous of me."
+
+Arnold's unlimited belief in Blanche expressed itself, without the
+slightest compromise, in two words:
+
+"That's impossible!"
+
+Anxious as she was, miserable as she was, a faint smile flitted over
+Anne's face.
+
+"Sir Patrick would tell you, Mr. Brinkworth, that nothing is impossible
+where women are concerned." She dropped her momentary lightness of tone,
+and went on as earnestly as ever. "You can't put yourself in Blanche's
+place--I can. Once more, I beg you to go. I don't like your coming here,
+in this way! I don't like it at all!"
+
+She held out her hand to take leave. At the same moment there was a loud
+knock at the door of the room.
+
+Anne sank into the chair at her side, and uttered a faint cry of alarm.
+Arnold, perfectly impenetrable to all sense of his position, asked what
+there was to frighten her--and answered the knock in the two customary
+words:
+
+"Come in!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TENTH.
+
+MR. BISHOPRIGGS.
+
+THE knock at the door was repeated--a louder knock than before.
+
+"Are you deaf?" shouted Arnold.
+
+The door opened, little by little, an inch at a time. Mr. Bishopriggs
+appeared mysteriously, with the cloth for dinner over his arm, and with
+his second in command behind him, bearing "the furnishing of the table"
+(as it was called at Craig Fernie) on a tray.
+
+"What the deuce were you waiting for?" asked Arnold. "I told you to come
+in."
+
+"And _I_ tauld _you,_" answered Mr. Bishopriggs, "that I wadna come in
+without knocking first. Eh, man!" he went on, dismissing his second in
+command, and laying the cloth with his own venerable hands, "d'ye think
+I've lived in this hottle in blinded eegnorance of hoo young married
+couples pass the time when they're left to themselves? Twa knocks at the
+door--and an unco trouble in opening it, after that--is joost the least
+ye can do for them! Whar' do ye think, noo, I'll set the places for you
+and your leddy there?"
+
+Anne walked away to the window, in undisguised disgust. Arnold found Mr.
+Bishopriggs to be quite irresistible. He answered, humoring the joke,
+
+"One at the top and one at the bottom of the table, I suppose?"
+
+"One at tap and one at bottom?" repeated Mr. Bishopriggs, in high
+disdain. "De'il a bit of it! Baith yer chairs as close together as
+chairs can be. Hech! hech!--haven't I caught 'em, after goodness knows
+hoo many preleeminary knocks at the door, dining on their husbands'
+knees, and steemulating a man's appetite by feeding him at the fork's
+end like a child? Eh!" sighed the sage of Craig Fernie, "it's a short
+life wi' that nuptial business, and a merry one! A mouth for yer billin'
+and cooin'; and a' the rest o' yer days for wondering ye were ever such
+a fule, and wishing it was a' to be done ower again.--Ye'll be for a
+bottle o' sherry wine, nae doot? and a drap toddy afterwards, to do yer
+digestin' on?"
+
+Arnold nodded--and then, in obedience to a signal from Anne, joined her
+at the window. Mr. Bishopriggs looked after them attentively--observed
+that they were talking in whispers--and approved of that proceeding, as
+representing another of the established customs of young married couples
+at inns, in the presence of third persons appointed to wait on them.
+
+"Ay! ay!" he said, looking over his shoulder at Arnold, "gae to your
+deerie! gae to your deerie! and leave a' the solid business o' life to
+Me. Ye've Screepture warrant for it. A man maun leave fether and mother
+(I'm yer fether), and cleave to his wife. My certie! 'cleave' is
+a strong word--there's nae sort o' doot aboot it, when it comes
+to 'cleaving!'" He wagged his head thoughtfully, and walked to the
+side-table in a corner, to cut the bread.
+
+As he took up the knife, his one wary eye detected a morsel of crumpled
+paper, lying lost between the table and the wall. It was the letter from
+Geoffrey, which Anne had flung from her, in the first indignation of
+reading it--and which neither she nor Arnold had thought of since.
+
+"What's that I see yonder?" muttered Mr. Bishopriggs, under his breath.
+"Mair litter in the room, after I've doosted and tidied it wi' my ain
+hands!"
+
+He picked up the crumpled paper, and partly opened it. "Eh! what's here?
+Writing on it in ink? and writing on it in pencil? Who may this belong
+to?" He looked round cautiously toward Arnold and Anne. They were both
+still talking in whispers, and both standing with their backs to him,
+looking out of the window. "Here it is, clean forgotten and dune with!"
+thought Mr. Bishopriggs. "Noo what would a fule do, if he fund this?
+A fule wad light his pipe wi' it, and then wonder whether he wadna ha'
+dune better to read it first. And what wad a wise man do, in a seemilar
+position?" He practically answered that question by putting the letter
+into his pocket. It might be worth keeping, or it might not; five
+minutes' private examination of it would decide the alternative, at the
+first convenient opportunity. "Am gaun' to breeng the dinner in!" he
+called out to Arnold. "And, mind ye, there's nae knocking at the door
+possible, when I've got the tray in baith my hands, and mairs the pity,
+the gout in baith my feet." With that friendly warning, Mr. Bishopriggs
+went his way to the regions of the kitchen.
+
+Arnold continued his conversation with Anne in terms which showed that
+the question of his leaving the inn had been the question once more
+discussed between them while they were standing at the window.
+
+"You see we can't help it," he said. "The waiter has gone to bring the
+dinner in. What will they think in the house, if I go away already, and
+leave 'my wife' to dine alone?"
+
+It was so plainly necessary to keep up appearances for the present,
+that there was nothing more to be said. Arnold was committing a
+serious imprudence--and yet, on this occasion, Arnold was right. Anne's
+annoyance at feeling that conclusion forced on her produced the first
+betrayal of impatience which she had shown yet. She left Arnold at the
+window, and flung herself on the sofa. "A curse seems to follow me!"
+she thought, bitterly. "This will end ill--and I shall be answerable for
+it!"
+
+In the mean time Mr. Bishopriggs had found the dinner in the kitchen,
+ready, and waiting for him. Instead of at once taking the tray on which
+it was placed into the sitting-room, he conveyed it privately into his
+own pantry, and shut the door.
+
+"Lie ye there, my freend, till the spare moment comes--and I'll look
+at ye again," he said, putting the letter away carefully in the
+dresser-drawer. "Noo aboot the dinner o' they twa turtle-doves in the
+parlor?" he continued, directing his attention to the dinner tray. "I
+maun joost see that the cook's 's dune her duty--the creatures are no'
+capable o' decidin' that knotty point for their ain selves." He took off
+one of the covers, and picked bits, here and there, out of the dish with
+the fork, "Eh! eh! the collops are no' that bad!" He took off another
+cover, and shook his head in solemn doubt. "Here's the green meat. I
+doot green meat's windy diet for a man at my time o' life!" He put the
+cover on again, and tried the next dish. "The fesh? What the de'il does
+the woman fry the trout for? Boil it next time, ye betch, wi' a pinch
+o' saut and a spunefu' o' vinegar." He drew the cork from a bottle of
+sherry, and decanted the wine. "The sherry wine?" he said, in tones of
+deep feeling, holding the decanter up to the light. "Hoo do I know but
+what it may be corkit? I maun taste and try. It's on my conscience,
+as an honest man, to taste and try." He forthwith relieved his
+conscience--copiously. There was a vacant space, of no inconsiderable
+dimensions, left in the decanter. Mr. Bishopriggs gravely filled it up
+from the water-bottle. "Eh! it's joost addin' ten years to the age
+o' the wine. The turtle-doves will be nane the waur--and I mysel' am
+a glass o' sherry the better. Praise Providence for a' its maircies!"
+Having relieved himself of that devout aspiration, he took up the tray
+again, and decided on letting the turtle-doves have their dinner.
+
+The conversation in the parlor (dropped for the moment) had been
+renewed, in the absence of Mr. Bishopriggs. Too restless to remain
+long in one place, Anne had risen again from the sofa, and had rejoined
+Arnold at the window.
+
+"Where do your friends at Lady Lundie's believe you to be now?" she
+asked, abruptly.
+
+"I am believed," replied Arnold, "to be meeting my tenants, and taking
+possession of my estate."
+
+"How are you to get to your estate to-night?"
+
+"By railway, I suppose. By-the-by, what excuse am I to make for going
+away after dinner? We are sure to have the landlady in here before long.
+What will she say to my going off by myself to the train, and leaving
+'my wife' behind me?"
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth! that joke--if it _is_ a joke--is worn out!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Arnold.
+
+"You may leave your excuse to me," pursued Anne. "Do you go by the up
+train, or the down?"
+
+"By the up train."
+
+The door opened suddenly; and Mr. Bishopriggs appeared with the dinner.
+Anne nervously separated herself from Arnold. The one available eye of
+Mr. Bishopriggs followed her reproachfully, as he put the dishes on the
+table.
+
+"I warned ye baith, it was a clean impossibility to knock at the door
+this time. Don't blame me, young madam--don't blame _me!"_
+
+"Where will you sit?" asked Arnold, by way of diverting Anne's attention
+from the familiarities of Father Bishopriggs.
+
+"Any where!" she answered, impatiently; snatching up a chair, and
+placing it at the bottom of the table.
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs politely, but firmly, put the chair back again in its
+place.
+
+"Lord's sake! what are ye doin'? It's clean contrary to a' the laws
+and customs o' the honey-mune, to sit as far away from your husband as
+that!"
+
+He waved his persuasive napkin to one of the two chairs placed close
+together at the table.
+
+Arnold interfered once more, and prevented another outbreak of
+impatience from Anne.
+
+"What does it matter?" he said. "Let the man have his way."
+
+"Get it over as soon as you can," she returned. "I can't, and won't,
+bear it much longer."
+
+They took their places at the table, with Father Bishopriggs behind
+them, in the mixed character of major domo and guardian angel.
+
+"Here's the trout!" he cried, taking the cover off with a flourish.
+"Half an hour since, he was loupin' in the water. There he lies noo,
+fried in the dish. An emblem o' human life for ye! When ye can spare any
+leisure time from yer twa selves, meditate on that."
+
+Arnold took up the spoon, to give Anne one of the trout. Mr. Bishopriggs
+clapped the cover on the dish again, with a countenance expressive of
+devout horror.
+
+"Is there naebody gaun' to say grace?" he asked.
+
+"Come! come!" said Arnold. "The fish is getting cold."
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs piously closed his available eye, and held the cover
+firmly on the dish. "For what ye're gaun' to receive, may ye baith be
+truly thankful!" He opened his available eye, and whipped the cover off
+again. "My conscience is easy noo. Fall to! Fall to!"
+
+"Send him away!" said Anne. "His familiarity is beyond all endurance."
+
+"You needn't wait," said Arnold.
+
+"Eh! but I'm here to wait," objected Mr. Bishopriggs. "What's the use o'
+my gaun' away, when ye'll want me anon to change the plates for ye?"
+He considered for a moment (privately consulting his experience) and
+arrived at a satisfactory conclusion as to Arnold's motive for wanting
+to get rid of him. "Tak' her on yer knee," he whispered in Arnold's
+ear, "as soon as ye like! Feed him at the fork's end," he added to Anne,
+"whenever ye please! I'll think of something else, and look out at the
+proaspect." He winked--and went to the window.
+
+"Come! come!" said Arnold to Anne. "There's a comic side to all this.
+Try and see it as I do."
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs returned from the window, and announced the appearance
+of a new element of embarrassment in the situation at the inn.
+
+"My certie!" he said, "it's weel ye cam' when ye did. It's ill getting
+to this hottle in a storm."
+
+Anne started and looked round at him. "A storm coming!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Eh! ye're well hoosed here--ye needn't mind it. There's the cloud down
+the valley," he added, pointing out of the window, "coming up one way,
+when the wind's blawing the other. The storm's brewing, my leddy, when
+ye see that!"
+
+There was another knock at the door. As Arnold had predicted, the
+landlady made her appearance on the scene.
+
+"I ha' just lookit in, Sir," said Mrs. Inchbare, addressing herself
+exclusively to Arnold, "to see ye've got what ye want."
+
+"Oh! you are the landlady? Very nice, ma'am--very nice."
+
+Mistress Inchbare had her own private motive for entering the room, and
+came to it without further preface.
+
+"Ye'll excuse me, Sir," she proceeded. "I wasna in the way when ye cam'
+here, or I suld ha' made bauld to ask ye the question which I maun e'en
+ask noo. Am I to understand that ye hire these rooms for yersel', and
+this leddy here--yer wife?"
+
+Anne raised her head to speak. Arnold pressed her hand warningly, under
+the table, and silenced her.
+
+"Certainly," he said. "I take the rooms for myself, and this lady
+here--my wife!"
+
+Anne made a second attempt to speak.
+
+"This gentleman--" she began.
+
+Arnold stopped her for the second time.
+
+"This gentleman?" repeated Mrs. Inchbare, with a broad stare of
+surprise. "I'm only a puir woman, my leddy--d'ye mean yer husband here?"
+
+Arnold's warning hand touched Anne's, for the third time. Mistress
+Inchbare's eyes remained fixed on her in merciless inquiry. To have
+given utterance to the contradiction which trembled on her lips would
+have been to involve Arnold (after all that he had sacrificed for her)
+in the scandal which would inevitably follow--a scandal which would be
+talked of in the neighborhood, and which might find its way to Blanche's
+ears. White and cold, her eyes never moving from the table, she accepted
+the landlady's implied correction, and faintly repeated the words: "My
+husband."
+
+Mistress Inchbare drew a breath of virtuous relief, and waited for what
+Anne had to say next. Arnold came considerately to the rescue, and got
+her out of the room.
+
+"Never mind," he said to Anne; "I know what it is, and I'll see about
+it. She's always like this, ma'am, when a storm's coming," he went on,
+turning to the landlady. "No, thank you--I know how to manage her. Well
+send to you, if we want your assistance."
+
+"At yer ain pleasure, Sir," answered Mistress Inchbare. She turned, and
+apologized to Anne (under protest), with a stiff courtesy. "No offense,
+my leddy! Ye'll remember that ye cam' here alane, and that the hottle
+has its ain gude name to keep up." Having once more vindicated "the
+hottle," she made the long-desired move to the door, and left the room.
+
+"I'm faint!" Anne whispered. "Give me some water."
+
+There was no water on the table. Arnold ordered it of Mr.
+Bishopriggs--who had remained passive in the back-ground (a model of
+discreet attention) as long as the mistress was in the room.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth!" said Anne, when they were alone, "you are acting with
+inexcusable rashness. That woman's question was an impertinence. Why did
+you answer it? Why did you force me--?"
+
+She stopped, unable to finish the sentence. Arnold insisted on her
+drinking a glass of wine--and then defended himself with the patient
+consideration for her which he had shown from the first.
+
+"Why didn't I have the inn door shut in your face"--he asked, good
+humoredly--"with a storm coming on, and without a place in which you can
+take refuge? No, no, Miss Silvester! I don't presume to blame you for
+any scruples you may feel--but scruples are sadly out of place with such
+a woman as that landlady. I am responsible for your safety to Geoffrey;
+and Geoffrey expects to find you here. Let's change the subject. The
+water is a long time coming. Try another glass of wine. No? Well--here
+is Blanche's health" (he took some of the wine himself), "in the
+weakest sherry I ever drank in my life." As he set down his glass,
+Mr. Bishopriggs came in with the water. Arnold hailed him satirically.
+"Well? have you got the water? or have you used it all for the sherry?"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs stopped in the middle of the room, thunder-struck at the
+aspersion cast on the wine.
+
+"Is that the way ye talk of the auldest bottle o' sherry wine in
+Scotland?" he asked, gravely. "What's the warld coming to? The new
+generation's a foot beyond my fathoming. The maircies o' Providence, as
+shown to man in the choicest veentages o' Spain, are clean thrown away
+on 'em."
+
+"Have you brought the water?"
+
+"I ha' brought the water--and mair than the water. I ha' brought ye
+news from ootside. There's a company o' gentlemen on horseback, joost
+cantering by to what they ca' the shootin' cottage, a mile from this."
+
+"Well--and what have we got to do with it?"
+
+"Bide a wee! There's ane o' them has drawn bridle at the hottle, and
+he's speerin' after the leddy that cam' here alane. The leddy's your
+leddy, as sure as saxpence. I doot," said Mr. Bishopriggs, walking away
+to the window, "_that's_ what ye've got to do with it."
+
+Arnold looked at Anne.
+
+"Do you expect any body?"
+
+"Is it Geoffrey?"
+
+"Impossible. Geoffrey is on his way to London."
+
+"There he is, any way," resumed Mr. Bishopriggs, at the window. "He's
+loupin' down from his horse. He's turning this way. Lord save us!" he
+exclaimed, with a start of consternation, "what do I see? That incarnate
+deevil, Sir Paitrick himself!"
+
+Arnold sprang to his feet.
+
+"Do you mean Sir Patrick Lundie?"
+
+Anne ran to the window.
+
+"It _is_ Sir Patrick!" she said. "Hide yourself before he comes in!"
+
+"Hide myself?"
+
+"What will he think if he sees you with _me?"_
+
+He was Blanche's guardian, and he believed Arnold to be at that moment
+visiting his new property. What he would think was not difficult to
+foresee. Arnold turned for help to Mr. Bishopriggs.
+
+"Where can I go?"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs pointed to the bedroom door.
+
+"Whar' can ye go? There's the nuptial chamber!"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs expressed the utmost extremity of human amazement by a
+long whistle, on one note.
+
+"Whew! Is that the way ye talk o' the nuptial chamber already?"
+
+"Find me some other place--I'll make it worth your while."
+
+"Eh! there's my paintry! I trow that's some other place; and the door's
+at the end o' the passage."
+
+Arnold hurried out. Mr. Bishopriggs--evidently under the impression that
+the case before him was a case of elopement, with Sir Patrick mixed
+up in it in the capacity of guardian--addressed himself, in friendly
+confidence, to Anne.
+
+"My certie, mistress! it's ill wark deceivin' Sir Paitrick, if that's
+what ye've dune. Ye must know, I was ance a bit clerk body in his
+chambers at Embro--"
+
+The voice of Mistress Inchbare, calling for the head-waiter, rose shrill
+and imperative from the regions of the bar. Mr. Bishopriggs disappeared.
+Anne remained, standing helpless by the window. It was plain by this
+time that the place of her retreat had been discovered at Windygates.
+The one doubt to decide, now, was whether it would be wise or not to
+receive Sir Patrick, for the purpose of discovering whether he came as
+friend or enemy to the inn.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.
+
+SIR PATRICK.
+
+THE doubt was practically decided before Anne had determined what to do.
+She was still at the window when the sitting-room door was thrown open,
+and Sir Patrick appeared, obsequiously shown in by Mr. Bishopriggs.
+
+"Ye're kindly welcome, Sir Paitrick. Hech, Sirs! the sight of you is
+gude for sair eyne."
+
+Sir Patrick turned and looked at Mr. Bishopriggs--as he might have
+looked at some troublesome insect which he had driven out of the window,
+and which had returned on him again.
+
+"What, you scoundrel! have you drifted into an honest employment at
+last?"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs rubbed his hands cheerfully, and took his tone from his
+superior, with supple readiness,
+
+"Ye're always in the right of it, Sir Paitrick! Wut, raal wut in that
+aboot the honest employment, and me drifting into it. Lord's sake, Sir,
+hoo well ye wear!"
+
+Dismissing Mr. Bishopriggs by a sign, Sir Patrick advanced to Anne.
+
+"I am committing an intrusion, madam which must, I am afraid, appear
+unpardonable in your eyes," he said. "May I hope you will excuse me when
+I have made you acquainted with my motive?"
+
+He spoke with scrupulous politeness. His knowledge of Anne was of the
+slightest possible kind. Like other men, he had felt the attraction of
+her unaffected grace and gentleness on the few occasions when he had
+been in her company--and that was all. If he had belonged to the present
+generation he would, under the circumstances, have fallen into one of
+the besetting sins of England in these days--the tendency (to borrow an
+illustration from the stage) to "strike an attitude" in the presence
+of a social emergency. A man of the present period, in Sir Patrick's
+position, would have struck an attitude of (what is called) chivalrous
+respect; and would have addressed Anne in a tone of ready-made sympathy,
+which it was simply impossible for a stranger really to feel. Sir
+Patrick affected nothing of the sort. One of the besetting sins of _his_
+time was the habitual concealment of our better selves--upon the whole,
+a far less dangerous national error than the habitual advertisement of
+our better selves, which has become the practice, public and privately,
+of society in this age. Sir Patrick assumed, if anything, less sympathy
+on this occasion than he really felt. Courteous to all women, he was as
+courteous as usual to Anne--and no more.
+
+"I am quite at a loss, Sir, to know what brings you to this place. The
+servant here informs me that you are one of a party of gentlemen who
+have just passed by the inn, and who have all gone on except yourself."
+In those guarded terms Anne opened the interview with the unwelcome
+visitor, on her side.
+
+Sir Patrick admitted the fact, without betraying the slightest
+embarrassment.
+
+"The servant is quite right," he said. "I am one of the party. And I
+have purposely allowed them to go on to the keeper's cottage without
+me. Having admitted this, may I count on receiving your permission to
+explain the motive of my visit?"
+
+Necessarily suspicious of him, as coming from Windygates, Anne answered
+in few and formal words, as coldly as before.
+
+"Explain it, Sir Patrick, if you please, as briefly as possible."
+
+Sir Patrick bowed. He was not in the least offended; he was even (if the
+confession may be made without degrading him in the public estimation)
+privately amused. Conscious of having honestly presented himself at the
+inn in Anne's interests, as well as in the interests of the ladies at
+Windygates, it appealed to his sense of humor to find himself kept
+at arm's-length by the very woman whom he had come to benefit. The
+temptation was strong on him to treat his errand from his own whimsical
+point of view. He gravely took out his watch, and noted the time to a
+second, before he spoke again.
+
+"I have an event to relate in which you are interested," he said. "And
+I have two messages to deliver, which I hope you will not object to
+receive. The event I undertake to describe in one minute. The messages
+I promise to dispose of in two minutes more. Total duration of this
+intrusion on your time--three minutes."
+
+He placed a chair for Anne, and waited until she had permitted him, by a
+sign, to take a second chair for himself.
+
+"We will begin with the event," he resumed. "Your arrival at this place
+is no secret at Windygates. You were seen on the foot-road to Craig
+Fernie by one of the female servants. And the inference naturally drawn
+is, that you were on your way to the inn. It may be important for you to
+know this; and I have taken the liberty of mentioning it accordingly."
+He consulted his watch. "Event related. Time, one minute."
+
+He had excited her curiosity, to begin with. "Which of the women saw
+me?" she asked, impulsively.
+
+Sir Patrick (watch in hand) declined to prolong the interview by
+answering any incidental inquiries which might arise in the course of
+it.
+
+"Pardon me," he rejoined; "I am pledged to occupy three minutes only. I
+have no room for the woman. With your kind permission, I will get on to
+the messages next."
+
+Anne remained silent. Sir Patrick went on.
+
+"First message: 'Lady Lundie's compliments to her step-daughter's late
+governess--with whose married name she is not acquainted. Lady Lundie
+regrets to say that Sir Patrick, as head of the family, has threatened
+to return to Edinburgh, unless she consents to be guided by his
+advice in the course she pursues with the late governess. Lady Lundie,
+accordingly, foregoes her intention of calling at the Craig Fernie inn,
+to express her sentiments and make her inquiries in person, and commits
+to Sir Patrick the duty of expressing her sentiments; reserving to
+herself the right of making her inquiries at the next convenient
+opportunity. Through the medium of her brother-in-law, she begs to
+inform the late governess that all intercourse is at an end between
+them, and that she declines to act as reference in case of future
+emergency.'--Message textually correct. Expressive of Lady Lundie's view
+of your sudden departure from the house. Time, two minutes."
+
+Anne's color rose. Anne's pride was up in arms on the spot.
+
+"The impertinence of Lady Lundie's message is no more than I should
+have expected from her," she said. "I am only surprised at Sir Patrick's
+delivering it."
+
+"Sir Patrick's motives will appear presently," rejoined the incorrigible
+old gentleman. "Second message: 'Blanche's fondest love. Is dying to
+be acquainted with Anne's husband, and to be informed of Anne's married
+name. Feels indescribable anxiety and apprehension on Anne's account.
+Insists on hearing from Anne immediately. Longs, as she never longed
+for any thing yet, to order her pony-chaise and drive full gallop to
+the inn. Yields, under irresistible pressure, to t he exertion of her
+guardian's authority, and commits the expression of her feelings to Sir
+Patrick, who is a born tyrant, and doesn't in the least mind breaking
+other people's hearts.' Sir Patrick, speaking for himself, places his
+sister-in-law's view and his niece's view, side by side, before the lady
+whom he has now the honor of addressing, and on whose confidence he is
+especially careful not to intrude. Reminds the lady that his influence
+at Windygates, however strenuously he may exert it, is not likely to
+last forever. Requests her to consider whether his sister-in-law's view
+and his niece's view in collision, may not lead to very undesirable
+domestic results; and leaves her to take the course which seems best to
+herself under those circumstances.--Second message delivered textually.
+Time, three minutes. A storm coming on. A quarter of an hour's ride from
+here to the shooting-cottage. Madam, I wish you good-evening."
+
+He bowed lower than ever--and, without a word more, quietly left the
+room.
+
+Anne's first impulse was (excusably enough, poor soul) an impulse of
+resentment.
+
+"Thank you, Sir Patrick!" she said, with a bitter look at the closing
+door. "The sympathy of society with a friendless woman could hardly have
+been expressed in a more amusing way!"
+
+The little irritation of the moment passed off with the moment. Anne's
+own intelligence and good sense showed her the position in its truer
+light.
+
+She recognized in Sir Patrick's abrupt departure Sir Patrick's
+considerate resolution to spare her from entering into any details on
+the subject of her position at the inn. He had given her a friendly
+warning; and he had delicately left her to decide for herself as to the
+assistance which she might render him in maintaining tranquillity at
+Windygates. She went at once to a side-table in the room, on which
+writing materials were placed, and sat down to write to Blanche.
+
+"I can do nothing with Lady Lundie," she thought. "But I have more
+influence than any body else over Blanche and I can prevent the
+collision between them which Sir Patrick dreads."
+
+She began the letter. "My dearest Blanche, I have seen Sir Patrick, and
+he has given me your message. I will set your mind at ease about me as
+soon as I can. But, before I say any thing else, let me entreat you,
+as the greatest favor you can do to your sister and your friend, not to
+enter into any disputes about me with Lady Lundie, and not to commit
+the imprudence--the useless imprudence, my love--of coming here." She
+stopped--the paper swam before her eyes. "My own darling!" she thought,
+"who could have foreseen that I should ever shrink from the thought of
+seeing _you?"_ She sighed, and dipped the pen in the ink, and went on
+with the letter.
+
+The sky darkened rapidly as the evening fell. The wind swept in fainter
+and fainter gusts across the dreary moor. Far and wide over the face of
+Nature the stillness was fast falling which tells of a coming storm.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.
+
+ARNOLD.
+
+MEANWHILE Arnold remained shut up in the head-waiter's pantry--chafing
+secretly at the position forced upon him.
+
+He was, for the first time in his life, in hiding from another person,
+and that person a man. Twice--stung to it by the inevitable loss of
+self-respect which his situation occasioned--he had gone to the door,
+determined to face Sir Patrick boldly; and twice he had abandoned the
+idea, in mercy to Anne. It would have been impossible for him to set
+himself right with Blanche's guardian without betraying the unhappy
+woman whose secret he was bound in honor to keep. "I wish to Heaven I
+had never come here!" was the useless aspiration that escaped him, as
+he doggedly seated himself on the dresser to wait till Sir Patrick's
+departure set him free.
+
+After an interval--not by any means the long interval which he had
+anticipated--his solitude was enlivened by the appearance of Father
+Bishopriggs.
+
+"Well?" cried Arnold, jumping off the dresser, "is the coast clear?"
+
+There were occasions when Mr. Bishopriggs became, on a sudden,
+unexpectedly hard of hearing, This was one of them.
+
+"Hoo do ye find the paintry?" he asked, without paying the slightest
+attention to Arnold's question. "Snug and private? A Patmos in the
+weelderness, as ye may say!"
+
+His one available eye, which had begun by looking at Arnold's face,
+dropped slowly downward, and fixed itself, in mute but eloquent
+expectation, on Arnold's waistcoat pocket.
+
+"I understand!" said Arnold. "I promised to pay you for the Patmos--eh?
+There you are!"
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs pocketed the money with a dreary smile and a sympathetic
+shake of the head. Other waiters would have returned thanks. The sage
+of Craig Fernie returned a few brief remarks instead. Admirable in many
+things, Father Bishopriggs was especially great at drawing a moral. He
+drew a moral on this occasion from his own gratuity.
+
+"There I am--as ye say. Mercy presairve us! ye need the siller at every
+turn, when there's a woman at yer heels. It's an awfu' reflection--ye
+canna hae any thing to do wi' the sex they ca' the opposite sex without
+its being an expense to ye. There's this young leddy o' yours, I doot
+she'll ha' been an expense to ye from the first. When you were
+coortin' her, ye did it, I'll go bail, wi' the open hand. Presents and
+keep-sakes, flowers and jewelery, and little dogues. Sair expenses all
+of them!"
+
+"Hang your reflections! Has Sir Patrick left the inn?"
+
+The reflections of Mr. Bishopriggs declined to be disposed of in any
+thing approaching to a summary way. On they flowed from their parent
+source, as slowly and as smoothly as ever!
+
+"Noo ye're married to her, there's her bonnets and goons and
+under-clothin'--her ribbons, laces, furbelows, and fallals. A sair
+expense again!"
+
+"What is the expense of cutting your reflections short, Mr.
+Bishopriggs?"
+
+"Thirdly, and lastly, if ye canna agree wi' her as time gaes on--if
+there's incompaitibeelity of temper betwixt ye--in short, if ye want a
+wee bit separation, hech, Sirs! ye pet yer hand in yer poaket, and come
+to an aimicable understandin' wi' her in that way. Or, maybe she takes
+ye into Court, and pets _her_ hand in your poaket, and comes to a
+hoastile understandin' wi' ye there. Show me a woman--and I'll show ye
+a man not far off wha' has mair expenses on his back than he ever
+bairgained for." Arnold's patience would last no longer--he turned to
+the door. Mr. Bishopriggs, with equal alacrity on his side, turned to
+the matter in hand. "Yes, Sir! The room is e'en clear o' Sir Paitrick,
+and the leddy's alane, and waitin' for ye."
+
+In a moment more Arnold was back in the sitting-room.
+
+"Well?" he asked, anxiously. "What is it? Bad news from Lady Lundie's?"
+
+Anne closed and directed the letter to Blanche, which she had just
+completed. "No," she replied. "Nothing to interest _you_."
+
+"What did Sir Patrick want?"
+
+"Only to warn me. They have found out at Windygates that I am here."
+
+"That's awkward, isn't it?"
+
+"Not in the least. I can manage perfectly; I have nothing to fear. Don't
+think of _me_--think of yourself."
+
+"I am not suspected, am I?"
+
+"Thank heaven--no. But there is no knowing what may happen if you stay
+here. Ring the bell at once, and ask the waiter about the trains."
+
+Struck by the unusual obscurity of the sky at that hour of the evening,
+Arnold went to the window. The rain had come--and was falling heavily.
+The view on the moor was fast disappearing in mist and darkness.
+
+"Pleasant weather to travel in!" he said.
+
+"The railway!" Anne exclaimed, impatiently. "It's getting late. See
+about the railway!"
+
+Arnold walked to the fire-place to ring the bell. The railway time-table
+hanging over it met his eye.
+
+"Here's the information I want," he said to Anne; "if I only knew how
+to get at it. 'Down'--'Up'--'A. M.'--P. M.' What a cursed confusion! I
+believe they do it on purpose."
+
+Anne joined him at the fire-place.
+
+"I understand it--I'll help you. Did you say it was the up train you
+wanted?"
+
+"What is the name of the station you stop at?"
+
+Arnold told her. She followed the intricate net-work of lines and
+figures with her finger--suddenly stopped--looked again to make
+sure--and turned from the time-table with a face of blank despair. The
+last train for the day had gone an hour since.
+
+In the silence which followed that discovery, a first flash of lightning
+passed across the window and the low roll of thunder sounded the
+outbreak of the storm.
+
+"What's to be done now?" asked Arnold.
+
+In the face of the storm, Anne answered without hesitation, "You must
+take a carriage, and drive."
+
+"Drive? They told me it was three-and-twenty miles, by railway, from
+the station to my place--let alone the distance from this inn to the
+station."
+
+"What does the distance matter? Mr. Brinkworth, you can't possibly stay
+here!"
+
+A second flash of lightning crossed the window; the roll of the thunder
+came nearer. Even Arnold's good temper began to be a little ruffled by
+Anne's determination to get rid of him. He sat down with the air of a
+man who had made up his mind not to leave the house.
+
+"Do you hear that?" he asked, as the sound of the thunder died away
+grandly, and the hard pattering of the rain on the window became audible
+once more. "If I ordered horses, do you think they would let me have
+them, in such weather as this? And, if they did, do you suppose the
+horses could face it on the moor? No, no, Miss Silvester--I am sorry to
+be in the way, but the train has gone, and the night and the storm have
+come. I have no choice but to stay here!"
+
+Anne still maintained her own view, but less resolutely than before.
+"After what you have told the landlady," she said, "think of the
+embarrassment, the cruel embarrassment of our position, if you stop at
+the inn till to-morrow morning!"
+
+"Is that all?" returned Arnold.
+
+Anne looked up at him, quickly and angrily. No! he was quite unconscious
+of having said any thing that could offend her. His rough masculine
+sense broke its way unconsciously through all the little feminine
+subtleties and delicacies of his companion, and looked the position
+practically in the face for what it was worth, and no more. "Where's the
+embarrassment?" he asked, pointing to the bedroom door. "There's your
+room, all ready for you. And here's the sofa, in this room, all ready
+for _me._ If you had seen the places I have slept in at sea--!"
+
+She interrupted him, without ceremony. The places he had slept in, at
+sea, were of no earthly importance. The one question to consider, was
+the place he was to sleep in that night.
+
+"If you must stay," she rejoined, "can't you get a room in some other
+part of the house?"
+
+But one last mistake in dealing with her, in her present nervous
+condition, was left to make--and the innocent Arnold made it. "In some
+other part of the house?" he repeated, jestingly. "The landlady would be
+scandalized. Mr. Bishopriggs would never allow it!"
+
+She rose, and stamped her foot impatiently on the floor. "Don't
+joke!" she exclaimed. "This is no laughing matter." She paced the room
+excitedly. "I don't like it! I don't like it!"
+
+Arnold looked after her, with a stare of boyish wonder.
+
+"What puts you out so?" he asked. "Is it the storm?"
+
+She threw herself on the sofa again. "Yes," she said, shortly. "It's the
+storm."
+
+Arnold's inexhaustible good-nature was at once roused to activity again.
+
+"Shall we have the candles," he suggested, "and shut the weather out?"
+She turned irritably on the sofa, without replying. "I'll promise to go
+away the first thing in the morning!" he went on. "Do try and take it
+easy--and don't be angry with me. Come! come! you wouldn't turn a dog
+out, Miss Silvester, on such a night as this!"
+
+He was irresistible. The most sensitive woman breathing could not
+have accused him of failing toward her in any single essential of
+consideration and respect. He wanted tact, poor fellow--but who could
+expect him to have learned that always superficial (and sometimes
+dangerous) accomplishment, in the life he had led at sea? At the sight
+of his honest, pleading face, Anne recovered possession of her gentler
+and sweeter self. She made her excuses for her irritability with a grace
+that enchanted him. "We'll have a pleasant evening of it yet!" cried
+Arnold, in his hearty way--and rang the bell.
+
+The bell was hung outside the door of that Patmos in the
+wilderness--otherwise known as the head-waiter's pantry. Mr. Bishopriggs
+(employing his brief leisure in the seclusion of his own apartment) had
+just mixed a glass of the hot and comforting liquor called "toddy" in
+the language of North Britain, and was just lifting it to his lips, when
+the summons from Arnold invited him to leave his grog.
+
+"Haud yer screechin' tongue!" cried Mr. Bishopriggs, addressing the
+bell through the door. "Ye're waur than a woman when ye aince begin!"
+
+The bell--like the woman--went on again. Mr. Bishopriggs, equally
+pertinacious, went on with his toddy.
+
+"Ay! ay! ye may e'en ring yer heart out--but ye won't part a Scotchman
+from his glass. It's maybe the end of their dinner they'll be wantin'.
+Sir Paitrick cam' in at the fair beginning of it, and spoilt the
+collops, like the dour deevil he is!" The bell rang for the third time.
+"Ay! ay! ring awa'! I doot yon young gentleman's little better than a
+belly-god--there's a scandalous haste to comfort the carnal part o' him
+in a' this ringin'! He knows naething o' wine," added Mr. Bishopriggs,
+on whose mind Arnold's discovery of the watered sherry still dwelt
+unpleasantly.
+
+
+
+The lightning quickened, and lit the sitting-room horribly with its
+lurid glare; the thunder rolled nearer and nearer over the black gulf of
+the moor. Arnold had just raised his hand to ring for the fourth time,
+when the inevitable knock was heard at the door. It was useless to say
+"come in." The immutable laws of Bishopriggs had decided that a second
+knock was necessary. Storm or no storm, the second knock came--and
+then, and not till then, the sage appeared, with the dish of untasted
+"collops" in his hand.
+
+"Candles!" said Arnold.
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs set the "collops" (in the language of England, minced
+meat) upon the table, lit the candles on the mantle-piece, faced about
+with the fire of recent toddy flaming in his nose, and waited for
+further orders, before he went back to his second glass. Anne declined
+to return to the dinner. Arnold ordered Mr. Bishopriggs to close the
+shutters, and sat down to dine by himself.
+
+"It looks greasy, and smells greasy," he said to Anne, turning over the
+collops with a spoon. "I won't be ten minutes dining. Will you have some
+tea?"
+
+Anne declined again.
+
+Arnold tried her once more. "What shall we do to get through the
+evening?"
+
+"Do what you like," she answered, resignedly.
+
+Arnold's mind was suddenly illuminated by an idea.
+
+"I have got it!" he exclaimed. "We'll kill the time as our
+cabin-passengers used to kill it at sea." He looked over his shoulder at
+Mr. Bishopriggs. "Waiter! bring a pack of cards."
+
+"What's that ye're wantin'?" asked Mr. Bishopriggs, doubting the
+evidence of his own senses.
+
+"A pack of cards," repeated Arnold.
+
+"Cairds?" echoed Mr. Bishopriggs. "A pack o' cairds? The deevil's
+allegories in the deevil's own colors--red and black! I wunna execute
+yer order. For yer ain saul's sake, I wunna do it. Ha' ye lived to your
+time o' life, and are ye no' awakened yet to the awfu' seenfulness o'
+gamblin' wi' the cairds?"
+
+"Just as you please," returned Arnold. "You will find me awakened--when
+I go away--to the awful folly of feeing a waiter."
+
+"Does that mean that ye're bent on the cairds?" asked Mr. Bishopriggs,
+suddenly betraying signs of worldly anxiety in his look and manner.
+
+"Yes--that means I am bent on the cards."
+
+"I tak' up my testimony against 'em--but I'm no' telling ye that I canna
+lay my hand on 'em if I like. What do they say in my country? 'Him that
+will to Coupar, maun to Coupar.' And what do they say in your country?
+'Needs must when the deevil drives.'" With that excellent reason for
+turning his back on his own principles, Mr. Bishopriggs shuffled out of
+the room to fetch the cards.
+
+The dresser-drawer in the pantry contained a choice selection of
+miscellaneous objects--a pack of cards being among them. In searching
+for the cards, the wary hand of the head-waiter came in contact with a
+morsel of crumpled-up paper. He drew it out, and recognized the letter
+which he had picked up in the sitting-room some hours since.
+
+"Ay! ay! I'll do weel, I trow, to look at this while my mind's runnin'
+on it," said Mr. Bishopriggs. "The cairds may e'en find their way to the
+parlor by other hands than mine."
+
+He forthwith sent the cards to Arnold by his second in command, closed
+the pantry door, and carefully smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper
+on which the two letters were written. This done, he trimmed his candle,
+and began with the letter in ink, which occupied the first three pages
+of the sheet of note-paper.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+
+
+"WINDYGATES HOUSE, _August_ 12, 1868.
+
+"GEOFFREY DELAMAYN,--I have waited in the hope that you would ride over
+from your brother's place, and see me--and I have waited in vain. Your
+conduct to me is cruelty itself; I will bear it no longer. Consider! in
+your own interests, consider--before you drive the miserable woman who
+has trusted you to despair. You have promised me marriage by all that is
+sacred. I claim your promise. I insist on nothing less than to be
+what you vowed I should be--what I have waited all this weary time to
+be--what I _am_, in the sight of Heaven, your wedded wife. Lady Lundie
+gives a lawn-party here on the 14th. I know you have been asked. I
+expect you to accept her invitation. If I don't see you, I won't answer
+for what may happen. My mind is made up to endure this suspense no
+longer. Oh, Geoffrey, remember the past! Be faithful--be just--to your
+loving wife,
+
+"ANNE SILVESTER."
+
+
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs paused. His commentary on the correspondence, so far,
+was simple enough. "Hot words (in ink) from the leddy to the gentleman!"
+He ran his eye over the second letter, on the fourth page of the paper,
+and added, cynically, "A trifle caulder (in pencil) from the gentleman
+to the leddy! The way o' the warld, Sirs! From the time o' Adam
+downwards, the way o' the warld!"
+
+The second letter ran thus:
+
+
+
+"DEAR ANNE,--Just called to London to my father. They have telegraphed
+him in a bad way. Stop where you are, and I will write you. Trust the
+bearer. Upon my soul, I'll keep my promise. Your loving husband that is
+to be,
+
+"GEOFFREY DELAMAYN."
+
+WINDYGATES HOUSE, _Augt._ 14, 4 P. M.
+
+"In a mortal hurry. Train starts at 4.30."
+
+
+
+There it ended!
+
+"Who are the pairties in the parlor? Is ane o' them 'Silvester?' and
+t'other 'Delamayn?'" pondered Mr. Bishopriggs, slowly folding the letter
+up again in its original form. "Hech, Sirs! what, being intairpreted,
+may a' this mean?"
+
+He mixed himself a second glass of toddy, as an aid to reflection, and
+sat sipping the liquor, and twisting and turning the letter in his gouty
+fingers. It was not easy to see his way to the true connection between
+the lady and gentleman in the parlor and the two letters now in his own
+possession. They might be themselves the writers of the letters, or they
+might be only friends of the writers. Who was to decide?
+
+In the first case, the lady's object would appear to have been as good
+as gained; for the two had certainly asserted themselves to be man and
+wife, in his own presence, and in the presence of the landlady. In the
+second case, the correspondence so carelessly thrown aside might, for
+all a stranger knew to the contrary, prove to be of some importance
+in the future. Acting on this latter view, Mr. Bishopriggs--whose past
+experience as "a bit clerk body," in Sir Patrick's chambers, had made
+a man of business of him--produced his pen and ink, and indorsed the
+letter with a brief dated statement of the circumstances under which
+he had found it. "I'll do weel to keep the Doecument," he thought to
+himself. "Wha knows but there'll be a reward offered for it ane o' these
+days? Eh! eh! there may be the warth o' a fi' pun' note in this, to a
+puir lad like me!"
+
+With that comforting reflection, he drew out a battered tin cash-box
+from the inner recesses of the drawer, and locked up the stolen
+correspondence to bide its time.
+
+
+
+The storm rose higher and higher as the evening advanced.
+
+In the sitting-room, the state of affairs, perpetually changing, now
+presented itself under another new aspect.
+
+Arnold had finished his dinner, and had sent it away. He had next drawn
+a side-table up to the sofa on which Anne lay--had shuffled the pack of
+cards--and was now using all his powers of persuasion to induce her
+to try one game at _Ecarte_ with him, by way of diverting her
+attention from the tumult of the storm. In sheer weariness, she gave up
+contesting the matter; and, raising herself languidly on the sofa, said
+she would try to play. "Nothing can make matters worse than they are,"
+she thought, despairingly, as Arnold dealt the cards for her. "Nothing
+can justify my inflicting my own wretchedness on this kind-hearted boy!"
+
+Two worse players never probably sat down to a game. Anne's attention
+perpetually wandered; and Anne's companion was, in all human
+probability, the most incapable card-player in Europe.
+
+Anne turned up the trump--the nine of Diamonds. Arnold looked at
+his hand--and "proposed." Anne declined to change the cards. Arnold
+announced, with undiminished good-humor, that he saw his way clearly,
+now, to losing the game, and then played his first card--the Queen of
+Trumps!
+
+Anne took it with the King, and forgot to declare the King. She played
+the ten of Trumps.
+
+Arnold unexpectedly discovered the eight of Trumps in his hand. "What
+a pity!" he said, as he played it. "Hullo! you haven't marked the King!
+I'll do it for you. That's two--no, three--to you. I said I should lose
+the game. Couldn't be expected to do any thing (could I?) with such
+a hand as mine. I've lost every thing now I've lost my trumps. You to
+play."
+
+Anne looked at her hand. At the same moment the lightning flashed into
+the room through the ill-closed shutters; the roar of the thunder burst
+over the house, and shook it to its foundation. The screaming of some
+hysterical female tourist, and the barking of a dog, rose shrill from
+the upper floor of the inn. Anne's nerves could support it no longer.
+She flung her cards on the table, and sprang to her feet.
+
+"I can play no more," she said. "Forgive me--I am quite unequal to it.
+My head burns! my heart stifles me!"
+
+She began to pace the room again. Aggravated by the effect of the storm
+on her nerves, her first vague distrust of the false position into which
+she and Arnold had allowed themselves to drift had strengthened, by this
+time, into a downright horror of their situation which was not to be
+endured. Nothing could justify such a risk as the risk they were now
+running! They had dined together like married people--and there they
+were, at that moment, shut in together, and passing the evening like man
+and wife!
+
+"Oh, Mr. Brinkworth!" she pleaded. "Think--for Blanche's sake, think--is
+there no way out of this?"
+
+Arnold was quietly collecting the scattered cards.
+
+"Blanche, again?" he said, with the most exasperating composure. "I
+wonder how she feels, in this storm?"
+
+In Anne's excited state, the reply almost maddened her. She turned from
+Arnold, and hurried to the door.
+
+"I don't care!" she cried, wildly. "I won't let this deception go on.
+I'll do what I ought to have done before. Come what may of it, I'll tell
+the landlady the truth!"
+
+She had opened the door, and was on the point of stepping into the
+passage--when she stopped, and started violently. Was it possible, in
+that dreadful weather, that she had actually heard the sound of carriage
+wheels on the strip of paved road outside the inn?
+
+Yes! others had heard the sound too. The hobbling figure of Mr.
+Bishopriggs passed her in the passage, making for the house door.
+The hard voice of the landlady rang through the inn, ejaculating
+astonishment in broad Scotch. Anne closed the sitting-room door again,
+and turned to Arnold--who had risen, in surprise, to his feet.
+
+"Travelers!" she exclaimed. "At this time!"
+
+"And in this weather!" added Arnold.
+
+"_Can_ it be Geoffrey?" she asked--going back to the old vain delusion
+that he might yet feel for her, and return.
+
+Arnold shook his head. "Not Geoffrey. Whoever else it may be--not
+Geoffrey!"
+
+Mrs. Inchbare suddenly entered the room--with her cap-ribb ons flying,
+her eyes staring, and her bones looking harder than ever.
+
+"Eh, mistress!" she said to Anne. "Wha do ye think has driven here to
+see ye, from Windygates Hoose, and been owertaken in the storm?"
+
+Anne was speechless. Arnold put the question: "Who is it?"
+
+"Wha is't?" repeated Mrs. Inchbare. "It's joost the bonny young
+leddy--Miss Blanche hersel'."
+
+An irrepressible cry of horror burst from Anne. The landlady set it down
+to the lightning, which flashed into the room again at the same moment.
+
+"Eh, mistress! ye'll find Miss Blanche a bit baulder than to skirl at a
+flash o' lightning, that gait! Here she is, the bonny birdie!" exclaimed
+Mrs. Inchbare, deferentially backing out into the passage again.
+
+Blanche's voice reached them, calling for Anne.
+
+Anne caught Arnold by the hand and wrung it hard. "Go!" she whispered.
+The next instant she was at the mantle-piece, and had blown out both the
+candles.
+
+Another flash of lightning came through the darkness, and showed
+Blanche's figure standing at the door.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.
+
+BLANCHE.
+
+MRS. INCHBARE was the first person who acted in the emergency. She
+called for lights; and sternly rebuked the house-maid, who brought them,
+for not having closed the house door. "Ye feckless ne'er-do-weel!" cried
+the landlady; "the wind's blawn the candles oot."
+
+The woman declared (with perfect truth) that the door had been closed.
+An awkward dispute might have ensued if Blanche had not diverted Mrs.
+Inchbare's attention to herself. The appearance of the lights disclosed
+her, wet through with her arms round Anne's neck. Mrs. Inchbare
+digressed at once to the pressing question of changing the young lady's
+clothes, and gave Anne the opportunity of looking round her, unobserved.
+Arnold had made his escape before the candles had been brought in.
+
+In the mean time Blanche's attention was absorbed in her own dripping
+skirts.
+
+"Good gracious! I'm absolutely distilling rain from every part of me.
+And I'm making you, Anne, as wet as I am! Lend me some dry things. You
+can't? Mrs. Inchbare, what does your experience suggest? Which had I
+better do? Go to bed while my clothes are being dried? or borrow from
+your wardrobe--though you _are_ a head and shoulders taller than I am?"
+
+Mrs. Inchbare instantly bustled out to fetch the choicest garments
+that her wardrobe could produce. The moment the door had closed on her
+Blanche looked round the room in her turn.
+
+The rights of affection having been already asserted, the claims of
+curiosity naturally pressed for satisfaction next.
+
+"Somebody passed me in the dark," she whispered. "Was it your husband?
+I'm dying to be introduced to him. And, oh my dear! what _is_ your
+married name?"
+
+Anne answered, coldly, "Wait a little. I can't speak about it yet."
+
+"Are you ill?" asked Blanche.
+
+"I am a little nervous."
+
+"Has any thing unpleasant happened between you and my uncle? You have
+seen him, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he give you my message?"
+
+"He gave me your message.--Blanche! you promised him to stay at
+Windygates. Why, in the name of heaven, did you come here to-night?"
+
+"If you were half as fond of me as I am of you," returned Blanche, "you
+wouldn't ask that. I tried hard to keep my promise, but I couldn't do
+it. It was all very well, while my uncle was laying down the law--with
+Lady Lundie in a rage, and the dogs barking, and the doors banging, and
+all that. The excitement kept me up. But when my uncle had gone, and
+the dreadful gray, quiet, rainy evening came, and it had all calmed down
+again, there was no bearing it. The house--without you--was like a tomb.
+If I had had Arnold with me I might have done very well. But I was
+all by myself. Think of that! Not a soul to speak to! There wasn't a
+horrible thing that could possibly happen to you that I didn't fancy was
+going to happen. I went into your empty room and looked at your things.
+_That_ settled it, my darling! I rushed down stairs--carried away,
+positively carried away, by an Impulse beyond human resistance. How
+could I help it? I ask any reasonable person how could I help it? I ran
+to the stables and found Jacob. Impulse--all impulse! I said, 'Get the
+pony-chaise--I must have a drive--I don't care if it rains--you come
+with me.' All in a breath, and all impulse! Jacob behaved like an angel.
+He said, 'All right, miss.' I am perfectly certain Jacob would die for
+me if I asked him. He is drinking hot grog at this moment, to prevent
+him from catching cold, by my express orders. He had the pony-chaise out
+in two minutes; and off we went. Lady Lundie, my dear, prostrate in
+her own room--too much sal volatile. I hate her. The rain got worse. I
+didn't mind it. Jacob didn't mind it. The pony didn't mind it. They
+had both caught my impulse--especially the pony. It didn't come on to
+thunder till some time afterward; and then we were nearer Craig Fernie
+than Windygates--to say nothing of your being at one place and not at
+the other. The lightning was quite awful on the moor. If I had had one
+of the horses, he would have been frightened. The pony shook his darling
+little head, and dashed through it. He is to have beer. A mash with beer
+in it--by my express orders. When he has done we'll borrow a lantern,
+and go into the stable, and kiss him. In the mean time, my dear, here
+I am--wet through in a thunderstorm, which doesn't in the least
+matter--and determined to satisfy my own mind about you, which matters a
+great deal, and must and shall be done before I rest to-night!"
+
+She turned Anne, by main force, as she spoke, toward the light of the
+candles.
+
+Her tone changed the moment she looked at Anne's face.
+
+"I knew it!" she said. "You would never have kept the most interesting
+event in your life a secret from _me_--you would never have written me
+such a cold formal letter as the letter you left in your room--if there
+had not been something wrong. I said so at the time. I know it now! Why
+has your husband forced you to leave Windygates at a moment's notice?
+Why does he slip out of the room in the dark, as if he was afraid of
+being seen? Anne! Anne! what has come to you? Why do you receive me in
+this way?"
+
+At that critical moment Mrs. Inchbare reappeared, with the choicest
+selection of wearing apparel which her wardrobe could furnish. Anne
+hailed the welcome interruption. She took the candles, and led the way
+into the bedroom immediately.
+
+"Change your wet clothes first," she said. "We can talk after that."
+
+The bedroom door had hardly been closed a minute before there was a tap
+at it. Signing to Mrs. Inchbare not to interrupt the services she was
+rendering to Blanche, Anne passed quickly into the sitting-room, and
+closed the door behind her. To her infinite relief, she only found
+herself face to face with the discreet Mr. Bishopriggs.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked.
+
+The eye of Mr. Bishopriggs announced, by a wink, that his mission was of
+a confidential nature. The hand of Mr. Bishopriggs wavered; the breath
+of Mr. Bishopriggs exhaled a spirituous fume. He slowly produced a slip
+of paper, with some lines of writing on it.
+
+"From ye ken who," he explained, jocosely. "A bit love-letter, I trow,
+from him that's dear to ye. Eh! he's an awfu' reprobate is him that's
+dear to ye. Miss, in the bedchamber there, will nae doot be the one he's
+jilted for _you?_ I see it all--ye can't blind Me--I ha' been a frail
+person my ain self, in my time. Hech! he's safe and sound, is the
+reprobate. I ha' lookit after a' his little creature-comforts--I'm joost
+a fether to him, as well as a fether to you. Trust Bishopriggs--when
+puir human nature wants a bit pat on the back, trust Bishopriggs."
+
+While the sage was speaking these comfortable words, Anne was reading
+the lines traced on the paper. They were signed by Arnold; and they ran
+thus:
+
+"I am in the smoking-room of the inn. It rests with you to say whether I
+must stop there. I don't believe Blanche would be jealous. If I knew how
+to explain my being at the inn without betraying the confidence which
+you and Geoffrey have placed in me, I wouldn't be away from her another
+moment. It does grate on me so! At the same time, I don't want to make
+your position harder than it is. Think of yourself first. I leave it
+in your hands. You have only to say, Wait, by the bearer--and I shall
+understand that I am to stay where I am till I hear from you again."
+
+Anne looked up from the message.
+
+"Ask him to wait," she said; "and I will send word to him again."
+
+"Wi' mony loves and kisses," suggested Mr. Bishopriggs, as a necessary
+supplement to the message. "Eh! it comes as easy as A. B. C. to a man o'
+my experience. Ye can ha' nae better gae-between than yer puir servant
+to command, Sawmuel Bishopriggs. I understand ye baith pairfeckly." He
+laid his forefinger along his flaming nose, and withdrew.
+
+Without allowing herself to hesitate for an instant, Anne opened the
+bedroom door--with the resolution of relieving Arnold from the new
+sacrifice imposed on him by owning the truth.
+
+"Is that you?" asked Blanche.
+
+At the sound of her voice, Anne started back guiltily. "I'll be with you
+in a moment," she answered, and closed the door again between them.
+
+No! it was not to be done. Something in Blanche's trivial question--or
+something, perhaps, in the sight of Blanche's face--roused the
+warning instinct in Anne, which silenced her on the very brink of the
+disclosure. At the last moment the iron chain of circumstances made
+itself felt, binding her without mercy to the hateful, the degrading
+deceit. Could she own the truth, about Geoffrey and herself, to Blanche?
+and, without owning it, could she explain and justify Arnold's conduct
+in joining her privately at Craig Fernie? A shameful confession made to
+an innocent girl; a risk of fatally shaking Arnold's place in Blanche's
+estimation; a scandal at the inn, in the disgrace of which the others
+would be involved with herself--this was the price at which she must
+speak, if she followed her first impulse, and said, in so many words,
+"Arnold is here."
+
+It was not to be thought of. Cost what it might in present
+wretchedness--end how it might, if the deception was discovered in the
+future--Blanche must be kept in ignorance of the truth, Arnold must be
+kept in hiding until she had gone.
+
+Anne opened the door for the second time, and went in.
+
+The business of the toilet was standing still. Blanche was in
+confidential communication with Mrs. Inchbare. At the moment when Anne
+entered the room she was eagerly questioning the landlady about her
+friend's "invisible husband"--she was just saying, "Do tell me! what is
+he like?"
+
+The capacity for accurate observation is a capacity so uncommon, and is
+so seldom associated, even where it does exist, with the equally rare
+gift of accurately describing the thing or the person observed, that
+Anne's dread of the consequences if Mrs. Inchbare was allowed time
+to comply with Blanches request, was, in all probability, a dread
+misplaced. Right or wrong, however, the alarm that she felt hurried
+her into taking measures for dismissing the landlady on the spot. "We
+mustn't keep you from your occupations any longer," she said to Mrs.
+Inchbare. "I will give Miss Lundie all the help she needs."
+
+Barred from advancing in one direction, Blanche's curiosity turned back,
+and tried in another. She boldly addressed herself to Anne.
+
+"I _must_ know something about him," she said. "Is he shy before
+strangers? I heard you whispering with him on the other side of the
+door. Are you jealous, Anne? Are you afraid I shall fascinate him in
+this dress?"
+
+Blanche, in Mrs. Inchbare's best gown--an ancient and high-waisted
+silk garment, of the hue called "bottle-green," pinned up in front, and
+trailing far behind her--with a short, orange-colored shawl over her
+shoulders, and a towel tied turban fashion round her head, to dry her
+wet hair, looked at once the strangest and the prettiest human anomaly
+that ever was seen. "For heaven's sake," she said, gayly, "don't tell
+your husband I am in Mrs. Inchbare's clothes! I want to appear suddenly,
+without a word to warn him of what a figure I am! I should have nothing
+left to wish for in this world," she added, "if Arnold could only see
+me now!"
+
+Looking in the glass, she noticed Anne's face reflected behind her, and
+started at the sight of it.
+
+"What _is_ the matter?" she asked. "Your face frightens me."
+
+It was useless to prolong the pain of the inevitable misunderstanding
+between them. The one course to take was to silence all further
+inquiries then and there. Strongly as she felt this, Anne's inbred
+loyalty to Blanche still shrank from deceiving her to her face. "I might
+write it," she thought. "I can't say it, with Arnold Brinkworth in the
+same house with her!" Write it? As she reconsidered the word, a sudden
+idea struck her. She opened the bedroom door, and led the way back into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"Gone again!" exclaimed Blanche, looking uneasily round the empty room.
+"Anne! there's something so strange in all this, that I neither can, nor
+will, put up with your silence any longer. It's not just, it's not kind,
+to shut me out of your confidence, after we have lived together like
+sisters all our lives!"
+
+Anne sighed bitterly, and kissed her on the forehead. "You shall know
+all I can tell you--all I _dare_ tell you," she said, gently. "Don't
+reproach me. It hurts me more than you think."
+
+She turned away to the side table, and came back with a letter in her
+hand. "Read that," she said, and handed it to Blanche.
+
+Blanche saw her own name, on the address, in the handwriting of Anne.
+
+"What does this mean?" she asked.
+
+"I wrote to you, after Sir Patrick had left me," Anne replied. "I meant
+you to have received my letter to-morrow, in time to prevent any little
+imprudence into which your anxiety might hurry you. All that I _can_
+say to you is said there. Spare me the distress of speaking. Read it,
+Blanche."
+
+Blanche still held the letter, unopened.
+
+"A letter from you to me! when we are both together, and both alone
+in the same room! It's worse than formal, Anne! It's as if there was a
+quarrel between us. Why should it distress you to speak to me?"
+
+Anne's eyes dropped to the ground. She pointed to the letter for the
+second time.
+
+Blanche broke the seal.
+
+She passed rapidly over the opening sentences, and devoted all her
+attention to the second paragraph.
+
+"And now, my love, you will expect me to atone for the surprise and
+distress that I have caused you, by explaining what my situation really
+is, and by telling you all my plans for the future. Dearest Blanche!
+don't think me untrue to the affection we bear toward each other--don't
+think there is any change in my heart toward you--believe only that I
+am a very unhappy woman, and that I am in a position which forces me,
+against my own will, to be silent about myself. Silent even to you, the
+sister of my love--the one person in the world who is dearest to me!
+A time may come when I shall be able to open my heart to you. Oh, what
+good it will do me! what a relief it will be! For the present, I must be
+silent. For the present, we must be parted. God knows what it costs me
+to write this. I think of the dear old days that are gone; I remember
+how I promised your mother to be a sister to you, when her kind eyes
+looked at me, for the last time--_your_ mother, who was an angel from
+heaven to _mine!_ All this comes back on me now, and breaks my heart.
+But it must be! my own Blanche, for the present, it must be! I will
+write often--I will think of you, my darling, night and day, till a
+happier future unites us again. God bless _you,_ my dear one! And God
+help _me!_"
+
+Blanche silently crossed the room to the sofa on which Anne was sitting,
+and stood there for a moment, looking at her. She sat down, and laid
+her head on Anne's shoulder. Sorrowfully and quietly, she put the letter
+into her bosom--and took Anne's hand, and kissed it.
+
+"All my questions are answered, dear. I will wait your time."
+
+It was simply, sweetly, generously said.
+
+Anne burst into tears.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The rain still fell, but the storm was dying away.
+
+Blanche left the sofa, and, going to the window, opened the shutters to
+look out at the night. She suddenly came back to Anne.
+
+"I see lights," she said--"the lights of a carriage coming up out of
+the darkness of the moor. They are sending after me, from Windygates. Go
+into t he bedroom. It's just possible Lady Lundie may have come for me
+herself."
+
+The ordinary relations of the two toward each other were completely
+reversed. Anne was like a child in Blanche's hands. She rose, and
+withdrew.
+
+Left alone, Blanche took the letter out of her bosom, and read it again,
+in the interval of waiting for the carriage.
+
+The second reading confirmed her in a resolution which she had privately
+taken, while she had been sitting by Anne on the sofa--a resolution
+destined to lead to far more serious results in the future than any
+previsions of hers could anticipate. Sir Patrick was the one person she
+knew on whose discretion and experience she could implicitly rely.
+She determined, in Anne's own interests, to take her uncle into her
+confidence, and to tell him all that had happened at the inn "I'll first
+make him forgive me," thought Blanche. "And then I'll see if he thinks
+as I do, when I tell him about Anne."
+
+The carriage drew up at the door; and Mrs. Inchbare showed in--not Lady
+Lundie, but Lady Lundie's maid.
+
+The woman's account of what had happened at Windygates was simple
+enough. Lady Lundie had, as a matter of course, placed the right
+interpretation on Blanche's abrupt departure in the pony-chaise, and
+had ordered the carriage, with the firm determination of following her
+step-daughter herself. But the agitations and anxieties of the day had
+proved too much for her. She had been seized by one of the attacks
+of giddiness to which she was always subject after excessive mental
+irritation; and, eager as she was (on more accounts than one) to go to
+the inn herself, she had been compelled, in Sir Patrick's absence, to
+commit the pursuit of Blanche to her own maid, in whose age and good
+sense she could place every confidence. The woman seeing the state
+of the weather--had thoughtfully brought a box with her, containing a
+change of wearing apparel. In offering it to Blanche, she added, with
+all due respect, that she had full powers from her mistress to go on,
+if necessary, to the shooting-cottage, and to place the matter in Sir
+Patrick's hands. This said, she left it to her young lady to decide
+for herself, whether she would return to Windygates, under present
+circumstances, or not.
+
+Blanche took the box from the woman's hands, and joined Anne in the
+bedroom, to dress herself for the drive home.
+
+"I am going back to a good scolding," she said. "But a scolding is no
+novelty in my experience of Lady Lundie. I'm not uneasy about that,
+Anne--I'm uneasy about you. Can I be sure of one thing--do you stay here
+for the present?"
+
+The worst that could happen at the inn _had_ happened. Nothing was to be
+gained now--and every thing might be lost--by leaving the place at which
+Geoffrey had promised to write to her. Anne answered that she proposed
+remaining at the inn for the present.
+
+"You promise to write to me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If there is any thing I can do for you--?"
+
+"There is nothing, my love."
+
+"There may be. If you want to see me, we can meet at Windygates without
+being discovered. Come at luncheon-time--go around by the shrubbery--and
+step in at the library window. You know as well as I do there is nobody
+in the library at that hour. Don't say it's impossible--you don't know
+what may happen. I shall wait ten minutes every day on the chance of
+seeing you. That's settled--and it's settled that you write. Before I
+go, darling, is there any thing else we can think of for the future?"
+
+At those words Anne suddenly shook off the depression that weighed on
+her. She caught Blanche in her arms, she held Blanche to her bosom with
+a fierce energy. "Will you always be to me, in the future, what you are
+now?" she asked, abruptly. "Or is the time coming when you will hate
+me?" She prevented any reply by a kiss--and pushed Blanche toward the
+door. "We have had a happy time together in the years that are gone,"
+she said, with a farewell wave of her hand. "Thank God for that! And
+never mind the rest."
+
+She threw open the bedroom door, and called to the maid, in the
+sitting-room. "Miss Lundie is waiting for you." Blanche pressed her
+hand, and left her.
+
+Anne waited a while in the bedroom, listening to the sound made by the
+departure of the carriage from the inn door. Little by little, the tramp
+of the horses and the noise of the rolling wheels lessened and lessened.
+When the last faint sounds were lost in silence she stood for a moment
+thinking--then, rousing on a sudden, hurried into the sitting-room, and
+rang the bell.
+
+"I shall go mad," she said to herself, "if I stay here alone."
+
+Even Mr. Bishopriggs felt the necessity of being silent when he stood
+face to face with her on answering the bell.
+
+"I want to speak to him. Send him here instantly."
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs understood her, and withdrew.
+
+Arnold came in.
+
+"Has she gone?" were the first words he said.
+
+"She has gone. She won't suspect you when you see her again. I have told
+her nothing. Don't ask me for my reasons!"
+
+"I have no wish to ask you."
+
+"Be angry with me, if you like!"
+
+"I have no wish to be angry with you."
+
+He spoke and looked like an altered man. Quietly seating himself at the
+table, he rested his head on his hand--and so remained silent. Anne
+was taken completely by surprise. She drew near, and looked at him
+curiously. Let a woman's mood be what it may, it is certain to feel the
+influence of any change for which she is unprepared in the manner of a
+man--when that man interests her. The cause of this is not to be found
+in the variableness of her humor. It is far more probably to be traced
+to the noble abnegation of Self, which is one of the grandest--and to
+the credit of woman be it said--one of the commonest virtues of the sex.
+Little by little, the sweet feminine charm of Anne's face came softly
+and sadly back. The inbred nobility of the woman's nature answered the
+call which the man had unconsciously made on it. She touched Arnold on
+the shoulder.
+
+"This has been hard on _you,_" she said. "And I am to blame for it. Try
+and forgive me, Mr. Brinkworth. I am sincerely sorry. I wish with all my
+heart I could comfort you!"
+
+"Thank you, Miss Silvester. It was not a very pleasant feeling, to be
+hiding from Blanche as if I was afraid of her--and it's set me thinking,
+I suppose, for the first time in my life. Never mind. It's all over now.
+Can I do any thing for you?"
+
+"What do you propose doing to-night?"
+
+"What I have proposed doing all along--my duty by Geoffrey. I have
+promised him to see you through your difficulties here, and to provide
+for your safety till he comes back. I can only make sure of doing that
+by keeping up appearances, and staying in the sitting-room to-night.
+When we next meet it will be under pleasanter circumstances, I hope. I
+shall always be glad to think that I was of some service to you. In the
+mean time I shall be most likely away to-morrow morning before you are
+up."
+
+Anne held out her hand to take leave. Nothing could undo what had been
+done. The time for warning and remonstrance had passed away.
+
+"You have not befriended an ungrateful woman," she said. "The day may
+yet come, Mr. Brinkworth, when I shall prove it."
+
+"I hope not, Miss Silvester. Good-by, and good luck!"
+
+She withdrew into her own room. Arnold locked the sitting-room door, and
+stretched himself on the sofa for the night.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The morning was bright, the air was delicious after the storm.
+
+Arnold had gone, as he had promised, before Anne was out of her room.
+It was understood at the inn that important business had unexpectedly
+called him south. Mr. Bishopriggs had been presented with a handsome
+gratuity; and Mrs. Inchbare had been informed that the rooms were taken
+for a week certain.
+
+In every quarter but one the march of events had now, to all appearance,
+fallen back into a quiet course. Arnold was on his way to his estate;
+Blanche was safe at Windygates; Anne's residence at the inn was assured
+for a week to come. The one present doubt was the doubt which hung over
+Geoffrey's movements. The one event still involved in darkness turned on
+the question of life or death waiting for solution in London--otherwise,
+the question of Lord Holchester's health. Taken by itself, the
+alternative, either way, was plain enough. If my lord lived--Geoffrey
+would be free to come back, and marry her privately in Scotland. If
+my lord died--Geoffrey would be free to send for her, and marry her
+publicly in London. But could Geoffrey be relied on?
+
+Anne went out on to the terrace-ground in front of the inn. The cool
+morning breeze blew steadily. Towering white clouds sailed in grand
+procession over the heavens, now obscuring, and now revealing the sun.
+Yellow light and purple shadow chased each other over the broad brown
+surface of the moor--even as hope and fear chased each other over Anne's
+mind, brooding on what might come to her with the coming time.
+
+She turned away, weary of questioning the impenetrable future, and went
+back to the inn.
+
+Crossing the hall she looked at the clock. It was past the hour when the
+train from Perthshire was due in London. Geoffrey and his brother were,
+at that moment, on their way to Lord Holchester's house.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD SCENE.--LONDON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.
+
+GEOFFREY AS A LETTER-WRITER.
+
+LORD HOLCHESTER'S servants--with the butler at their head--were on the
+look-out for Mr. Julius Delamayn's arrival from Scotland. The appearance
+of the two brothers together took the whole domestic establishment by
+surprise. Inquiries were addressed to the butler by Julius; Geoffrey
+standing by, and taking no other than a listener's part in the
+proceedings.
+
+"Is my father alive?"
+
+"His lordship, I am rejoiced to say, has astonished the doctors, Sir.
+He rallied last night in the most wonderful way. If things go on for the
+next eight-and-forty hours as they are going now, my lord's recovery is
+considered certain."
+
+"What was the illness?"
+
+"A paralytic stroke, Sir. When her ladyship telegraphed to you in
+Scotland the doctors had given his lordship up."
+
+"Is my mother at home?"
+
+"Her ladyship is at home to _you,_, Sir."'
+
+The butler laid a special emphasis on the personal pronoun. Julius
+turned to his brother. The change for the better in the state of
+Lord Holchester's health made Geoffrey's position, at that moment, an
+embarrassing one. He had been positively forbidden to enter the house.
+His one excuse for setting that prohibitory sentence at defiance rested
+on the assumption that his father was actually dying. As matters
+now stood, Lord Holchester's order remained in full force. The
+under-servants in the hall (charged to obey that order as they valued
+their places) looked from "Mr. Geoffrey" to the butler, The butler
+looked from "Mr. Geoffrey" to "Mr. Julius." Julius looked at his
+brother. There was an awkward pause. The position of the second son was
+the position of a wild beast in the house--a creature to be got rid of,
+without risk to yourself, if you only knew how.
+
+Geoffrey spoke, and solved the problem
+
+"Open the door, one of you fellows," he said to the footmen. "I'm off."
+
+"Wait a minute," interposed his brother. "It will be a sad
+disappointment to my mother to know that you have been here, and gone
+away again without seeing her. These are no ordinary circumstances,
+Geoffrey. Come up stairs with me--I'll take it on myself."
+
+"I'm blessed if I take it on _my_self!" returned Geoffrey. "Open the
+door!"
+
+"Wait here, at any rate," pleaded Julius, "till I can send you down a
+message."
+
+"Send your message to Nagle's Hotel. I'm at home at Nagle's--I'm not at
+home here."
+
+At that point the discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a
+little terrier in the hall. Seeing strangers, the dog began to bark.
+Perfect tranquillity in the house had been absolutely insisted on by the
+doctors; and the servants, all trying together to catch the animal and
+quiet him, simply aggravated the noise he was making. Geoffrey solved
+this problem also in his own decisive way. He swung round as the dog was
+passing him, and kicked it with his heavy boot. The little creature
+fell on the spot, whining piteously. "My lady's pet dog!" exclaimed the
+butler. "You've broken its ribs, Sir." "I've broken it of barking, you
+mean," retorted Geoffrey. "Ribs be hanged!" He turned to his brother.
+"That settles it," he said, jocosely. "I'd better defer the pleasure of
+calling on dear mamma till the next opportunity. Ta-ta, Julius. You know
+where to find me. Come, and dine. We'll give you a steak at Nagle's that
+will make a man of you."
+
+He went out. The tall footmen eyed his lordship's second son with
+unaffected respect. They had seen him, in public, at the annual festival
+of the Christian-Pugilistic-Association, with "the gloves" on. He could
+have beaten the biggest man in the hall within an inch of his life in
+three minutes. The porter bowed as he threw open the door. The whole
+interest and attention of the domestic establishment then present was
+concentrated on Geoffrey. Julius went up stairs to his mother without
+attracting the slightest notice.
+
+The month was August. The streets were empty. The vilest breeze that
+blows--a hot east wind in London--was the breeze abroad on that day.
+Even Geoffrey appeared to feel the influence of the weather as the cab
+carried him from his father's door to the hotel. He took off his hat,
+and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and lit his everlasting pipe, and growled
+and grumbled between his teeth in the intervals of smoking. Was it only
+the hot wind that wrung from him these demonstrations of discomfort? Or
+was there some secret anxiety in his mind which assisted the depressing
+influences of the day? There was a secret anxiety in his mind. And the
+name of it was--Anne.
+
+As things actually were at that moment, what course was he to take with
+the unhappy woman who was waiting to hear from him at the Scotch inn?
+
+To write? or not to write? That was the question with Geoffrey.
+
+The preliminary difficulty, relating to addressing a letter to Anne at
+the inn, had been already provided for. She had decided--if it proved
+necessary to give her name, before Geoffrey joined her--to call herself
+Mrs., instead of Miss, Silvester. A letter addressed to "Mrs.
+Silvester" might be trusted to find its way to her without causing any
+embarrassment. The doubt was not here. The doubt lay, as usual, between
+two alternatives. Which course would it be wisest to take?--to inform
+Anne, by that day's post, that an interval of forty-eight hours must
+elapse before his father's recovery could be considered certain? Or
+to wait till the interval was over, and be guided by the result?
+Considering the alternatives in the cab, he decided that the wise course
+was to temporize with Anne, by reporting matters as they then stood.
+
+Arrived at the hotel, he sat down to write the letter--doubted--and tore
+it up--doubted again--and began again--doubted once more--and tore
+up the second letter--rose to his feet--and owned to himself (in
+unprintable language) that he couldn't for the life of him decide which
+was safest--to write or to wait.
+
+In this difficulty, his healthy physical instincts sent him to healthy
+physical remedies for relief. "My mind's in a muddle," said Geoffrey.
+"I'll try a bath."
+
+It was an elaborate bath, proceeding through many rooms, and combining
+many postures and applications. He steamed. He plunged. He simmered. He
+stood under a pipe, and received a cataract of cold water on his head.
+He was laid on his back; he was laid on his stomach; he was respectfully
+pounded and kneaded, from head to foot, by the knuckles of accomplished
+practitioners. He came out of it all, sleek, clear rosy, beautiful. He
+returned to the hotel, and took up the writing materials--and behold
+the intolerable indecision seized him again, declining to be washed out!
+This time he laid it all to Anne. "That infernal woman will be the ruin
+of me," said Geoffrey, taking up his hat. "I must try the dumb-bells."
+
+The pursuit of the new remedy for stimulating a sluggish brain took him
+to a public house, kept by the professional pedestrian who had the honor
+of training him when he contended at Athletic Sports.
+
+"A private room and the dumb-bells!" cried Geoffrey. "The heaviest you
+have got."
+
+He stripped himself of his upper clothing, and set to work, with the
+heavy weights in each hand, waving them up and down, and backward and
+forward, in every attainable variety o f movement, till his magnificent
+muscles seemed on the point of starting through his sleek skin. Little
+by little his animal spirits roused themselves. The strong
+exertion intoxicated the strong man. In sheer excitement he swore
+cheerfully--invoking thunder and lightning, explosion and blood, in
+return for the compliments profusely paid to him by the pedestrian and
+the pedestrian's son. "Pen, ink, and paper!" he roared, when he could
+use the dumb-bells no longer. "My mind's made up; I'll write, and have
+done with it!" He sat down to his writing on the spot; actually finished
+the letter; another minute would have dispatched it to the post--and, in
+that minute, the maddening indecision took possession of him once more.
+He opened the letter again, read it over again, and tore it up again.
+"I'm out of my mind!" cried Geoffrey, fixing his big bewildered blue
+eyes fiercely on the professor who trained him. "Thunder and lightning!
+Explosion and blood! Send for Crouch."
+
+Crouch (known and respected wherever English manhood is known and
+respected) was a retired prize-fighter. He appeared with the third
+and last remedy for clearing the mind known to the Honorable Geoffrey
+Delamayn--namely, two pair of boxing-gloves in a carpet-bag.
+
+The gentleman and the prize-fighter put on the gloves, and faced each
+other in the classically correct posture of pugilistic defense. "None of
+your play, mind!" growled Geoffrey. "Fight, you beggar, as if you were
+in the Ring again with orders to win." No man knew better than the great
+and terrible Crouch what real fighting meant, and what heavy blows
+might be given even with such apparently harmless weapons as stuffed
+and padded gloves. He pretended, and only pretended, to comply with his
+patron's request. Geoffrey rewarded him for his polite forbearance by
+knocking him down. The great and terrible rose with unruffled composure.
+"Well hit, Sir!" he said. "Try it with the other hand now." Geoffrey's
+temper was not under similar control. Invoking everlasting destruction
+on the frequently-blackened eyes of Crouch, he threatened instant
+withdrawal of his patronage and support unless the polite pugilist
+hit, then and there, as hard as he could. The hero of a hundred fights
+quailed at the dreadful prospect. "I've got a family to support,"
+remarked Crouch. "If you _will_ have it, Sir--there it is!" The fall of
+Geoffrey followed, and shook the house. He was on his legs again in an
+instant--not satisfied even yet. "None of your body-hitting!" he roared.
+"Stick to my head. Thunder and lightning! explosion and blood! Knock it
+out of me! Stick to the head!" Obedient Crouch stuck to the head.
+The two gave and took blows which would have stunned--possibly have
+killed--any civilized member of the community. Now on one side of
+his patron's iron skull, and now on the other, the hammering of the
+prize-fighter's gloves fell, thump upon thump, horrible to hear--until
+even Geoffrey himself had had enough of it. "Thank you, Crouch," he
+said, speaking civilly to the man for the first time. "That will do. I
+feel nice and clear again." He shook his head two or three times, he was
+rubbed down like a horse by the professional runner; he drank a mighty
+draught of malt liquor; he recovered his good-humor as if by magic.
+"Want the pen and ink, Sir?" inquired his pedestrian host. "Not I!"
+answered Geoffrey. "The muddle's out of me now. Pen and ink be hanged!
+I shall look up some of our fellows, and go to the play." He left the
+public house in the happiest condition of mental calm. Inspired by the
+stimulant application of Crouch's gloves, his torpid cunning had been
+shaken up into excellent working order at last. Write to Anne? Who but a
+fool would write to such a woman as that until he was forced to it? Wait
+and see what the chances of the next eight-and-forty hours might bring
+forth, and then write to her, or desert her, as the event might decide.
+It lay in a nut-shell, if you could only see it. Thanks to Crouch, he
+did see it--and so away in a pleasant temper for a dinner with "our
+fellows" and an evening at the play!
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.
+
+GEOFFREY IN THE MARRIAGE MARKET.
+
+THE interval of eight-and-forty hours passed--without the occurrence of
+any personal communication between the two brothers in that time.
+
+Julius, remaining at his father's house, sent brief written bulletins of
+Lord Holchester's health to his brother at the hotel. The first bulletin
+said, "Going on well. Doctors satisfied." The second was firmer in tone.
+"Going on excellently. Doctors very sanguine." The third was the most
+explicit of all. "I am to see my father in an hour from this. The
+doctors answer for his recovery. Depend on my putting in a good word for
+you, if I can; and wait to hear from me further at the hotel."
+
+Geoffrey's face darkened as he read the third bulletin. He called once
+more for the hated writing materials. There could be no doubt now as to
+the necessity of communicating with Anne. Lord Holchester's recovery had
+put him back again in the same critical position which he had occupied
+at Windygates. To keep Anne from committing some final act of despair,
+which would connect him with a public scandal, and ruin him so far as
+his expectations from his father were concerned, was, once more, the
+only safe policy that Geoffrey could pursue. His letter began and ended
+in twenty words:
+
+
+
+"DEAR ANNE,--Have only just heard that my father is turning the corner.
+Stay where you are. Will write again."
+
+
+
+Having dispatched this Spartan composition by the post, Geoffrey lit his
+pipe, and waited the event of the interview between Lord Holchester and
+his eldest son.
+
+Julius found his father alarmingly altered in personal appearance, but
+in full possession of his faculties nevertheless. Unable to return
+the pressure of his son's hand--unable even to turn in the bed without
+help--the hard eye of the old lawyer was as keen, the hard mind of the
+old lawyer was as clear, as ever. His grand ambition was to see Julius
+in Parliament. Julius was offering himself for election in Perthshire,
+by his father's express desire, at that moment. Lord Holchester entered
+eagerly into politics before his eldest son had been two minutes by his
+bedside.
+
+"Much obliged, Julius, for your congratulations. Men of my sort are not
+easily killed. (Look at Brougham and Lyndhurst!) You won't be called to
+the Upper House yet. You will begin in the House of Commons--precisely
+as I wished. What are your prospects with the constituency? Tell me
+exactly how you stand, and where I can be of use to you."
+
+"Surely, Sir, you are hardly recovered enough to enter on matters of
+business yet?"
+
+"I am quite recovered enough. I want some present interest to occupy
+me. My thoughts are beginning to drift back to past times, and to things
+which are better forgotten." A sudden contraction crossed his livid
+face. He looked hard at his son, and entered abruptly on a new question.
+"Julius!" he resumed, "have you ever heard of a young woman named Anne
+Silvester?"
+
+Julius answered in the negative. He and his wife had exchanged cards
+with Lady Lundie, and had excused themselves from accepting her
+invitation to the lawn-party. With the exception of Blanche, they were
+both quite ignorant of the persons who composed the family circle at
+Windygates.
+
+"Make a memorandum of the name," Lord Holchester went on. "Anne
+Silvester. Her father and mother are dead. I knew her father in former
+times. Her mother was ill-used. It was a bad business. I have been
+thinking of it again, for the first time for many years. If the girl is
+alive and about the world she may remember our family name. Help
+her, Julius, if she ever wants help, and applies to you." The painful
+contraction passed across his face once more. Were his thoughts taking
+him back to the memorable summer evening at the Hampstead villa? Did
+he see the deserted woman swooning at his feet again? "About your
+election?" he asked, impatiently. "My mind is not used to be idle. Give
+it something to do."
+
+Julius stated his position as plainly and as briefly as he could.
+The father found nothing to object to in the report--except the son's
+absence from the field of action. He blamed Lady Holchester for
+summoning Julius to London. He was annoyed at his son's being there, at
+the bedside, when he ought to have been addressing the electors. "It's
+inconvenient, Julius," he said, petulantly. "Don't you see it yourself?"
+
+Having previously arranged with his mother to take the first opportunity
+that offered of risking a reference to Geoffrey, Julius decided to "see
+it" in a light for which his father was not prepared. The opportunity
+was before him. He took it on the spot.
+
+"It is no inconvenience to me, Sir," he replied, "and it is no
+inconvenience to my brother either. Geoffrey was anxious about you too.
+Geoffrey has come to London with me."
+
+Lord Holchester looked at his eldest son with a grimly-satirical
+expression of surprise.
+
+"Have I not already told you," he rejoined, "that my mind is not
+affected by my illness? Geoffrey anxious about me! Anxiety is one of the
+civilized emotions. Man in his savage state is incapable of feeling it."
+
+"My brother is not a savage, Sir."
+
+"His stomach is generally full, and his skin is covered with linen and
+cloth, instead of red ochre and oil. So far, certainly, your brother is
+civilized. In all other respects your brother is a savage."
+
+"I know what you mean, Sir. But there is something to be said for
+Geoffrey's way of life. He cultivates his courage and his strength.
+Courage and strength are fine qualities, surely, in their way?"
+
+"Excellent qualities, as far as they go. If you want to know how far
+that is, challenge Geoffrey to write a sentence of decent English, and
+see if his courage doesn't fail him there. Give him his books to read
+for his degree, and, strong as he is, he will be taken ill at the sight
+of them. You wish me to see your brother. Nothing will induce me to see
+him, until his way of life (as you call it) is altered altogether. I
+have but one hope of its ever being altered now. It is barely possible
+that the influence of a sensible woman--possessed of such advantages
+of birth and fortune as may compel respect, even from a savage--might
+produce its effect on Geoffrey. If he wishes to find his way back into
+this house, let him find his way back into good society first, and bring
+me a daughter-in-law to plead his cause for him--whom his mother and I
+can respect and receive. When that happens, I shall begin to have some
+belief in Geoffrey. Until it does happen, don't introduce your brother
+into any future conversations which you may have with Me. To return to
+your election. I have some advice to give you before you go back. You
+will do well to go back to-night. Lift me up on the pillow. I shall
+speak more easily with my head high."
+
+His son lifted him on the pillows, and once more entreated him to spare
+himself.
+
+It was useless. No remonstrances shook the iron resolution of the man
+who had hewed his way through the rank and file of political humanity to
+his own high place apart from the rest. Helpless, ghastly, snatched out
+of the very jaws of death, there he lay, steadily distilling the clear
+common-sense which had won him all his worldly rewards into the mind of
+his son. Not a hint was missed, not a caution was forgotten, that could
+guide Julius safely through the miry political ways which he had trodden
+so safely and so dextrously himself. An hour more had passed before the
+impenetrable old man closed his weary eyes, and consented to take his
+nourishment and compose himself to rest. His last words, rendered barely
+articulate by exhaustion, still sang the praises of party manoeuvres
+and political strife. "It's a grand career! I miss the House of Commons,
+Julius, as I miss nothing else!"
+
+Left free to pursue his own thoughts, and to guide his own movements,
+Julius went straight from Lord Holchester's bedside to Lady Holchester's
+boudoir.
+
+"Has your father said any thing about Geoffrey?" was his mother's first
+question as soon as he entered the room.
+
+"My father gives Geoffrey a last chance, if Geoffrey will only take it."
+
+Lady Holchester's face clouded. "I know," she said, with a look of
+disappointment. "His last chance is to read for his degree. Hopeless,
+my dear. Quite hopeless! If it had only been something easier than that;
+something that rested with me--"
+
+"It does rest with you," interposed Julius. "My dear mother!--can you
+believe it?--Geoffrey's last chance is (in one word) Marriage!"
+
+"Oh, Julius! it's too good to be true!"
+
+Julius repeated his father's own words. Lady Holchester looked twenty
+years younger as she listened. When he had done she rang the bell.
+
+"No matter who calls," she said to the servant, "I am not at home." She
+turned to Julius, kissed him, and made a place for him on the sofa by
+her side. "Geoffrey shall take _that_ chance," she said, gayly--"I will
+answer for it! I have three women in my mind, any one of whom would suit
+him. Sit down, my dear, and let us consider carefully which of the three
+will be most likely to attract Geoffrey, and to come up to your father's
+standard of what his daughter-in-law ought to be. When we have decided,
+don't trust to writing. Go yourself and see Geoffrey at his hotel."
+
+Mother and son entered on their consultation--and innocently sowed the
+seeds of a terrible harvest to come.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.
+
+GEOFFREY AS A PUBLIC CHARACTER.
+
+TIME had advanced to after noon before the selection of Geoffrey's
+future wife was accomplished, and before the instructions of Geoffrey's
+brother were complete enough to justify the opening of the matrimonial
+negotiation at Nagle's Hotel.
+
+"Don't leave him till you have got his promise," were Lady Holchester's
+last words when her son started on his mission.
+
+"If Geoffrey doesn't jump at what I am going to offer him," was the
+son's reply, "I shall agree with my father that the case is hopeless;
+and I shall end, like my father, in giving Geoffrey up."
+
+This was strong language for Julius to use. It was not easy to rouse the
+disciplined and equable temperament of Lord Holchester's eldest son.
+No two men were ever more thoroughly unlike each other than these two
+brothers. It is melancholy to acknowledge it of the blood relation of
+a "stroke oar," but it must be owned, in the interests of truth, that
+Julius cultivated his intelligence. This degenerate Briton could digest
+books--and couldn't digest beer. Could learn languages--and couldn't
+learn to row. Practiced the foreign vice of perfecting himself in the
+art of playing on a musical instrument and couldn't learn the English
+virtue of knowing a good horse when he saw him. Got through life.
+(Heaven only knows how!) without either a biceps or a betting-book.
+Had openly acknowledged, in English society, that he didn't think the
+barking of a pack of hounds the finest music in the world. Could go to
+foreign parts, and see a mountain which nobody had ever got to the top
+of yet--and didn't instantly feel his honor as an Englishman involved in
+getting to the top of it himself. Such people may, and do, exist among
+the inferior races of the Continent. Let us thank Heaven, Sir, that
+England never has been, and never will be, the right place for them!
+
+Arrived at Nagle's Hotel, and finding nobody to inquire of in the hall,
+Julius applied to the young lady who sat behind the window of "the
+bar." The young lady was reading something so deeply interesting in the
+evening newspaper that she never even heard him. Julius went into the
+coffee-room.
+
+The waiter, in his corner, was absorbed over a second newspaper. Three
+gentlemen, at three different tables, were absorbed in a third, fourth,
+and fifth newspaper. They all alike went on with their reading without
+noticing the entrance of the stranger. Julius ventured on disturbing
+the waiter by asking for Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn. At the sound of that
+illustrious name the waiter looked up with a start. "Are you Mr.
+Delamayn's brother, Sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The three gentlemen at the tables looked up with a start. The light of
+Geoffrey's celebrity fell, reflected, on Geoffrey's brother, and made a
+public character of him.
+
+"You'll find Mr. Geoffrey, Sir," said the waiter, in a flurried, excited
+manner, "at the Cock and Bottle, Putney."
+
+"I expected to find him here. I had an appointment with him at this
+hotel."
+
+The wait er opened his eyes on Julius with an expression of blank
+astonishment. "Haven't you heard the news, Sir?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the waiter--and offered the newspaper.
+
+"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the three gentlemen--and offered the
+three newspapers.
+
+"What is it?" asked Julius.
+
+"What is it?" repeated the waiter, in a hollow voice. "The most dreadful
+thing that's happened in my time. It's all up, Sir, with the great
+Foot-Race at Fulham. Tinkler has gone stale."
+
+The three gentlemen dropped solemnly back into their three chairs, and
+repeated the dreadful intelligence, in chorus--"Tinkler has gone stale."
+
+A man who stands face to face with a great national disaster, and who
+doesn't understand it, is a man who will do wisely to hold his tongue
+and enlighten his mind without asking other people to help him. Julius
+accepted the waiter's newspaper, and sat down to make (if possible) two
+discoveries: First, as to whether "Tinkler" did, or did not, mean a man.
+Second, as to what particular form of human affliction you implied when
+you described that man as "gone stale."
+
+There was no difficulty in finding the news. It was printed in the
+largest type, and was followed by a personal statement of the facts,
+taken one way--which was followed, in its turn, by another personal
+statement of the facts, taken in another way. More particulars, and
+further personal statements, were promised in later editions. The royal
+salute of British journalism thundered the announcement of Tinkler's
+staleness before a people prostrate on the national betting book.
+
+Divested of exaggeration, the facts were few enough and simple enough.
+A famous Athletic Association of the North had challenged a famous
+Athletic Association of the South. The usual "Sports" were to take
+place--such as running, jumping, "putting" the hammer, throwing
+cricket-balls, and the like--and the whole was to wind up with a
+Foot-Race of unexampled length and difficulty in the annals of human
+achievement between the two best men on either side. "Tinkler" was the
+best man on the side of the South. "Tinkler" was backed in innumerable
+betting-books to win. And Tinkler's lungs had suddenly given way under
+stress of training! A prospect of witnessing a prodigious achievement in
+foot-racing, and (more important still) a prospect of winning and losing
+large sums of money, was suddenly withdrawn from the eyes of the British
+people. The "South" could produce no second opponent worthy of the North
+out of its own associated resources. Surveying the athletic world in
+general, but one man existed who might possibly replace "Tinkler"--and
+it was doubtful, in the last degree, whether he would consent to come
+forward under the circumstances. The name of that man--Julius read it
+with horror--was Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+Profound silence reigned in the coffee-room. Julius laid down the
+newspaper, and looked about him. The waiter was busy, in his corner,
+with a pencil and a betting-book. The three gentlemen were busy, at the
+three tables, with pencils and betting-books.
+
+"Try and persuade him!" said the waiter, piteously, as Delamayn's
+brother rose to leave the room.
+
+"Try and persuade him!" echoed the three gentlemen, as Delamayn's
+brother opened the door and went out.
+
+Julius called a cab and told the driver (busy with a pencil and a
+betting-book) to go to the Cock and Bottle, Putney. The man brightened
+into a new being at the prospect. No need to hurry him; he drove,
+unasked, at the top of his horse's speed.
+
+As the cab drew near to its destination the signs of a great national
+excitement appeared, and multiplied. The lips of a people pronounced,
+with a grand unanimity, the name of "Tinkler." The heart of a people
+hung suspended (mostly in the public houses) on the chances for and
+against the possibility of replacing "Tinkler" by another man. The
+scene in front of the inn was impressive in the highest degree. Even the
+London blackguard stood awed and quiet in the presence of the national
+calamity. Even the irrepressible man with the apron, who always turns up
+to sell nuts and sweetmeats in a crowd, plied his trade in silence, and
+found few indeed (to the credit of the nation be it spoken) who had
+the heart to crack a nut at such a time as this. The police were on the
+spot, in large numbers, and in mute sympathy with the people, touching
+to see. Julius, on being stopped at the door, mentioned his name--and
+received an ovation. His brother! oh, heavens, his brother! The people
+closed round him, the people shook hands with him, the people invoked
+blessings on his head. Julius was half suffocated, when the police
+rescued him, and landed him safe in the privileged haven on the inner
+side of the public house door. A deafening tumult broke out, as he
+entered, from the regions above stairs. A distant voice screamed,
+"Mind yourselves!" A hatless shouting man tore down through the people
+congregated on the stairs. "Hooray! Hooray! He's promised to do it! He's
+entered for the race!" Hundreds on hundreds of voices took up the cry.
+A roar of cheering burst from the people outside. Reporters for the
+newspapers raced, in frantic procession, out of the inn, and rushed into
+cabs to put the news in print. The hand of the landlord, leading Julius
+carefully up stairs by the arm, trembled with excitement. "His brother,
+gentlemen! his brother!" At those magic words a lane was made through
+the throng. At those magic words the closed door of the council-chamber
+flew open; and Julius found himself among the Athletes of his native
+country, in full parliament assembled. Is any description of them
+needed? The description of Geoffrey applies to them all. The manhood
+and muscle of England resemble the wool and mutton of England, in this
+respect, that there is about as much variety in a flock of athletes as
+in a flock of sheep. Julius looked about him, and saw the same man in
+the same dress, with the same health, strength, tone, tastes, habits,
+conversation, and pursuits, repeated infinitely in every part of the
+room. The din was deafening; the enthusiasm (to an uninitiated stranger)
+something at once hideous and terrifying to behold. Geoffrey had been
+lifted bodily on to the table, in his chair, so as to be visible to the
+whole room. They sang round him, they danced round him, they cheered
+round him, they swore round him. He was hailed, in maudlin terms of
+endearment, by grateful giants with tears in their eyes. "Dear old man!"
+"Glorious, noble, splendid, beautiful fellow!" They hugged him. They
+patted him on the back. They wrung his hands. They prodded and punched
+his muscles. They embraced the noble legs that were going to run
+the unexampled race. At the opposite end of the room, where it was
+physically impossible to get near the hero, the enthusiasm vented itself
+in feats of strength and acts of destruction. Hercules I. cleared a
+space with his elbows, and laid down--and Hercules II. took him up in
+his teeth. Hercules III. seized the poker from the fireplace, and broke
+it on his arm. Hercules IV. followed with the tongs, and shattered them
+on his neck. The smashing of the furniture and the pulling down of the
+house seemed likely to succeed--when Geoffrey's eye lighted by accident
+on Julius, and Geoffrey's voice, calling fiercely for his brother,
+hushed the wild assembly into sudden attention, and turned the fiery
+enthusiasm into a new course. Hooray for his brother! One, two,
+three--and up with his brother on our shoulders! Four five, six--and
+on with his brother, over our heads, to the other end of the room! See,
+boys--see! the hero has got him by the collar! the hero has lifted him
+on the table! The hero heated red-hot with his own triumph, welcomes
+the poor little snob cheerfully, with a volley of oaths. "Thunder and
+lightning! Explosion and blood! What's up now, Julius? What's up now?"
+
+Julius recovered his breath, and arranged his coat. The quiet little
+man, who had just muscle enough to lift a dictionary from the shelf, and
+just training enough to play the fiddle, so far from being daunted by
+the rough reception accorded to him, appeared to feel no other sentiment
+in relation to it than a sentiment of unmitigated contempt.
+
+"You're not frightened, are you?" said Geoffrey. "Our fellows are a
+roughish lot, but they mean well."
+
+"I am not frightened," answered Julius. "I am only wondering--when the
+Schools and Universities of England turn out such a set of ruffians as
+these--how long the Schools and Universities of England will last."
+
+"Mind what you are about, Julius! They'll cart you out of window if they
+hear you."
+
+"They will only confirm my opinion of them, Geoffrey, if they do."
+
+Here the assembly, seeing but not hearing the colloquy between the two
+brothers, became uneasy on the subject of the coming race. A roar of
+voices summoned Geoffrey to announce it, if there was any thing wrong.
+Having pacified the meeting, Geoffrey turned again to his brother, and
+asked him, in no amiable mood, what the devil he wanted there?
+
+"I want to tell you something, before I go back to Scotland," answered
+Julius. "My father is willing to give you a last chance. If you don't
+take it, _my_ doors are closed against you as well as _his._"
+
+Nothing is more remarkable, in its way, than the sound common-sense and
+admirable self-restraint exhibited by the youth of the present time when
+confronted by an emergency in which their own interests are concerned.
+Instead of resenting the tone which his brother had taken with him,
+Geoffrey instantly descended from the pedestal of glory on which
+he stood, and placed himself without a struggle in the hands which
+vicariously held his destiny--otherwise, the hands which vicariously
+held the purse. In five minutes more the meeting had been dismissed,
+with all needful assurances relating to Geoffrey's share in the coming
+Sports--and the two brothers were closeted together in one of the
+private rooms of the inn.
+
+"Out with it!" said Geoffrey. "And don't be long about it."
+
+"I won't be five minutes," replied Julius. "I go back to-night by the
+mail-train; and I have a great deal to do in the mean time. Here it is,
+in plain words: My father consents to see you again, if you choose to
+settle in life--with his approval. And my mother has discovered where
+you may find a wife. Birth, beauty, and money are all offered to you.
+Take them--and you recover your position as Lord Holchester's son.
+Refuse them--and you go to ruin your own way."
+
+Geoffrey's reception of the news from home was not of the most
+reassuring kind. Instead of answering he struck his fist furiously on
+the table, and cursed with all his heart some absent woman unnamed.
+
+"I have nothing to do with any degrading connection which you may have
+formed," Julius went on. "I have only to put the matter before you
+exactly as it stands, and to leave you to decide for yourself. The
+lady in question was formerly Miss Newenden--a descendant of one of the
+oldest families in England. She is now Mrs. Glenarm--the young widow
+(and the childless widow) of the great iron-master of that name. Birth
+and fortune--she unites both. Her income is a clear ten thousand a
+year. My father can and will, make it fifteen thousand, if you are lucky
+enough to persuade her to marry you. My mother answers for her personal
+qualities. And my wife has met her at our house in London. She is now,
+as I hear, staying with some friends in Scotland; and when I get back I
+will take care that an invitation is sent to her to pay her next visit
+at my house. It remains, of course, to be seen whether you are fortunate
+enough to produce a favorable impression on her. In the mean time you
+will be doing every thing that my father can ask of you, if you make the
+attempt."
+
+Geoffrey impatiently dismissed that part of the question from all
+consideration.
+
+"If she don't cotton to a man who's going to run in the Great Race at
+Fulham," he said, "there are plenty as good as she is who will! That's
+not the difficulty. Bother _that!_"
+
+"I tell you again, I have nothing to do with your difficulties," Julius
+resumed. "Take the rest of the day to consider what I have said to you.
+If you decide to accept the proposal, I shall expect you to prove you
+are in earnest by meeting me at the station to-night. We will travel
+back to Scotland together. You will complete your interrupted visit at
+Lady Lundie's (it is important, in my interests, that you should treat a
+person of her position in the county with all due respect); and my wife
+will make the necessary arrangements with Mrs. Glenarm, in anticipation
+of your return to our house. There is nothing more to be said, and no
+further necessity of my staying here. If you join me at the station
+to-night, your sister-in-law and I will do all we can to help you. If I
+travel back to Scotland alone, don't trouble yourself to follow--I have
+done with you." He shook hands with his brother, and went out.
+
+Left alone, Geoffrey lit his pipe and sent for the landlord.
+
+"Get me a boat. I shall scull myself up the river for an hour or two.
+And put in some towels. I may take a swim."
+
+The landlord received the order--with a caution addressed to his
+illustrious guest.
+
+"Don't show yourself in front of the house, Sir! If you let the people
+see you, they're in such a state of excitement, the police won't answer
+for keeping them in order."
+
+"All right. I'll go out by the back way."
+
+He took a turn up and down the room. What were the difficulties to be
+overcome before he could profit by the golden prospect which his brother
+had offered to him? The Sports? No! The committee had promised to
+defer the day, if he wished it--and a month's training, in his physical
+condition, would be amply enough for him. Had he any personal
+objection to trying his luck with Mrs. Glenarm? Not he! Any woman would
+do--provided his father was satisfied, and the money was all right. The
+obstacle which was really in his way was the obstacle of the woman whom
+he had ruined. Anne! The one insuperable difficulty was the difficulty
+of dealing with Anne.
+
+"We'll see how it looks," he said to himself, "after a pull up the
+river!"
+
+The landlord and the police inspector smuggled him out by the back way
+unknown to the expectant populace in front The two men stood on the
+river-bank admiring him, as he pulled away from them, with his long,
+powerful, easy, beautiful stroke.
+
+"That's what I call the pride and flower of England!" said the
+inspector. "Has the betting on him begun?"
+
+"Six to four," said the landlord, "and no takers."
+
+
+
+Julius went early to the station that night. His mother was very
+anxious. "Don't let Geoffrey find an excuse in your example," she said,
+"if he is late."
+
+The first person whom Julius saw on getting out of the carriage was
+Geoffrey--with his ticket taken, and his portmanteau in charge of the
+guard.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH SCENE.--WINDYGATES.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH
+
+NEAR IT.
+
+THE Library at Windygates was the largest and the handsomest room in
+the house. The two grand divisions under which Literature is usually
+arranged in these days occupied the customary places in it. On the
+shelves which ran round the walls were the books which humanity in
+general respects--and does not read. On the tables distributed over
+the floor were the books which humanity in general reads--and does not
+respect. In the first class, the works of the wise ancients; and
+the Histories, Biographies, and Essays of writers of more modern
+times--otherwise the Solid Literature, which is universally respected,
+and occasionally read. In the second class, the Novels of our own
+day--otherwise the Light Literature, which is universally read, and
+occasionally respected. At Windygates, as elsewhere, we believed History
+to be high literature, because it assumed to be true to Authorities
+(of which we knew little)--and Fiction to be low literature, because it
+attempted to be true to Nature (of which we knew less). At Windygates as
+elsewhere, we were always more or less satisfied with ourselves, if
+we were publicly discovered consulting our History--and more or less
+ashamed of ourselves, if we were publicly discovered devouring our
+Fiction. An architectural peculiarity in the original arrangement of the
+library favored the development of this common and curious form of human
+stupidity. While a row of luxurious arm-chairs, in the main thoroughfare
+of the room, invited the reader of solid literature to reveal himself
+in the act of cultivating a virtue, a row of snug little curtained
+recesses, opening at intervals out of one of the walls, enabled the
+reader of light literature to conceal himself in the act of indulging
+a vice. For the rest, all the minor accessories of this spacious and
+tranquil place were as plentiful and as well chosen as the heart could
+desire. And solid literature and light literature, and great writers and
+small, were all bounteously illuminated alike by a fine broad flow of
+the light of heaven, pouring into the room through windows that opened
+to the floor.
+
+
+
+It was the fourth day from the day of Lady Lundie's garden-party, and
+it wanted an hour or more of the time at which the luncheon-bell usually
+rang.
+
+The guests at Windygates were most of them in the garden, enjoying the
+morning sunshine, after a prevalent mist and rain for some days past.
+Two gentlemen (exceptions to the general rule) were alone in the
+library. They were the two last gentlemen in the would who could
+possibly be supposed to have any legitimate motive for meeting each
+other in a place of literary seclusion. One was Arnold Brinkworth, and
+the other was Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+They had arrived together at Windygates that morning. Geoffrey had
+traveled from London with his brother by the train of the previous
+night. Arnold, delayed in getting away at his own time, from his own
+property, by ceremonies incidental to his position which were not to be
+abridged without giving offense to many worthy people--had caught the
+passing train early that morning at the station nearest to him, and had
+returned to Lady Lundie's, as he had left Lady Lundie's, in company with
+his friend.
+
+After a short preliminary interview with Blanche, Arnold had rejoined
+Geoffrey in the safe retirement of the library, to say what was still
+left to be said between them on the subject of Anne. Having completed
+his report of events at Craig Fernie, he was now naturally waiting to
+hear what Geoffrey had to say on his side. To Arnold's astonishment,
+Geoffrey coolly turned away to leave the library without uttering a
+word.
+
+Arnold stopped him without ceremony.
+
+"Not quite so fast, Geoffrey," he said. "I have an interest in Miss
+Silvester's welfare as well as in yours. Now you are back again in
+Scotland, what are you going to do?"
+
+If Geoffrey had told the truth, he must have stated his position much as
+follows:
+
+He had necessarily decided on deserting Anne when he had decided on
+joining his brother on the journey back. But he had advanced no farther
+than this. How he was to abandon the woman who had trusted him, without
+seeing his own dastardly conduct dragged into the light of day, was more
+than he yet knew. A vague idea of at once pacifying and deluding Anne,
+by a marriage which should be no marriage at all, had crossed his mind
+on the journey. He had asked himself whether a trap of that sort might
+not be easily set in a country notorious for the looseness of its
+marriage laws--if a man only knew how? And he had thought it likely that
+his well-informed brother, who lived in Scotland, might be tricked
+into innocently telling him what he wanted to know. He had turned the
+conversation to the subject of Scotch marriages in general by way of
+trying the experiment. Julius had not studied the question; Julius knew
+nothing about it; and there the experiment had come to an end. As the
+necessary result of the check thus encountered, he was now in Scotland
+with absolutely nothing to trust to as a means of effecting his release
+but the chapter of accidents, aided by his own resolution to marry Mrs.
+Glenarm. Such was his position, and such should have been the substance
+of his reply when he was confronted by Arnold's question, and plainly
+asked what he meant to do.
+
+"The right thing," he answered, unblushingly. "And no mistake about it."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you see your way so plainly," returned Arnold. "In
+your place, I should have been all abroad. I was wondering, only the
+other day, whether you would end, as I should have ended, in consulting
+Sir Patrick."
+
+Geoffrey eyed him sharply.
+
+"Consult Sir Patrick?" he repeated. "Why would you have done that?"
+
+"_I_ shouldn't have known how to set about marrying her," replied
+Arnold. "And--being in Scotland--I should have applied to Sir Patrick
+(without mentioning names, of course), because he would be sure to know
+all about it."
+
+"Suppose I don't see my way quite so plainly as you think," said
+Geoffrey. "Would you advise me--"
+
+"To consult Sir Patrick? Certainly! He has passed his life in the
+practice of the Scotch law. Didn't you know that?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then take my advice--and consult him. You needn't mention names. You
+can say it's the case of a friend."
+
+The idea was a new one and a good one. Geoffrey looked longingly toward
+the door. Eager to make Sir Patrick his innocent accomplice on the
+spot, he made a second attempt to leave the library; and made it for the
+second time in vain. Arnold had more unwelcome inquiries to make, and
+more advice to give unasked.
+
+"How have you arranged about meeting Miss Silvester?" he went on. "You
+can't go to the hotel in the character of her husband. I have prevented
+that. Where else are you to meet her? She is all alone; she must be
+weary of waiting, poor thing. Can you manage matters so as to see her
+to-day?"
+
+After staring hard at Arnold while he was speaking, Geoffrey burst out
+laughing when he had done. A disinterested anxiety for the welfare of
+another person was one of those refinements of feeling which a muscular
+education had not fitted him to understand.
+
+"I say, old boy," he burst out, "you seem to take an extraordinary
+interest in Miss Silvester! You haven't fallen in love with her
+yourself--have you?"
+
+"Come! come!" said Arnold, seriously. "Neither she nor I deserve to
+be sneered at, in that way. I have made a sacrifice to your interests,
+Geoffrey--and so has she."
+
+Geoffrey's face became serious again. His secret was in Arnold's hands;
+and his estimate of Arnold's character was founded, unconsciously,
+on his experience of himself. "All right," he said, by way of timely
+apology and concession. "I was only joking."
+
+"As much joking as you please, when you have married her," replied
+Arnold. "It seems serious enough, to my mind, till then." He
+stopped--considered--and laid his hand very earnestly on Geoffrey's arm.
+"Mind!" he resumed. "You are not to breathe a word to any living soul,
+of my having been near the inn!"
+
+"I've promised to hold my tongue, once already. What do you want more?"
+
+"I am anxious, Geoffrey. I was at Craig Fernie, remember, when Blanche
+came there! She has been telling me all that happened, poor darling, in
+the firm persuasion that I was miles off at the time. I swear I couldn't
+look her in the face! What would she think of me, if she knew the truth?
+Pray be careful! pray be careful!"
+
+Geoffrey's patience began to fail him.
+
+"We had all this out," he said, "on the way here from the station.
+What's the good of going over the ground again?"
+
+"You're quite right," said Arnold, good-humoredly. "The fact is--I'm out
+of sorts, this morning. My mind misgives me--I don't know why."
+
+"Mind?" repeated Geoffrey, in high contempt. "It's flesh--that's what's
+the matter with _you._ You're nigh on a stone over your right weight.
+Mind he hanged! A man in healthy training don't know that he has got
+a mind. Take a turn with the dumb-bells, and a run up hill with a
+great-coat on. Sweat it off, Arnold! Sweat it off!"
+
+With that excellent advice, he turned to leave the room for the third
+time. Fate appeared to have determined to keep him imprisoned in the
+library, that morning. On this occasion, it was a servant who got in the
+way--a servant, with a letter and a message. "The man waits for answer."
+
+Geoffrey looked at the letter. It was in his brother's handwriting.
+He had left Julius at the junction about three hours since. What could
+Julius possibly have to say to him now?
+
+He opened the letter. Julius had to announce that Fortune was favoring
+them already. He had heard news of Mrs. Glenarm, as soon as he reached
+home. She had called on his wife, during his absence in London--she
+had been inv ited to the house--and she had promised to accept the
+invitation early in the week. "Early in the week," Julius wrote, "may
+mean to-morrow. Make your apologies to Lady Lundie; and take care not
+to offend her. Say that family reasons, which you hope soon to have
+the pleasure of confiding to her, oblige you to appeal once more to her
+indulgence--and come to-morrow, and help us to receive Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+Even Geoffrey was startled, when he found himself met by a sudden
+necessity for acting on his own decision. Anne knew where his brother
+lived. Suppose Anne (not knowing where else to find him) appeared at
+his brother's house, and claimed him in the presence of Mrs. Glenarm? He
+gave orders to have the messenger kept waiting, and said he would send
+back a written reply.
+
+"From Craig Fernie?" asked Arnold, pointing to the letter in his
+friend's hand.
+
+Geoffrey looked up with a frown. He had just opened his lips to answer
+that ill-timed reference to Anne, in no very friendly terms, when a
+voice, calling to Arnold from the lawn outside, announced the appearance
+of a third person in the library, and warned the two gentlemen that
+their private interview was at an end.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.
+
+NEARER STILL.
+
+BLANCHE stepped lightly into the room, through one of the open French
+windows.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she said to Arnold.
+
+"Nothing. I was just going to look for you in the garden."
+
+"The garden is insufferable, this morning." Saying those words, she
+fanned herself with her handkerchief, and noticed Geoffrey's presence
+in the room with a look of very thinly-concealed annoyance at the
+discovery. "Wait till I am married!" she thought. "Mr. Delamayn will be
+cleverer than I take him to be, if he gets much of his friend's company
+_then!_"
+
+"A trifle too hot--eh?" said Geoffrey, seeing her eyes fixed on him, and
+supposing that he was expected to say something.
+
+Having performed that duty he walked away without waiting for a reply;
+and seated himself with his letter, at one of the writing-tables in the
+library.
+
+"Sir Patrick is quite right about the young men of the present day,"
+said Blanche, turning to Arnold. "Here is this one asks me a question,
+and doesn't wait for an answer. There are three more of them, out in
+the garden, who have been talking of nothing, for the last hour, but the
+pedigrees of horses and the muscles of men. When we are married, Arnold,
+don't present any of your male friends to me, unless they have turned
+fifty. What shall we do till luncheon-time? It's cool and quiet in here
+among the books. I want a mild excitement--and I have got absolutely
+nothing to do. Suppose you read me some poetry?"
+
+"While _he_ is here?" asked Arnold, pointing to the personified
+antithesis of poetry--otherwise to Geoffrey, seated with his back to
+them at the farther end of the library.
+
+"Pooh!" said Blanche. "There's only an animal in the room. We needn't
+mind _him!_"
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Arnold. "You're as bitter, this morning, as Sir
+Patrick himself. What will you say to Me when we are married if you talk
+in that way of my friend?"
+
+Blanche stole her hand into Arnold's hand and gave it a little
+significant squeeze. "I shall always be nice to _you,_" she
+whispered--with a look that contained a host of pretty promises in
+itself. Arnold returned the look (Geoffrey was unquestionably in the
+way!). Their eyes met tenderly (why couldn't the great awkward brute
+write his letters somewhere else?). With a faint little sigh, Blanche
+dropped resignedly into one of the comfortable arm-chairs--and asked
+once more for "some poetry," in a voice that faltered softly, and with a
+color that was brighter than usual.
+
+"Whose poetry am I to read?" inquired Arnold.
+
+"Any body's," said Blanche. "This is another of my impulses. I am dying
+for some poetry. I don't know whose poetry. And I don't know why."
+
+Arnold went straight to the nearest book-shelf, and took down the first
+volume that his hand lighted on--a solid quarto, bound in sober brown.
+
+"Well?" asked Blanche. "What have you found?"
+
+Arnold opened the volume, and conscientiously read the title exactly as
+it stood:
+
+"Paradise Lost. A Poem. By John Milton."
+
+"I have never read Milton," said Blanche. "Have you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Another instance of sympathy between us. No educated person ought to be
+ignorant of Milton. Let us be educated persons. Please begin."
+
+"At the beginning?"
+
+"Of course! Stop! You musn't sit all that way off--you must sit where
+I can look at you. My attention wanders if I don't look at people while
+they read."
+
+Arnold took a stool at Blanche's feet, and opened the "First Book" of
+Paradise Lost. His "system" as a reader of blank verse was simplicity
+itself. In poetry we are some of us (as many living poets can testify)
+all for sound; and some of us (as few living poets can testify) all for
+sense. Arnold was for sound. He ended every line inexorably with a
+full stop; and he got on to his full stop as fast as the inevitable
+impediment of the words would let him. He began:
+
+     "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit.
+     Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste.
+     Brought death into the world and all our woe.
+     With loss of Eden till one greater Man.
+     Restore us and regain the blissful seat.
+     Sing heavenly Muse--"
+
+"Beautiful!" said Blanche. "What a shame it seems to have had Milton all
+this time in the library and never to have read him yet! We will have
+Mornings with Milton, Arnold. He seems long; but we are both young, and
+we _may_ live to get to the end of him. Do you know dear, now I look
+at you again, you don't seem to have come back to Windygates in good
+spirits."
+
+"Don't I? I can't account for it."
+
+"I can. It's sympathy with Me. I am out of spirits too."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes. After what I saw at Craig Fernie, I grow more and more uneasy
+about Anne. You will understand that, I am sure, after what I told you
+this morning?"
+
+Arnold looked back, in a violent hurry, from Blanche to Milton. That
+renewed reference to events at Craig Fernie was a renewed reproach to
+him for his conduct at the inn. He attempted to silence her by pointing
+to Geoffrey.
+
+"Don't forget," he whispered, "that there is somebody in the room
+besides ourselves."
+
+Blanche shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
+
+"What does _he_ matter?" she asked. "What does _he_ know or care about
+Anne?"
+
+There was only one other chance of diverting her from the delicate
+subject. Arnold went on reading headlong, two lines in advance of the
+place at which he had left off, with more sound and less sense than
+ever:
+
+     "In the beginning how the heavens and earth.
+     Rose out of Chaos or if Sion hill--"
+
+At "Sion hill," Blanche interrupted him again.
+
+"Do wait a little, Arnold. I can't have Milton crammed down my throat
+in that way. Besides I had something to say. Did I tell you that I
+consulted my uncle about Anne? I don't think I did. I caught him alone
+in this very room. I told him all I have told you. I showed him Anne's
+letter. And I said, 'What do you think?' He took a little time (and a
+great deal of snuff) before he would say what he thought. When he did
+speak, he told me I might quite possibly be right in suspecting Anne's
+husband to be a very abominable person. His keeping himself out of my
+way was (just as I thought) a suspicious circumstance, to begin with.
+And then there was the sudden extinguishing of the candles, when I first
+went in. I thought (and Mrs. Inchbare thought) it was done by the wind.
+Sir Patrick suspects it was done by the horrid man himself, to prevent
+me from seeing him when I entered the room. I am firmly persuaded Sir
+Patrick is right. What do _you_ think?"
+
+"I think we had better go on," said Arnold, with his head down over his
+book. "We seem to be forgetting Milton."
+
+"How you do worry about Milton! That last bit wasn't as interesting as
+the other. Is there any love in Paradise Lost?"
+
+"Perhaps we may find some if we go on."
+
+"Very well, then. Go on. And be quick about it."
+
+Arnold was _so_ quick about it that he lost his place. Instead of going
+on he went back. He read once more:
+
+     "In the beginning how the heavens and earth.
+     Rose out of  Chaos or if Sion hill--"
+
+"You read that before," said Blanche.
+
+"I think not."
+
+"I'm sure you did. When you said 'Sion hill' I recollect I thought of
+the Methodists directly. I couldn't have thought of the Methodists, if
+you hadn't said 'Sion hill.' It stands to reason."
+
+"I'll try the next page," said Arnold. "I can't have read that
+before--for I haven't turned over yet."
+
+Blanche threw herself back in her chair, and flung her handkerchief
+resignedly over her face. "The flies," she explained. "I'm not going to
+sleep. Try the next page. Oh, dear me, try the next page!"
+
+Arnold proceeded:
+
+     "Say first for heaven hides nothing from thy view.
+     Nor the deep tract of hell say first what cause.
+     Moved our grand parents in that happy state--"
+
+Blanche suddenly threw the handkerchief off again, and sat bolt upright
+in her chair. "Shut it up," she cried. "I can't bear any more. Leave
+off, Arnold--leave off!"
+
+"What's, the matter now?"
+
+"'That happy state,'" said Blanche. "What does 'that happy state' mean?
+Marriage, of course! And marriage reminds me of Anne. I won't have any
+more. Paradise Lost is painful. Shut it up. Well, my next question to
+Sir Patrick was, of course, to know what he thought Anne's husband had
+done. The wretch had behaved infamously to her in some way. In what way?
+Was it any thing to do with her marriage? My uncle considered again. He
+thought it quite possible. Private marriages were dangerous things (he
+said)--especially in Scotland. He asked me if they had been married in
+Scotland. I couldn't tell him--I only said, 'Suppose they were? What
+then?' 'It's barely possible, in that case,' says Sir Patrick, 'that
+Miss Silvester may be feeling uneasy about her marriage. She may even
+have reason--or may think she has reason--to doubt whether it is a
+marriage at all.'"
+
+Arnold started, and looked round at Geoffrey still sitting at the
+writing-table with his back turned on them. Utterly as Blanche and Sir
+Patrick were mistaken in their estimate of Anne's position at Craig
+Fernie, they had drifted, nevertheless, into discussing the very
+question in which Geoffrey and Miss Silvester were interested--the
+question of marriage in Scotland. It was impossible in Blanche's
+presence to tell Geoffrey that he might do well to listen to Sir
+Patrick's opinion, even at second-hand. Perhaps the words had found
+their way to him? perhaps he was listening already, of his own accord?
+
+(He _was_ listening. Blanche's last words had found their way to him,
+while he was pondering over his half-finished letter to his brother. He
+waited to hear more--without moving, and with the pen suspended in his
+hand.)
+
+Blanche proceeded, absently winding her fingers in and out of Arnold's
+hair as he sat at her feet:
+
+"It flashed on me instantly that Sir Patrick had discovered the
+truth. Of course I told him so. He laughed, and said I mustn't jump at
+conclusions We were guessing quite in the dark; and all the distressing
+things I had noticed at the inn might admit of some totally different
+explanation. He would have gone on splitting straws in that provoking
+way the whole morning if I hadn't stopped him. I was strictly logical.
+I said _I_ had seen Anne, and _he_ hadn't--and that made all the
+difference. I said, 'Every thing that puzzled and frightened me in the
+poor darling is accounted for now. The law must, and shall, reach
+that man, uncle--and I'll pay for it!' I was so much in earnest that
+I believe I cried a little. What do you think the dear old man did? He
+took me on his knee and gave me a kiss; and he said, in the nicest way,
+that he would adopt my view, for the present, if I would promise not to
+cry any more; and--wait! the cream of it is to come!--that he would put
+the view in quite a new light to me as soon as I was composed again. You
+may imagine how soon I dried my eyes, and what a picture of composure I
+presented in the course of half a minute. 'Let us take it for granted,'
+says Sir Patrick, 'that this man unknown has really tried to deceive
+Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it's as
+likely as not that, in trying to overreach _her,_ he may (without in the
+least suspecting it) have ended in overreaching himself.'"
+
+(Geoffrey held his breath. The pen dropped unheeded from his fingers. It
+was coming. The light that his brother couldn't throw on the subject was
+dawning on it at last!)
+
+Blanche resumed:
+
+"I was so interested, and it made such a tremendous impression on me,
+that I haven't forgotten a word. 'I mustn't make that poor little head
+of yours ache with Scotch law,' my uncle said; 'I must put it plainly.
+There are marriages allowed in Scotland, Blanche, which are called
+Irregular Marriages--and very abominable things they are. But they have
+this accidental merit in the present case. It is extremely difficult for
+a man to pretend to marry in Scotland, and not really to do it. And it
+is, on the other hand, extremely easy for a man to drift into marrying
+in Scotland without feeling the slightest suspicion of having done it
+himself.' That was exactly what he said, Arnold. When _we_ are married,
+it sha'n't be in Scotland!"
+
+(Geoffrey's ruddy color paled. If this was true he might be caught
+himself in the trap which he had schemed to set for Anne! Blanche went
+on with her narrative. He waited and listened.)
+
+"My uncle asked me if I understood him so far. It was as plain as the
+sun at noonday, of course I understood him! 'Very well, then--now for
+the application!' says Sir Patrick. 'Once more supposing our guess to be
+the right one, Miss Silvester may be making herself very unhappy without
+any real cause. If this invisible man at Craig Fernie has actually
+meddled, I won't say with marrying her, but only with pretending to make
+her his wife, and if he has attempted it in Scotland, the chances are
+nine to one (though _he_ may not believe it, and though _she_ may not
+believe it) that he has really married her, after all.' My uncle's own
+words again! Quite needless to say that, half an hour after they were
+out of his lips, I had sent them to Craig Fernie in a letter to Anne!"
+
+(Geoffrey's stolidly-staring eyes suddenly brightened. A light of
+the devil's own striking illuminated him. An idea of the devil's own
+bringing entered his mind. He looked stealthily round at the man whose
+life he had saved--at the man who had devotedly served him in return. A
+hideous cunning leered at his mouth and peeped out of his eyes. "Arnold
+Brinkworth pretended to be married to her at the inn. By the lord Harry!
+that's a way out of it that never struck me before!" With that thought
+in his heart he turned back again to his half-finished letter to Julius.
+For once in his life he was strongly, fiercely agitated. For once in
+his life he was daunted--and that by his Own Thought! He had written to
+Julius under a strong sense of the necessity of gaining time to delude
+Anne into leaving Scotland before he ventured on paying his addresses to
+Mrs. Glenarm. His letter contained a string of clumsy excuses, intended
+to delay his return to his brother's house. "No," he said to himself, as
+he read it again. "Whatever else may do--_this_ won't!" He looked round
+once more at Arnold, and slowly tore the letter into fragments as he
+looked.)
+
+In the mean time Blanche had not done yet. "No," she said, when Arnold
+proposed an adjournment to the garden; "I have something more to say,
+and you are interested in it, this time." Arnold resigned himself to
+listen, and worse still to answer, if there was no help for it, in the
+character of an innocent stranger who had never been near the Craig
+Fernie inn.
+
+"Well," Blanche resumed, "and what do you think has come of my letter to
+Anne?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"Nothing has come of it!"
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing! I know she received the letter yesterday morning. I
+ought to have had the answer to-day at breakfast."
+
+"Perhaps she thought it didn't require an answer."
+
+"She couldn't have thought that, for reasons that I know of. Besides, in
+my letter yesterday I implored her to tell me (if it was one line only)
+whether, in guessing at what her trouble was, Sir Patrick and I had not
+guessed right. And here is the day getting on, and no answer! What am I
+to conclude?"
+
+"I really can't say!"
+
+"Is it possible, Arnold, that we have _not_ guessed right, after all?
+Is the wickedness of that man who blew the candles out wickedness beyond
+our discovering? The doubt is so dreadful that I have made up my mind
+not to bear it after to-day. I count on your sympathy and assistance
+when to-morrow comes!"
+
+Arnold's heart sank. Some new complication was evidently gathering round
+him. He waited in silence to hear the worst. Blanche bent forward, and
+whispered to him.
+
+"This is a secret," she said. "If that creature at the writing-table has
+ears for any thing but rowing and racing, he mustn't hear this! Anne
+may come to me privately to-day while you are all at luncheon. If she
+doesn't come and if I don't hear from her, then the mystery of her
+silence must be cleared up; and You must do it!"
+
+"I!"
+
+"Don't make difficulties! If you can't find your way to Craig Fernie, I
+can help you. As for Anne, you know what a charming person she is, and
+you know she will receive you perfectly, for my sake. I must and will
+have some news of her. I can't break the laws of the household a second
+time. Sir Patrick sympathizes, but he won't stir. Lady Lundie is a
+bitter enemy. The servants are threatened with the loss of their places
+if any one of them goes near Anne. There is nobody but you. And to Anne
+you go to-morrow, if I don't see her or hear from her to-day!"
+
+This to the man who had passed as Anne's husband at the inn, and who had
+been forced into the most intimate knowledge of Anne's miserable secret!
+Arnold rose to put Milton away, with the composure of sheer despair.
+Any other secret he might, in the last resort, have confided to the
+discretion of a third person. But a woman's secret--with a woman's
+reputation depending on his keeping it--was not to be confided to any
+body, under any stress of circumstances whatever. "If Geoffrey doesn't
+get me out of _this,_," he thought, "I shall have no choice but to leave
+Windygates to-morrow."
+
+As he replaced the book on the shelf, Lady Lundie entered the library
+from the garden.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she said to her step-daughter.
+
+"Improving my mind," replied Blanche. "Mr. Brinkworth and I have been
+reading Milton."
+
+"Can you condescend so far, after reading Milton all the morning, as to
+help me with the invitations for the dinner next week?"
+
+"If _you_ can condescend, Lady Lundie, after feeding the poultry all the
+morning, I must be humility itself after only reading Milton!"
+
+With that little interchange of the acid amenities of feminine
+intercourse, step-mother and step-daughter withdrew to a writing-table,
+to put the virtue of hospitality in practice together.
+
+Arnold joined his friend at the other end of the library.
+
+Geoffrey was sitting with his elbows on the desk, and his clenched fists
+dug into his cheeks. Great drops of perspiration stood on his forehead,
+and the fragments of a torn letter lay scattered all round him. He
+exhibited symptoms of nervous sensibility for the first time in his
+life--he started when Arnold spoke to him.
+
+"What's the matter, Geoffrey?"
+
+"A letter to answer. And I don't know how."
+
+"From Miss Silvester?" asked Arnold, dropping his voice so as to prevent
+the ladies at the other end of the room from hearing him.
+
+"No," answered Geoffrey, in a lower voice still.
+
+"Have you heard what Blanche has been saying to me about Miss
+Silvester?"
+
+"Some of it."
+
+"Did you hear Blanche say that she meant to send me to Craig Fernie
+to-morrow, if she failed to get news from Miss Silvester to-day?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you know it now. That is what Blanche has just said to me."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well--there's a limit to what a man can expect even from his best
+friend. I hope you won't ask me to be Blanche's messenger to-morrow. I
+can't, and won't, go back to the inn as things are now."
+
+"You have had enough of it--eh?"
+
+"I have had enough of distressing Miss Silvester, and more than enough
+of deceiving Blanche."
+
+"What do you mean by 'distressing Miss Silvester?'"
+
+"She doesn't take the same easy view that you and I do, Geoffrey, of my
+passing her off on the people of the inn as my wife."
+
+Geoffrey absently took up a paper-knife. Still with his head down, he
+began shaving off the topmost layer of paper from the blotting-pad under
+his hand. Still with his head down, he abruptly broke the silence in a
+whisper.
+
+"I say!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"How did you manage to pass her off as your wife?"
+
+"I told you how, as we were driving from the station here."
+
+"I was thinking of something else. Tell me again."
+
+Arnold told him once more what had happened at the inn. Geoffrey
+listened, without making any remark. He balanced the paper-knife
+vacantly on one of his fingers. He was strangely sluggish and strangely
+silent.
+
+"All _that_ is done and ended," said Arnold shaking him by the shoulder.
+"It rests with you now to get me out of the difficulty I'm placed in
+with Blanche. Things must be settled with Miss Silvester to-day."
+
+"Things _shall_ be settled."
+
+"Shall be? What are you waiting for?"
+
+"I'm waiting to do what you told me."
+
+"What I told you?"
+
+"Didn't you tell me to consult Sir Patrick before I married her?"
+
+"To be sure! so I did."
+
+"Well--I am waiting for a chance with Sir Patrick."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then--" He looked at Arnold for the first time. "Then," he said,
+"you may consider it settled."
+
+"The marriage?"
+
+He suddenly looked down again at the blotting-pad. "Yes--the marriage."
+
+Arnold offered his hand in congratulation. Geoffrey never noticed it.
+His eyes were off the blotting-pad again. He was looking out of the
+window near him.
+
+"Don't I hear voices outside?" he asked.
+
+"I believe our friends are in the garden," said Arnold. "Sir Patrick may
+be among them. I'll go and see."
+
+The instant his back was turned Geoffrey snatched up a sheet of
+note-paper. "Before I forget it!" he said to himself. He wrote the word
+"Memorandum" at the top of the page, and added these lines beneath it:
+
+"He asked for her by the name of his wife at the door. He said, at
+dinner, before the landlady and the waiter, 'I take these rooms for my
+wife.' He made _her_ say he was her husband at the same time. After
+that he stopped all night. What do the lawyers call this in
+Scotland?--(Query: a marriage?)"
+
+After folding up the paper he hesitated for a moment. "No!" he thought,
+"It won't do to trust to what Miss Lundie said about it. I can't be
+certain till I have consulted Sir Patrick himself."
+
+He put the paper away in his pocket, and wiped the heavy perspiration
+from his forehead. He was pale--for _him,_ strikingly pale--when Arnold
+came back.
+
+"Any thing wrong, Geoffrey?--you're as white as ashes."
+
+"It's the heat. Where's Sir Patrick?"
+
+"You may see for yourself."
+
+Arnold pointed to the window. Sir Patrick was crossing the lawn, on
+his way to the library with a newspaper in his hand; and the guests at
+Windygates were accompanying him. Sir Patrick was smiling, and saying
+nothing. The guests were talking excitedly at the tops of their voices.
+There had apparently been a collision of some kind between the old
+school and the new. Arnold directed Geoffrey's attention to the state of
+affairs on the lawn.
+
+"How are you to consult Sir Patrick with all those people about him?"
+
+"I'll consult Sir Patrick, if I take him by the scruff of the neck and
+carry him into the next county!" He rose to his feet as he spoke those
+words, and emphasized them under his breath with an oath.
+
+Sir Patrick entered the library, with the guests at his heels.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.
+
+CLOSE ON IT.
+
+THE object of the invasion of the library by the party in the garden
+appeared to be twofold.
+
+Sir Patrick had entered the room to restore the newspaper to the place
+from which he had taken it. The guests, to the number of five, had
+followed him, to appeal in a body to Geoffrey Delamayn. Between these
+two apparently dissimilar motives there was a connection, not visible on
+the surface, which was now to assert itself.
+
+Of the five guests, two were middle-aged gentlemen belonging to that
+large, but indistinct, division of the human family whom the hand of
+Nature has painted in unobtrusive neutral tint. They had absorbed the
+ideas of their time with such receptive capacity as they possessed;
+and they occupied much the same place in society which the chorus in an
+opera occupies on the stage. They echoed the prevalent sentiment of the
+moment; and they gave the solo-talker time to fetch his breath.
+
+The three remaining guests were on the right side of thirty. All
+profoundly versed in horse-racing, in athletic sports, in pipes, beer,
+billiards, and betting. All profoundly ignorant of every thing else
+under the sun. All gentlemen by birth, and all marked as such by the
+stamp of "a University education." They may be personally described as
+faint reflections of Geoffrey; and they may be numerically distinguished
+(in the absence of all other distinction) as One, Two, and Three.
+
+Sir Patrick laid the newspaper on the table and placed himself in one of
+the comfortable arm-chairs. He was instantly assailed, in his domestic
+capacity, by his irrepressible sister-in-law. Lady Lundie dispatched
+Blanche to him with the list of her guests at the dinner. "For your
+uncle's approval, my dear, as head of the family."
+
+While Sir Patrick was looking over the list, and while Arnold was making
+his way to Blanche, at the back of her uncle's chair, One, Two, and
+Three--with the Chorus in attendance on them--descended in a body on
+Geoffrey, at the other end of the room, and appealed in rapid succession
+to his superior authority, as follows:
+
+"I say, Delamayn. We want You. Here is Sir Patrick running a regular
+Muck at us. Calls us aboriginal Britons. Tells us we ain't educated.
+Doubts if we could read, write, and cipher, if he tried us. Swears he's
+sick of fellows showing their arms and legs, and seeing which fellow's
+hardest, and who's got three belts of muscle across his wind, and who
+hasn't, and the like of that. Says a most infernal thing of a chap.
+Says--because a chap likes a healthy out-of-door life, and trains for
+rowing and running, and the rest of it, and don't see his way to stewing
+over his books--_therefore_ he's safe to commit all the crimes in the
+calendar, murder included. Saw your name down in the newspaper for the
+Foot-Race; and said, when we asked him if he'd taken the odds, he'd
+lay any odds we liked against you in the other Race at the
+University--meaning, old boy, your Degree. Nasty, that about the
+Degree--in the opinion of Number One. Bad taste in Sir Patrick to rake
+up what we never mention among ourselves--in the opinion of Number Two.
+Un-English to sneer at a man in that way behind his back--in the opinion
+of Number Three. Bring him to book, Delamayn. Your name's in the papers;
+he can't ride roughshod over You."
+
+The two choral gentlemen agreed (in the minor key) with the general
+opinion. "Sir Patrick's views are certainly extreme, Smith?" "I think,
+Jones, it's desirable to hear Mr. Delamayn on the other side."
+
+Geoffrey looked from one to the other of his admirers with an expression
+on his face which was quite new to them, and with something in his
+manner which puzzled them all.
+
+"You can't argue with Sir Patrick yourselves," he said, "and you want me
+to do it?"
+
+One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all answered, "Yes."
+
+"I won't do it."
+
+One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all asked, "Why?"
+
+"Because," answered Geoffrey, "you're all wrong. And Sir Patrick's
+right."
+
+Not astonishment only, but downright stupefaction, struck the deputation
+from the garden speechless.
+
+Without saying a word more to any of the persons standing near him,
+Geoffrey walked straight up to Sir Patrick's arm-chair, and personally
+addressed him. The satellites followed, and listened (as well they
+might) in wonder.
+
+"You will lay any odds, Sir," said Geoffrey "against me taking my
+Degree? You're quite right. I sha'n't take my Degree. You doubt whether
+I, or any of those fellows behind me, could read, write, and cipher
+correctly if you tried us. You're right again--we couldn't. You say you
+don't know why men like Me, and men like Them, may not begin with rowing
+and running and the like of that, and end in committing all the crimes
+in the calendar: murder included. Well! you may be right again there.
+Who's to know what may happen to him? or what he may not end in doing
+before he dies? It may be Another, or it may be Me. How do I know?
+and how do you?" He suddenly turned on the deputation, standing
+thunder-struck behind him. "If you want to know what I think, there it
+is for you, in plain words."
+
+There was something, not only in the shamelessness of the declaration
+itself, but in the fierce pleasure that the speaker seemed to feel in
+making it, which struck the circle of listeners, Sir Patrick included,
+with a momentary chill.
+
+In the midst of the silence a sixth guest appeared on the lawn, and
+stepped into the library--a silent, resolute, unassuming, elderly man
+who had arrived the day before on a visit to Windygates, and who
+was well known, in and out of London, as one of the first consulting
+surgeons of his time.
+
+"A discussion going on?" he asked. "Am I in the way?"
+
+"There's no discussion--we are all agreed," cried Geoffrey, answering
+boisterously for the rest. "The more the merrier, Sir!"
+
+After a glance at Geoffrey, the surgeon suddenly checked himself on the
+point of advancing to the inner part of the room, and remained standing
+at the window.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Sir Patrick, addressing himself to Geoffrey,
+with a grave dignity which was quite new in Arnold's experience of him.
+"We are not all agreed. I decline, Mr. Delamayn, to allow you to connect
+me with such an expression of feeling on your part as we have just
+heard. The language you have used leaves me no alternative but to meet
+your statement of what you suppose me to have said by my statement
+of what I really did say. It is not my fault if the discussion in the
+garden is revived before another audience in this room--it is yours."
+
+He looked as he spoke to Arnold and Blanche, and from them to the
+surgeon standing at the window.
+
+The surgeon had found an occupation for himself which completely
+isolated him among the rest of the guests. Keeping his own face in
+shadow, he was studying Geoffrey's face, in the full flood of light
+that fell on it, with a steady attention which must have been generally
+remarked, if all eyes had not been turned toward Sir Patrick at the
+time.
+
+It was not an easy face to investigate at that moment.
+
+While Sir Patrick had been speaking Geoffrey had seated himself near the
+window, doggedly impenetrable to the reproof of which he was the object.
+In his impatience to consult the one authority competent to decide
+the question of Arnold's position toward Anne, he had sided with Sir
+Patrick, as a means of ridding himself of the unwelcome presence of his
+friends--and he had defeated his own purpose, thanks to his own brutish
+incapability of bridling himself in the pursuit of it. Whether he was
+now discouraged under these circumstances, or whether he was simply
+resigned to bide his time till his time came, it was impossible, judging
+by outward appearances, to say. With a heavy dropping at the corners of
+his mouth, with a stolid indifference staring dull in his eyes, there
+he sat, a man forearmed, in his own obstinate neutrality, against all
+temptation to engage in the conflict of opinions that was to come.
+
+Sir Patrick took up the newspaper which he had brought in from the
+garden, and looked once more to see if the surgeon was attending to him.
+
+No! The surgeon's attention was absorbed in his own subject. There he
+was in the same position, with his mind still hard at work on something
+in Geoffrey which at once interested and puzzled it! "That man," he was
+thinking to himself, "has come here this morning after traveling from
+London all night. Does any ordinary fatigue explain what I see in his
+face? No!"
+
+"Our little discussion in the garden," resumed Sir Patrick, answering
+Blanche's inquiring look as she bent over him, "began, my dear, in a
+paragraph here announcing Mr. Delamayn's forthcoming appearance in a
+foot-race in the neighborhood of London. I hold very unpopular opinions
+as to the athletic displays which are so much in vogue in England just
+now. And it is possible that I may have expressed those opinions a
+little too strongly, in the heat of discussion, with gentlemen who
+are opposed to me--I don't doubt, conscientiously opposed--on this
+question."
+
+A low groan of protest rose from One, Two, and Three, in return for the
+little compliment which Sir Patrick had paid to them. "How about rowing
+and running ending in the Old Bailey and the gallows? You said that,
+Sir--you know you did!"
+
+The two choral gentlemen looked at each other, and agreed with the
+prevalent sentiment. "It came to that, I think, Smith." "Yes, Jones, it
+certainly came to that."
+
+The only two men who still cared nothing about it were Geoffrey and the
+surgeon. There sat the first, stolidly neutral--indifferent alike to
+the attack and the defense. There stood the second, pursuing his
+investigation--with the growing interest in it of a man who was
+beginning to see his way to the end.
+
+"Hear my defense, gentlemen," continued Sir Patrick, as courteously
+as ever. "You belong, remember, to a nation which especially claims to
+practice the rules of fair play. I must beg to remind you of what I said
+in the garden. I started with a concession. I admitted--as every person
+of the smallest sense must admit--that a man will, in the great majority
+of cases, be all the fitter for mental exercise if he wisely combines
+physical exercise along with it. The whole question between the two is a
+question of proportion and degree, and my complaint of the present time
+is that the present time doesn't see it. Popular opinion in England
+seems to me to be, not only getting to consider the cultivation of the
+muscles as of equal importance with the cultivation of the mind, but to
+be actually extending--in practice, if not in theory--to the absurd
+and dangerous length of putting bodily training in the first place of
+importance, and mental training in the second. To take a case in point:
+I can discover no enthusiasm in the nation any thing like so genuine and
+any thing like so general as the enthusiasm excited by your University
+boat-race. Again: I see this Athletic Education of yours made a
+matter of public celebration in schools and colleges; and I ask any
+unprejudiced witness to tell me which excites most popular enthusiasm,
+and which gets the most prominent place in the public journals--the
+exhibition, indoors (on Prize-day), of what the boys can do with their
+minds? or the exhibition, out of doors (on Sports-day), of what the
+boys can do with their bodies? You know perfectly well which performance
+excites the loudest cheers, which occupies the prominent place in the
+newspapers, and which, as a necessary consequence, confers the highest
+social honors on the hero of the day."
+
+Another murmur from One, Two, and Three. "We have nothing to say to
+that, Sir; have it all your own way, so far."
+
+Another ratification of agreement with the prevalent opinion between
+Smith and Jones.
+
+"Very good," pursued Sir Patrick. "We are all of one mind as to which
+way the public feeling sets. If it is a feeling to be respected and
+encouraged, show me the national advantage which has resulted from it.
+Where is the influence of this modern outburst of manly enthusiasm on
+the serious concerns of life? and how has it improved the character of
+the people at large? Are we any of us individually readier than we ever
+were to sacrifice our own little private interests to the public good?
+Are we dealing with the serious social questions of our time in a
+conspicuously determined, downright, and definite way? Are we becoming a
+visibly and indisputably purer people in our code of commercial morals?
+Is there a healthier and higher tone in those public amusements which
+faithfully reflect in all countries the public taste? Produce me
+affirmative answers to these questions, which rest on solid proof, and
+I'll accept the present mania for athletic sports as something better
+than an outbreak of our insular boastfulness and our insular barbarity
+in a new form."
+
+"Question! question!" in a general cry, from One, Two, and Three.
+
+"Question! question!" in meek reverberation, from Smith and Jones.
+
+"That is the question," rejoined Sir Patrick. "You admit the existence
+of the public feeling and I ask, what good does it do?"
+
+"What harm does it do?" from One, Two, and Three.
+
+"Hear! hear!" from Smith and Jones.
+
+"That's a fair challenge," replied Sir Patrick. "I am bound to meet you
+on that new ground. I won't point, gentlemen, by way of answer, to the
+coarseness which I can see growing on our national manners, or to the
+deterioration which appears to me to be spreading more and more widely
+in our national tastes. You may tell me with perfect truth that I am too
+old a man to be a fair judge of manners and tastes which have got beyond
+my standards. We will try the issue, as it now stands between us, on its
+abstract merits only. I assert that a state of public feeling which does
+practically place physical training, in its estimation, above moral and
+mental training, is a positively bad and dangerous state of feeling in
+this, that it encourages the inbred reluctance in humanity to submit to
+the demands which moral and mental cultivation must inevitably make on
+it. Which am I, as a boy, naturally most ready to do--to try how high I
+can jump? or to try how much I can learn? Which training comes easiest
+to me as a young man? The training which teaches me to handle an oar?
+or the training which teaches me to return good for evil, and to love
+my neighbor as myself? Of those two experiments, of those two trainings,
+which ought society in England to meet with the warmest encouragement?
+And which does society in England practically encourage, as a matter of
+fact?"
+
+"What did you say yourself just now?" from One, Two, and Three.
+
+"Remarkably well put!" from Smith and Jones.
+
+"I said," admitted Sir Patrick, "that a man will go all the better
+to his books for his healthy physical exercise. And I say that
+again--provided the physical exercise be restrained within fit limits.
+But when public feeling enters into the question, and directly exalts
+the bodily exercises above the books--then I say public feeling is in a
+dangerous extreme. The bodily exercises, in that case, will be uppermost
+in the youth's thoughts, will have the strongest hold on his
+interest, will take the lion's share of his time, and will, by those
+means--barring the few purely exceptional instances--slowly and surely
+end in leaving him, to all good moral and mental purpose, certainly an
+uncultivated, and, possibly, a dangerous man."
+
+A cry from the camp of the adversaries: "He's got to it at last! A man
+who leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength that God has given
+to him, is a dangerous man. Did any body ever hear the like of that?"
+
+Cry reverberated, with variations, by the two human echoes: "No! Nobody
+ever heard the like of that!"
+
+"Clear your minds of cant, gentlemen," answered Sir Patrick. "The
+agricultural laborer leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength
+that God has given to him. The sailor in the merchant service does the
+name. Both are an uncultivated, a shamefully uncultivated, class--and
+see the result! Look at the Map of Crime, and you will find the most
+hideous offenses in the calendar, committed--not in the towns, where the
+average man doesn't lead an out-of-door life, doesn't as a rule, use his
+strength, but is, as a rule, comparatively cultivated--not in the towns,
+but in the agricultural districts. As for the English sailor--except
+when the Royal Navy catches and cultivates him--ask Mr. Brinkworth,
+who has served in the merchant navy, what sort of specimen of the moral
+influence of out-of-door life and muscular cultivation _he_ is."
+
+"In nine cases out of ten," said Arnold, "he is as idle and vicious as
+ruffian as walks the earth."
+
+Another cry from the Opposition: "Are _we_ agricultural laborers? Are
+_we_ sailors in the merchant service?"
+
+A smart reverberation from the human echoes: "Smith! am I a laborer?"
+"Jones! am I a sailor?"
+
+"Pray let us not be personal, gentlemen," said Sir Patrick. "I am
+speaking generally, and I can only meet extreme objections by pushing
+my argument to extreme limits. The laborer and the sailor have served my
+purpose. If the laborer and the sailor offend you, by all means let them
+walk off the stage! I hold to the position which I advanced just now. A
+man may be well born, well off, well dressed, well fed--but if he is an
+uncultivated man, he is (in spite of all those advantages) a man with
+special capacities for evil in him, on that very account. Don't mistake
+me! I am far from saving that the present rage for exclusively muscular
+accomplishments must lead inevitably downward to the lowest deep of
+depravity. Fortunately for society, all special depravity is more or
+less certainly the result, in the first instance, of special temptation.
+The ordinary mass of us, thank God, pass through life without being
+exposed to other than ordinary temptations. Thousands of the young
+gentlemen, devoted to the favorite pursuits of the present time, will
+get through existence with no worse consequences to themselves than
+a coarse tone of mind and manners, and a lamentable incapability of
+feeling any of those higher and gentler influences which sweeten and
+purify the lives of more cultivated men. But take the other case (which
+may occur to any body), the case of a special temptation trying a modern
+young man of your prosperous class and of mine. And let me beg Mr.
+Delamayn to honor with his attention what I have now to say, because it
+refers to the opinion which I did really express--as distinguished from
+the opinion which he affects to agree with, and which I never advanced."
+
+Geoffrey's indifference showed no signs of giving way. "Go on!" he
+said--and still sat looking straight before him, with heavy eyes, which
+noticed nothing, and expressed nothing.
+
+"Take the example which we have now in view," pursued Sir Patrick--"the
+example of an average young gentleman of our time, blest with every
+advantage that physical cultivation can bestow on him. Let this man be
+tried by a temptation which insidiously calls into action, in his own
+interests, the savage instincts latent in humanity--the instincts of
+self-seeking and cruelty which are at the bottom of all crime. Let this
+man be placed toward some other person, guiltless of injuring him, in a
+position which demands one of two sacrifices: the sacrifice of the other
+person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his own desires.
+His neighbor's happiness, or his neighbor's life, stands, let us say,
+between him and the attainment of something that he wants. He can wreck
+the happiness, or strike down the life, without, to his knowledge, any
+fear of suffering for it himself. What is to prevent him, being the man
+he is, from going straight to his end, on those conditions? Will the
+skill in rowing, the swiftness in running, the admirable capacity and
+endurance in other physical exercises, which he has attained, by a
+strenuous cultivation in this kind that has excluded any similarly
+strenuous cultivation in other kinds--will these physical attainments
+help him to win a purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his
+own cruelty? They won't even help him to see that it _is_ selfishness,
+and that it _is_ cruelty. The essential principle of his rowing and
+racing (a harmless principle enough, if you can be sure of applying it
+to rowing and racing only) has taught him to take every advantage of
+another man that his superior strength and superior cunning can suggest.
+There has been nothing in his training to soften the barbarous hardness
+in his heart, and to enlighten the barbarous darkness in his mind.
+Temptation finds this man defenseless, when temptation passes his way.
+I don't care who he is, or how high he stands accidentally in the social
+scale--he is, to all moral intents and purposes, an Animal, and nothing
+more. If my happiness stands in his way--and if he can do it with
+impunity to himself--he will trample down my happiness. If my life
+happens to be the next obstacle he encounters--and if he can do it with
+impunity to himself--he will trample down my life. Not, Mr. Delamayn, in
+the character of a victim to irresistible fatality, or to blind chance;
+but in the character of a man who has sown the seed, and reaps the
+harvest. That, Sir, is the case which I put as an extreme case only,
+when this discussion began. As an extreme case only--but as a perfectly
+possible case, at the same time--I restate it now."
+
+Before the advocates of the other side of the question could open their
+lips to reply, Geoffrey suddenly flung off his indifference, and started
+to his feet.
+
+"Stop!" he cried, threatening the others, in his fierce impatience to
+answer for himself, with his clenched fist.
+
+There was a general silence.
+
+Geoffrey turned and looked at Sir Patrick, as if Sir Patrick had
+personally insulted him.
+
+"Who is this anonymous man, who finds his way to his own ends, and
+pities nobody and sticks at nothing?" he asked. "Give him a name!"
+
+"I am quoting an example," said Sir Patrick. "I am not attacking a man."
+
+"What right have you," cried Geoffrey--utterly forgetful, in the strange
+exasperation that had seized on him, of the interest that he had in
+controlling himself before Sir Patrick--"what right have you to pick out
+an example of a rowing man who is an infernal scoundrel--when it's
+quite as likely that a rowing man may be a good fellow: ay! and a better
+fellow, if you come to that, than ever stood in your shoes!"
+
+"If the one case is quite as likely to occur as the other (which I
+readily admit)," answered Sir Patrick, "I have surely a right to choose
+which case I please for illustration. (Wait, Mr. Delamayn! These are
+the last words I have to say and I mean to say them.) I have taken
+the example--not of a specially depraved man, as you erroneously
+suppose--but of an average man, with his average share of the mean,
+cruel, and dangerous qualities, which are part and parcel of unreformed
+human nature--as your religion tells you, and as you may see for
+yourself, if you choose to look at your untaught fellow-creatures any
+where. I suppose that man to be tried by a temptation to wickedness, out
+of the common; and I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the
+moral and mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone
+of public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at the
+mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how surely, under
+those conditions, he _must_ go down (gentleman as he is) step by
+step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes down under _his_
+special temptation--from the beginning in ignorance to the end in crime.
+If you deny my right to take such an example as that, in illustration of
+the views I advocate, you must either deny that a special temptation to
+wickedness can assail a man in the position of a gentleman, or you must
+assert that gentlemen who are naturally superior to all temptation are
+the only gentlemen who devote themselves to athletic pursuits. There
+is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my own sincere
+respect for the interests of virtue and of learning; out of my own
+sincere admiration for those young men among us who are resisting the
+contagion of barbarism about them. In _their_ future is the future hope
+of England. I have done."
+
+Angrily ready with a violent personal reply, Geoffrey found himself
+checked, in his turn by another person with something to say, and with a
+resolution to say it at that particular moment.
+
+
+
+For some little time past the surgeon had discontinued his steady
+investigation of Geoffrey's face, and had given all his attention to the
+discussion, with the air of a man whose self-imposed task had come to
+an end. As the last sentence fell from the last speaker's lips, he
+interposed so quickly and so skillfully between Geoffrey and Sir
+Patrick, that Geoffrey himself was taken by surprise,
+
+"There is something still wanting to make Sir Patrick's statement of the
+case complete," he said. "I think I can supply it, from the result of
+my own professional experience. Before I say what I have to say, Mr.
+Delamayn will perhaps excuse me, if I venture on giving him a caution to
+control himself."
+
+"Are _you_ going to make a dead set at me, too?" inquired Geoffrey.
+
+"I am recommending you to keep your temper--nothing more. There are
+plenty of men who can fly into a passion without doing themselves any
+particular harm. You are not one of them."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I don't think the state of your health, Mr. Delamayn, is quite so
+satisfactory as you may be disposed to consider it yourself."
+
+Geoffrey turned to his admirers and adherents with a roar of derisive
+laughter. The admirers and adherents all echoed him together. Arnold
+and Blanche smiled at each other. Even Sir Patrick looked as if he
+could hardly credit the evidence of his own ears. There stood the modern
+Hercules, self-vindicated as a Hercules, before all eyes that looked at
+him. And there, opposite, stood a man whom he could have killed with one
+blow of his fist, telling him, in serious earnest, that he was not in
+perfect health!
+
+"You are a rare fellow!" said Geoffrey, half in jest and half in anger.
+"What's the matter with me?"
+
+"I have undertaken to give you, what I believe to be, a necessary
+caution," answered the surgeon. "I have _not_ undertaken to tell
+you what I think is the matter with you. That may be a question for
+consideration some little time hence. In the meanwhile, I should like
+to put my impression about you to the test. Have you any objection to
+answer a question on a matter of no particular importance relating to
+yourself?"
+
+"Let's hear the question first."
+
+"I have noticed something in your behavior while Sir Patrick was
+speaking. You are as much interested in opposing his views as any of
+those gentlemen about you. I don't understand your sitting in
+silence, and leaving it entirely to the others to put the case on your
+side--until Sir Patrick said something which happened to irritate you.
+Had you, all the time before that, no answer ready in your own mind?"
+
+"I had as good answers in my mind as any that have been made here
+to-day."
+
+"And yet you didn't give them?"
+
+"No; I didn't give them."
+
+"Perhaps you felt--though you knew your objections to be good ones--that
+it was hardly worth while to take the trouble of putting them into
+words? In short, you let your friends answer for you, rather than make
+the effort of answering for yourself?"
+
+Geoffrey looked at his medical adviser with a sudden curiosity and a
+sudden distrust.
+
+"I say," he asked, "how do you come to know what's going on in my
+mind--without my telling you of it?"
+
+"It is my business to find out what is going on in people's bodies--and
+to do that it is sometimes necessary for me to find out (if I can) what
+is going on in their minds. If I have rightly interpreted what was going
+on in _your_ mind, there is no need for me to press my question. You
+have answered it already."
+
+He turned to Sir Patrick next
+
+"There is a side to this subject," he said, "which you have not touched
+on yet. There is a Physical objection to the present rage for muscular
+exercises of all sorts, which is quite as strong, in its way, as the
+Moral objection. You have stated the consequences as they _may_ affect
+the mind. I can state the consequences as they _do_ affect the body."
+
+"From your own experience?"
+
+"From my own experience. I can tell you, as a medical man, that a
+proportion, and not by any means a small one, of the young men who are
+now putting themselves to violent athletic tests of their strength and
+endurance, are taking that course to the serious and permanent injury of
+their own health. The public who attend rowing-matches, foot-races, and
+other exhibitions of that sort, see nothing but the successful results
+of muscular training. Fathers and mothers at home see the failures.
+There are households in England--miserable households, to be counted,
+Sir Patrick, by more than ones and twos--in which there are young men
+who have to thank the strain laid on their constitutions by the popular
+physical displays of the present time, for being broken men, and
+invalided men, for the rest of their lives."
+
+"Do you hear that?" said Sir Patrick, looking at Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey carelessly nodded his head. His irritation had had time to
+subside; the stolid indifference had got possession of him again. He had
+resumed his chair--he sat, with outstretched legs, staring stupidly
+at the pattern on the carpet. "What does it matter to Me?" was the
+sentiment expressed all over him, from head to foot.
+
+The surgeon went on.
+
+"I can see no remedy for this sad state of things," he said, "as long
+as the public feeling remains what the public feeling is now. A fine
+healthy-looking young man, with a superb muscular development,
+longs (naturally enough) to distinguish himself like others. The
+training-authorities at his college, or elsewhere, take him in hand
+(naturally enough again) on the strength of outward appearances. And
+whether they have been right or wrong in choosing him is more than they
+can say, until the experiment has been tried, and the mischief has been,
+in many cases, irretrievably done. How many of them are aware of the
+important physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no
+fair guarantee of his vital power? How many of them know that we all
+have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us--the surface
+life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart, lungs, and brain?
+Even if they did know this--even with medical men to help them--it would
+be in the last degree doubtful, in most cases, whether any previous
+examination would result in any reliable discovery of the vital fitness
+of the man to undergo the stress of muscular exertion laid on him. Apply
+to any of my brethren; and they will tell you, as the result of their
+own professional observation, that I am, in no sense, overstating this
+serious evil, or exaggerating the deplorable and dangerous consequences
+to which it leads. I have a patient at this moment, who is a young man
+of twenty, and who possesses one of the finest muscular developments
+I ever saw in my life. If that young man had consulted me, before
+he followed the example of the other young men about him, I can not
+honestly say that I could have foreseen the results. As things are,
+after going through a certain amount of muscular training, after
+performing a certain number of muscular feats, he suddenly fainted one
+day, to the astonishment of his family and friends. I was called in and
+I have watched the case since. He will probably live, but he will never
+recover. I am obliged to take precautions with this youth of twenty
+which I should take with an old man of eighty. He is big enough and
+muscular enough to sit to a painter as a model for Samson--and only last
+week I saw him swoon away like a young girl, in his mother's arms."
+
+"Name!" cried Geoffrey's admirers, still fighting the battle on their
+side, in the absence of any encouragement from Geoffrey himself.
+
+"I am not in the habit of mentioning my patients' names," replied the
+surgeon. "But if you insist on my producing an example of a man broken
+by athletic exercises, I can do it."
+
+"Do it! Who is he?"
+
+"You all know him perfectly well."
+
+"Is he in the doctor's hands?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"There!"
+
+In a pause of breathless silence--with the eyes of every person in the
+room eagerly fastened on him--the surgeon lifted his hand and pointed to
+Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.
+
+TOUCHING IT.
+
+As soon as the general stupefaction was allayed, the general incredulity
+asserted itself as a matter of course.
+
+The man who first declared that "seeing" was "believing" laid his finger
+(whether he knew it himself or not) on one of the fundamental follies
+of humanity. The easiest of all evidence to receive is the evidence
+that requires no other judgment to decide on it than the judgment of
+the eye--and it will be, on that account, the evidence which humanity is
+most ready to credit, as long as humanity lasts. The eyes of every
+body looked at Geoffrey; and the judgment of every body decided, on
+the evidence there visible, that the surgeon must be wrong. Lady Lundie
+herself (disturbed over her dinner invitations) led the general protest.
+"Mr. Delamayn in broken health!" she exclaimed, appealing to the better
+sense of her eminent medical guest. "Really, now, you can't expect us to
+believe that!"
+
+Stung into action for the second time by the startling assertion of
+which he had been made the subject, Geoffrey rose, and looked the
+surgeon, steadily and insolently, straight in the face.
+
+"Do you mean what you say?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You point me out before all these people--"
+
+"One moment, Mr. Delamayn. I admit that I may have been wrong in
+directing the general attention to you. You have a right to complain of
+my having answered too publicly the public challenge offered to me by
+your friends. I apologize for having done that. But I don't retract a
+single word of what I have said on the subject of your health."
+
+"You stick to it that I'm a broken-down man?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"I wish you were twenty years younger, Sir!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'd ask you to step out on the lawn there and I'd show you whether I'm
+a broken-down man or not."
+
+Lady Lundie looked at her brother-in-law. Sir Patrick instantly
+interfered.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn," he said, "you were invited here in the character of a
+gentleman, and you are a guest in a lady's house."
+
+"No! no!" said the surgeon, good humoredly. "Mr. Delamayn is using a
+strong argument, Sir Patrick--and that is all. If I _were_ twenty years
+younger," he went on, addressing himself to Geoffrey, "and if I _did_
+step out on the lawn with you, the result wouldn't affect the question
+between us in the least. I don't say that the violent bodily exercises
+in which you are famous have damaged your muscular power. I assert that
+they have damaged your vital power. In what particular way they have
+affected it I don't consider myself bound to tell you. I simply give
+you a warning, as a matter of common humanity. You will do well to
+be content with the success you have already achieved in the field of
+athletic pursuits, and to alter your mode of life for the future.
+Accept my excuses, once more, for having said this publicly instead of
+privately--and don't forget my warning."
+
+He turned to move away to another part of the room. Geoffrey fairly
+forced him to return to the subject.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said. "You have had your innings. My turn now. I can't
+give it words as you do; but I can come to the point. And, by the Lord,
+I'll fix you to it! In ten days or a fortnight from this I'm going into
+training for the Foot-Race at Fulham. Do you say I shall break down?"
+
+"You will probably get through your training."
+
+"Shall I get through the race?"
+
+"You may _possibly_ get through the race. But if you do--"
+
+"If I do?"
+
+"You will never run another."
+
+"And never row in another match?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"I have been asked to row in the Race, next spring; and I have said I
+will. Do you tell me, in so many words, that I sha'n't be able to do
+it?"
+
+"Yes--in so many words."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+"Positively."
+
+"Back your opinion!" cried Geoffrey, tearing his betting-book out of his
+pocket. "I lay you an even hundred I'm in fit condition to row in the
+University Match next spring."
+
+"I don't bet, Mr. Delamayn."
+
+With that final reply the surgeon walked away to the other end of the
+library. Lady Lundie (taking Blanche in custody) withdrew, at the same
+time, to return to the serious business of her invitations for the
+dinner. Geoffrey turned defiantly, book in hand, to his college friends
+about him. The British blood was up; and the British resolution to bet,
+which successfully defies common decency and common-law from one end of
+the country to the other, was not to be trifled with.
+
+"Come on!" cried Geoffrey. "Back the doctor, one of you!"
+
+Sir Patrick rose in undisguised disgust, and followed the surgeon. One,
+Two, and Three, invited to business by their illustrious friend, shook
+their thick heads at him knowingly, and answered with one accord, in one
+eloquent word--"Gammon!"
+
+"One of _you_ back him!" persisted Geoffrey, appealing to the two choral
+gentlemen in the back-ground, with his temper fast rising to fever heat.
+The two choral gentlemen compared notes, as usual. "We weren't born
+yesterday, Smith?" "Not if we know it, Jones."
+
+"Smith!" said Geoffrey, with a sudden assumption of politeness ominous
+of something unpleasant to come.
+
+Smith said "Yes?"--with a smile.
+
+"Jones!"
+
+Jones said "Yes?"--with a reflection of Smith.
+
+"You're a couple of infernal cads--and you haven't got a hundred pound
+between you!"
+
+"Come! come!" said Arnold, interfering for the first time. "This is
+shameful, Geoffrey!"
+
+"Why the"--(never mind what!)--"won't they any of them take the bet?"
+
+"If you must be a fool," returned Arnold, a little irritably on his
+side, "and if nothing else will keep you quiet, _I'll_ take the bet."
+
+"An even hundred on the doctor!" cried Geoffrey. "Done with you!"
+
+His highest aspirations were satisfied; his temper was in perfect order
+again. He entered the bet in his book; and made his excuses to Smith and
+Jones in the heartiest way. "No offense, old chaps! Shake hands!"
+The two choral gentlemen were enchanted with him. "The English
+aristocracy--eh, Smith?" "Blood and breeding--ah, Jones!"
+
+As soon as he had spoken, Arnold's conscience reproached him: not for
+betting (who is ashamed of _that_ form of gambling in England?) but for
+"backing the doctor." With the best intention toward his friend, he was
+speculating on the failure of his friend's health. He anxiously assured
+Geoffrey that no man in the room could be more heartily persuaded that
+the surgeon was wrong than himself. "I don't cry off from the bet,"
+he said. "But, my dear fellow, pray understand that I only take it to
+please _you._"
+
+"Bother all that!" answered Geoffrey, with the steady eye to business,
+which was one of the choicest virtues in his character. "A bet's a
+bet--and hang your sentiment!" He drew Arnold by the arm out of ear-shot
+of the others. "I say!" he asked, anxiously. "Do you think I've set the
+old fogy's back up?"
+
+"Do you mean Sir Patrick?"
+
+Geoffrey nodded, and went on.
+
+"I haven't put that little matter to him yet--about marrying in
+Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?"
+His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end
+of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The
+ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was
+alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken
+down.
+
+"Make an apology," suggested Arnold. "Sir Patrick may be a little
+irritable and bitter; but he's a just man and a kind man. Say you were
+not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him--and you will say
+enough."
+
+"All right!"
+
+Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found
+himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no
+less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked, coldly.
+
+"I want to make an apology," said Geoffrey. "Let by-gones be
+by-gones--and that sort of thing. I wasn't guilty of any intentional
+disrespect toward you. Forgive and forget. Not half a bad motto,
+Sir--eh?"
+
+It was clumsily expressed--but still it was an apology. Not even
+Geoffrey could appeal to Sir Patrick's courtesy and Sir Patrick's
+consideration in vain.
+
+"Not a word more, Mr. Delamayn!" said the polite old man. "Accept my
+excuses for any thing which I may have said too sharply, on my side; and
+let us by all means forget the rest."
+
+Having met the advance made to him, in those terms, he paused,
+expecting Geoffrey to leave him free to return to the Decameron. To
+his unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey suddenly stooped over him, and
+whispered in his ear, "I want a word in private with you."
+
+Sir Patrick started back, as if Geoffrey had tried to bite him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Delamayn--what did you say?"
+
+"Could you give me a word in private?"
+
+Sir Patrick put back the Decameron; and bowed in freezing silence. The
+confidence of the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn was the last confidence in
+the world into which he desired to be drawn. "This is the secret of the
+apology!" he thought. "What can he possibly want with Me?"
+
+"It's about a friend of mine," pursued Geoffrey; leading the way toward
+one of the windows. "He's in a scrape, my friend is. And I want to ask
+your advice. It's strictly private, you know." There he came to a full
+stop--and looked to see what impression he had produced, so far.
+
+Sir Patrick declined, either by word or gesture, to exhibit the
+slightest anxiety to hear a word more.
+
+"Would you mind taking a turn in the garden?" asked Geoffrey.
+
+Sir Patrick pointed to his lame foot. "I have had my allowance of
+walking this morning," he said. "Let my infirmity excuse me."
+
+Geoffrey looked about him for a substitute for the garden, and led the
+way back again toward one of the convenient curtained recesses opening
+out of the inner wall of the library. "We shall be private enough here,"
+he said.
+
+Sir Patrick made a final effort to escape the proposed conference--an
+undisguised effort, this time.
+
+"Pray forgive me, Mr. Delamayn. Are you quite sure that you apply to the
+right person, in applying to _me?_"
+
+"You're a Scotch lawyer, ain't you?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And you understand about Scotch marriages--eh?"
+
+Sir Patrick's manner suddenly altered.
+
+"Is _that_ the subject you wish to consult me on?" he asked.
+
+"It's not me. It's my friend."
+
+"Your friend, then?"
+
+"Yes. It's a scrape with a woman. Here in Scotland. My friend don't know
+whether he's married to her or not."
+
+"I am at your service, Mr. Delamayn."
+
+To Geoffrey's relief--by no means unmixed with surprise--Sir Patrick not
+only showed no further reluctance to be consulted by him, but actually
+advanced to meet his wishes, by leading the way to the recess that was
+nearest to them. The quick brain of the old lawyer had put Geoffrey's
+application to him for assistance, and Blanche's application to him for
+assistance, together; and had built its own theory on the basis thus
+obtained. "Do I see a connection between the present position of
+Blanche's governess, and the present position of Mr. Delamayn's
+'friend?'" thought Sir Patrick. "Stranger extremes than _that_ have met
+me in my experience. Something may come out of this."
+
+The two strangely-assorted companions seated themselves, one on each
+side of a little table in the recess. Arnold and the other guests had
+idled out again on to the lawn. The surgeon with his prints, and the
+ladies with their invitations, were safely absorbed in a distant part
+of the library. The conference between the two men, so trifling in
+appearance, so terrible in its destined influence, not over Anne's
+future only, but over the future of Arnold and Blanche, was, to all
+practical purposes, a conference with closed doors.
+
+"Now," said Sir Patrick, "what is the question?"
+
+"The question," said Geoffrey, "is whether my friend is married to her
+or not?"
+
+"Did he mean to marry her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He being a single man, and she being a single woman, at the time? And
+both in Scotland?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. Now tell me the circumstances."
+
+Geoffrey hesitated. The art of stating circumstances implies the
+cultivation of a very rare gift--the gift of arranging ideas. No one
+was better acquainted with this truth than Sir Patrick. He was purposely
+puzzling Geoffrey at starting, under the firm conviction that his
+client had something to conceal from him. The one process that could be
+depended on for extracting the truth, under those circumstances, was
+the process of interrogation. If Geoffrey was submitted to it, at the
+outset, his cunning might take the alarm. Sir Patrick's object was
+to make the man himself invite interrogation. Geoffrey invited it
+forthwith, by attempting to state the circumstances, and by involving
+them in the usual confusion. Sir Patrick waited until he had thoroughly
+lost the thread of his narrative--and then played for the winning trick.
+
+"Would it be easier to you if I asked a few questions?" he inquired,
+innocently.
+
+"Much easier."
+
+"I am quite at your service. Suppose we clear the ground to begin with?
+Are you at liberty to mention names?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Places?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Dates?"
+
+"Do you want me to be particular?"
+
+"Be as particular as you can."
+
+"Will it do, if I say the present year?"
+
+"Yes. Were your friend and the lady--at some time in the present
+year--traveling together in Scotland?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Living together in Scotland?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What _were_ they doing together in Scotland?"
+
+"Well--they were meeting each other at an inn."
+
+"Oh? They were meeting each other at an inn. Which was first at the
+rendezvous?"
+
+"The woman was first. Stop a bit! We are getting to it now." He produced
+from his pocket the written memorandum of Arnold's proceedings at Craig
+Fernie, which he had taken down from Arnold's own lips. "I've got a bit
+of note here," he went on. "Perhaps you'd like to have a look at it?"
+
+Sir Patrick took the note--read it rapidly through to himself--then
+re-read it, sentence by sentence, to Geoffrey; using it as a text to
+speak from, in making further inquiries.
+
+"'He asked for her by the name of his wife, at the door,'" read
+Sir Patrick. "Meaning, I presume, the door of the inn? Had the lady
+previously given herself out as a married woman to the people of the
+inn?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long had she been at the inn before the gentleman joined her?"
+
+"Only an hour or so."
+
+"Did she give a name?"
+
+"I can't be quite sure--I should say not."
+
+"Did the gentleman give a name?"
+
+"No. I'm certain _he_ didn't."
+
+Sir Patrick returned to the memorandum.
+
+"'He said at dinner, before the landlady and the waiter, I take these
+rooms for my wife. He made _her_ say he was her husband, at the same
+time.' Was that done jocosely, Mr. Delamayn--either by the lady or the
+gentleman?"
+
+"No. It was done in downright earnest."
+
+"You mean it was done to look like earnest, and so to deceive the
+landlady and the waiter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Sir Patrick returned to the memorandum.
+
+"'After that, he stopped all night.' Stopped in the rooms he had taken
+for himself and his wife?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what happened the next day?"
+
+"He went away. Wait a bit! Said he had business for an excuse."
+
+"That is to say, he kept up the deception with the people of the inn?
+and left the lady behind him, in the character of his wife?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Did he go back to the inn?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long did the lady stay there, after he had gone?"
+
+"She staid--well, she staid a few days."
+
+"And your friend has not seen her since?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are your friend and the lady English or Scotch?"
+
+"Both English."
+
+"At the time when they met at the inn, had they either of them arrived
+in Scotland, from the place in which they were previously living, within
+a period of less than twenty-one days?"
+
+Geoffrey hesitated. There could be no difficulty in answering for Anne.
+Lady Lundie and her domestic circle had occupied Windygates for a much
+longer period than three weeks before the date of the lawn-party. The
+question, as it affected Arnold, was the only question that required
+reflection. After searching his memory for details of the conversation
+which had taken place between them, when he and Arnold had met at the
+lawn-party, Geoffrey recalled a certain reference on the part of his
+friend to a performance at the Edinburgh theatre, which at once decided
+the question of time. Arnold had been necessarily detained in Edinburgh,
+before his arrival at Windygates, by legal business connected with his
+inheritance; and he, like Anne, had certainly been in Scotland, before
+they met at Craig Fernie, for a longer period than a period of three
+weeks He accordingly informed Sir Patrick that the lady and gentleman
+had been in Scotland for more than twenty-one days--and then added a
+question on his own behalf: "Don't let me hurry you, Sir--but, shall you
+soon have done?"
+
+"I shall have done, after two more questions," answered Sir Patrick.
+"Am I to understand that the lady claims, on the strength of the
+circumstances which you have mentioned to me, to be your friend's wife?"
+
+Geoffrey made an affirmative reply. The readiest means of obtaining Sir
+Patrick's opinion was, in this case, to answer, Yes. In other words,
+to represent Anne (in the character of "the lady") as claiming to be
+married to Arnold (in the character of "his friend").
+
+Having made this concession to circumstances, he was, at the same time,
+quite cunning enough to see that it was of vital importance to the
+purpose which he had in view, to confine himself strictly to this one
+perversion of the truth. There could be plainly no depending on the
+lawyer's opinion, unless that opinion was given on the facts exactly a
+s they had occurred at the inn. To the facts he had, thus far, carefully
+adhered; and to the facts (with the one inevitable departure from them
+which had been just forced on him) he determined to adhere to the end.
+
+"Did no letters pass between the lady and gentleman?" pursued Sir
+Patrick.
+
+"None that I know of," answered Geoffrey, steadily returning to the
+truth.
+
+"I have done, Mr. Delamayn."
+
+"Well? and what's your opinion?"
+
+"Before I give my opinion I am bound to preface it by a personal
+statement which you are not to take, if you please, as a statement of
+the law. You ask me to decide--on the facts with which you have supplied
+me--whether your friend is, according to the law of Scotland, married or
+not?"
+
+Geoffrey nodded. "That's it!" he said, eagerly.
+
+"My experience, Mr. Delamayn, is that any single man, in Scotland, may
+marry any single woman, at any time, and under any circumstances. In
+short, after thirty years' practice as a lawyer, I don't know what is
+_not_ a marriage in Scotland."
+
+"In plain English," said Geoffrey, "you mean she's his wife?"
+
+In spite of his cunning; in spite of his self-command, his eyes
+brightened as he said those words. And the tone in which he
+spoke--though too carefully guarded to be a tone of triumph--was, to a
+fine ear, unmistakably a tone of relief.
+
+Neither the look nor the tone was lost on Sir Patrick.
+
+His first suspicion, when he sat down to the conference, had been
+the obvious suspicion that, in speaking of "his friend," Geoffrey was
+speaking of himself. But, like all lawyers, he habitually distrusted
+first impressions, his own included. His object, thus far, had been
+to solve the problem of Geoffrey's true position and Geoffrey's real
+motive. He had set the snare accordingly, and had caught his bird.
+
+It was now plain to his mind--first, that this man who was consulting
+him, was, in all probability, really speaking of the case of another
+person: secondly, that he had an interest (of what nature it was
+impossible yet to say) in satisfying his own mind that "his friend" was,
+by the law of Scotland, indisputably a married man. Having penetrated
+to that extent the secret which Geoffrey was concealing from him,
+he abandoned the hope of making any further advance at that present
+sitting. The next question to clear up in the investigation, was the
+question of who the anonymous "lady" might be. And the next discovery
+to make was, whether "the lady" could, or could not, be identified with
+Anne Silvester. Pending the inevitable delay in reaching that result,
+the straight course was (in Sir Patrick's present state of uncertainty)
+the only course to follow in laying down the law. He at once took the
+question of the marriage in hand--with no concealment whatever, as to
+the legal bearings of it, from the client who was consulting him.
+
+"Don't rush to conclusions, Mr. Delamayn," he said. "I have only told
+you what my general experience is thus far. My professional opinion on
+the special case of your friend has not been given yet."
+
+Geoffrey's face clouded again. Sir Patrick carefully noted the new
+change in it.
+
+"The law of Scotland," he went on, "so far as it relates to Irregular
+Marriages, is an outrage on common decency and common-sense. If you
+think my language in thus describing it too strong--I can refer you
+to the language of a judicial authority. Lord Deas delivered a recent
+judgment of marriage in Scotland, from the bench, in these words:
+'Consent makes marriage. No form or ceremony, civil or religious; no
+notice before, or publication after; no cohabitation, no writing, no
+witnesses even, are essential to the constitution of this, the most
+important contract which two persons can enter into.'--There is a Scotch
+judge's own statement of the law that he administers! Observe, at the
+same time, if you please, that we make full legal provision in Scotland
+for contracts affecting the sale of houses and lands, horses and dogs.
+The only contract which we leave without safeguards or precautions of
+any sort is the contract that unites a man and a woman for life. As
+for the authority of parents, and the innocence of children, our law
+recognizes no claim on it either in the one case or in the other. A
+girl of twelve and a boy of fourteen have nothing to do but to cross the
+Border, and to be married--without the interposition of the slightest
+delay or restraint, and without the slightest attempt to inform their
+parents on the part of the Scotch law. As to the marriages of men and
+women, even the mere interchange of consent which, as you have just
+heard, makes them man and wife, is not required to be directly proved:
+it may be proved by inference. And, more even than that, whatever the
+law for its consistency may presume, men and women are, in point of
+fact, held to be married in Scotland where consent has never been
+interchanged, and where the parties do not even know that they are
+legally held to be married persons. Are you sufficiently confused about
+the law of Irregular Marriages in Scotland by this time, Mr. Delamayn?
+And have I said enough to justify the strong language I used when I
+undertook to describe it to you?"
+
+"Who's that 'authority' you talked of just now?" inquired Geoffrey.
+"Couldn't I ask _him?_"
+
+"You might find him flatly contradicted, if you did ask him by another
+authority equally learned and equally eminent," answered Sir Patrick.
+"I am not joking--I am only stating facts. Have you heard of the Queen's
+Commission?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then listen to this. In March, 'sixty-five, the Queen appointed a
+Commission to inquire into the Marriage-Laws of the United Kingdom. The
+Report of that Commission is published in London; and is accessible to
+any body who chooses to pay the price of two or three shillings for
+it. One of the results of the inquiry was, the discovery that high
+authorities were of entirely contrary opinions on one of the vital
+questions of Scottish marriage-law. And the Commissioners, in announcing
+that fact, add that the question of which opinion is right is still
+disputed, and has never been made the subject of legal decision.
+Authorities are every where at variance throughout the Report. A haze of
+doubt and uncertainty hangs in Scotland over the most important contract
+of civilized life. If no other reason existed for reforming the Scotch
+marriage-law, there would be reason enough afforded by that one fact. An
+uncertain marriage-law is a national calamity."
+
+"You can tell me what you think yourself about my friend's case--can't
+you?" said Geoffrey, still holding obstinately to the end that he had in
+view.
+
+"Certainly. Now that I have given you due warning of the danger of
+implicitly relying on any individual opinion, I may give my opinion with
+a clear conscience. I say that there has not been a positive marriage in
+this case. There has been evidence in favor of possibly establishing a
+marriage--nothing more."
+
+The distinction here was far too fine to be appreciated by Geoffrey's
+mind. He frowned heavily, in bewilderment and disgust.
+
+"Not married!" he exclaimed, "when they said they were man and wife,
+before witnesses?"
+
+"That is a common popular error," said Sir Patrick. "As I have already
+told you, witnesses are not legally necessary to make a marriage in
+Scotland. They are only valuable--as in this case--to help, at some
+future time, in proving a marriage that is in dispute."
+
+Geoffrey caught at the last words.
+
+"The landlady and the waiter _might_ make it out to be a marriage,
+then?" he said.
+
+"Yes. And, remember, if you choose to apply to one of my professional
+colleagues, he might possibly tell you they were married already. A
+state of the law which allows the interchange of matrimonial consent
+to be proved by inference leaves a wide door open to conjecture. Your
+friend refers to a certain lady, in so many words, as his wife. The lady
+refers to your friend, in so many words, as her husband. In the rooms
+which they have taken, as man and wife, they remain, as man and wife,
+till the next morning. Your friend goes away, without undeceiving any
+body. The lady stays at the inn, for some days after, in the character
+of his wife. And all these circumstances take place in the presence o f
+competent witnesses. Logically--if not legally--there is apparently an
+inference of the interchange of matrimonial consent here. I stick to
+my own opinion, nevertheless. Evidence in proof of a marriage (I
+say)--nothing more."
+
+While Sir Patrick had been speaking, Geoffrey had been considering with
+himself. By dint of hard thinking he had found his way to a decisive
+question on his side.
+
+"Look here!" he said, dropping his heavy hand down on the table. "I want
+to bring you to book, Sir! Suppose my friend had another lady in his
+eye?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"As things are now--would you advise him to marry her?"
+
+"As things are now--certainly not!"
+
+Geoffrey got briskly on his legs, and closed the interview.
+
+"That will do," he said, "for him and for me."
+
+With those words he walked back, without ceremony, into the main
+thoroughfare of the room.
+
+"I don't know who your friend is," thought Sir Patrick, looking after
+him. "But if your interest in the question of his marriage is an honest
+and a harmless interest, I know no more of human nature than the babe
+unborn!"
+
+Immediately on leaving Sir Patrick, Geoffrey was encountered by one of
+the servants in search of him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir," began the man. "The groom from the Honorable
+Mr. Delamayn's--"
+
+"Yes? The fellow who brought me a note from my brother this morning?"
+
+"He's expected back, Sir--he's afraid he mustn't wait any longer."
+
+"Come here, and I'll give you the answer for him."
+
+He led the way to the writing-table, and referred to Julius's letter
+again. He ran his eye carelessly over it, until he reached the final
+lines: "Come to-morrow, and help us to receive Mrs. Glenarm." For a
+while he paused, with his eye fixed on that sentence; and with the
+happiness of three people--of Anne, who had loved him; of Arnold, who
+had served him; of Blanche, guiltless of injuring him--resting on the
+decision that guided his movements for the next day. After what had
+passed that morning between Arnold and Blanche, if he remained at Lady
+Lundie's, he had no alternative but to perform his promise to Anne. If
+he returned to his brother's house, he had no alternative but to desert
+Anne, on the infamous pretext that she was Arnold's wife.
+
+He suddenly tossed the letter away from him on the table, and snatched
+a sheet of note-paper out of the writing-case. "Here goes for Mrs.
+Glenarm!" he said to himself; and wrote back to his brother, in
+one line: "Dear Julius, Expect me to-morrow. G. D." The impassible
+man-servant stood by while he wrote, looking at his magnificent breadth
+of chest, and thinking what a glorious "staying-power" was there for the
+last terrible mile of the coming race.
+
+"There you are!" he said, and handed his note to the man.
+
+"All right, Geoffrey?" asked a friendly voice behind him.
+
+He turned--and saw Arnold, anxious for news of the consultation with Sir
+Patrick.
+
+"Yes," he said. "All right."
+
+     ------------ NOTE.--There are certain readers who feel a
+     disposition to doubt Facts, when they meet with them in a work of
+     fiction. Persons of this way of thinking may be profitably
+     referred to the book which first suggested to me the idea of
+     writing the present Novel. The book is the Report of the Royal
+     Commissioners on The Laws of Marriage. Published by the Queen's
+     Printers For her Majesty's Stationery Office. (London, 1868.)
+     What Sir Patrick says professionally of Scotch Marriages in this
+     chapter is taken from this high authority. What the lawyer (in
+     the Prologue) says professionally of Irish Marriages is also
+     derived from the same source. It is needless to encumber these
+     pages with quotations. But as a means of satisfying my readers
+     that they may depend on me, I subjoin an extract from my list of
+     references to the Report of the Marriage Commission, which any
+     persons who may be so inclined can verify for themselves.
+
+     _Irish Marriages_ (In the Prologue).--See Report, pages XII.,
+     XIII., XXIV.
+
+     _Irregular Marriages in Scotland._--Statement of the law by Lord
+     Deas. Report, page XVI.--Marriages of children of tender years.
+     Examination of Mr. Muirhead by Lord Chelmsford (Question
+     689).--Interchange of consent, established by inference.
+     Examination of Mr. Muirhead by the Lord Justice Clerk (Question
+     654)--Marriage where consent has never been interchanged.
+     Observations of Lord Deas. Report, page XIX.--Contradiction of
+     opinions between authorities. Report, pages XIX., XX.--Legal
+     provision for the sale of horses and dogs. No legal provision for
+     the marriage of men and women. Mr. Seeton's Remarks. Report, page
+     XXX.--Conclusion of the Commissioners. In spite of the arguments
+     advanced before them in favor of not interfering with Irregular
+     Marriages in Scotland, the Commissioners declare their opinion
+     that "Such marriages ought not to continue." (Report, page
+     XXXIV.)
+
+     In reference to the arguments (alluded to above) in favor of
+     allowing the present disgraceful state of things to continue, I
+     find them resting mainly on these grounds: That Scotland doesn't
+     like being interfered with by England (!). That Irregular
+     Marriages cost nothing (!!). That they are diminishing in number,
+     and may therefore be trusted, in course of time, to exhaust
+     themselves (!!!). That they act, on certain occasions, in the
+     capacity of a moral trap to catch a profligate man (!!!!). Such
+     is the elevated point of view from which the Institution of
+     Marriage is regarded by some of the most pious and learned men in
+     Scotland. A legal enactment providing for the sale of your wife,
+     when you have done with her, or of your husband; when you "really
+     can't put up with him any longer," appears to be all that is
+     wanting to render this North British estimate of the "Estate of
+     Matrimony" practically complete. It is only fair to add that, of
+     the witnesses giving evidence--oral and written--before the
+     Commissioners, fully one-half regard the Irregular Marriages of
+     Scotland from the Christian and the civilized point of view, and
+     entirely agree with the authoritative conclusion already
+     cited--that such marriages ought to be abolished.
+
+     W. C.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.
+
+DONE!
+
+ARNOLD was a little surprised by the curt manner in which Geoffrey
+answered him.
+
+"Has Sir Patrick said any thing unpleasant?" he asked.
+
+"Sir Patrick has said just what I wanted him to say."
+
+"No difficulty about the marriage?"
+
+"None."
+
+"No fear of Blanche--"
+
+"She won't ask you to go to Craig Fernie--I'll answer for that!" He said
+the words with a strong emphasis on them, took his brother's letter from
+the table, snatched up his hat, and went out.
+
+His friends, idling on the lawn, hailed him. He passed by them quickly
+without answering, without so much as a glance at them over his
+shoulder. Arriving at the rose-garden, he stopped and took out his pipe;
+then suddenly changed his mind, and turned back again by another path.
+There was no certainty, at that hour of the day, of his being left alone
+in the rose-garden. He had a fierce and hungry longing to be by himself;
+he felt as if he could have been the death of any body who came and
+spoke to him at that moment. With his head down and his brows knit
+heavily, he followed the path to see what it ended in. It ended in a
+wicket-gate which led into a kitchen-garden. Here he was well out of
+the way of interruption: there was nothing to attract visitors in the
+kitchen-garden. He went on to a walnut-tree planted in the middle of the
+inclosure, with a wooden bench and a broad strip of turf running round
+it. After first looking about him, he seated himself and lit his pipe.
+
+"I wish it was done!" he said.
+
+He sat, with his elbows on his knees, smoking and thinking. Before long
+the restlessness that had got possession of him forced him to his feet
+again. He rose, and paced round and round the strip of greensward under
+the walnut-tree, like a wild beast in a cage.
+
+What was the meaning of this disturbance in the inner man? Now that he
+had committed himself to the betrayal of the friend who had trusted and
+served him, was he torn by remorse?
+
+He was no more torn by remorse than you are while your eye is passing
+over this sentence. He was simply in a raging fever of impatience to see
+himself safely la nded at the end which he had in view.
+
+Why should he feel remorse? All remorse springs, more or less directly,
+from the action of two sentiments, which are neither of them inbred in
+the natural man. The first of these sentiments is the product of the
+respect which we learn to feel for ourselves. The second is the product
+of the respect which we learn to feel for others. In their highest
+manifestations, these two feelings exalt themselves, until the first he
+comes the love of God, and the second the love of Man. I have injured
+you, and I repent of it when it is done. Why should I repent of it if
+I have gained something by it for my own self and if you can't make me
+feel it by injuring Me? I repent of it because there has been a sense
+put into me which tells me that I have sinned against Myself, and sinned
+against You. No such sense as that exists among the instincts of the
+natural man. And no such feelings as these troubled Geoffrey Delamayn;
+for Geoffrey Delamayn was the natural man.
+
+When the idea of his scheme had sprung to life in his mind, the
+novelty of it had startled him--the enormous daring of it, suddenly
+self-revealed, had daunted him. The signs of emotion which he had
+betrayed at the writing-table in the library were the signs of mere
+mental perturbation, and of nothing more.
+
+That first vivid impression past, the idea had made itself familiar
+to him. He had become composed enough to see such difficulties as it
+involved, and such consequences as it implied. These had fretted him
+with a passing trouble; for these he plainly discerned. As for the
+cruelty and the treachery of the thing he meditated doing--that
+consideration never crossed the limits of his mental view. His position
+toward the man whose life he had preserved was the position of a dog.
+The "noble animal" who has saved you or me from drowning will fly at
+your throat or mine, under certain conditions, ten minutes afterward.
+Add to the dog's unreasoning instinct the calculating cunning of a man;
+suppose yourself to be in a position to say of some trifling thing,
+"Curious! at such and such a time I happened to pick up such and such
+an object; and now it turns out to be of some use to me!"--and there you
+have an index to the state of Geoffrey's feeling toward his friend when
+he recalled the past or when he contemplated the future. When Arnold
+had spoken to him at the critical moment, Arnold had violently irritated
+him; and that was all.
+
+The same impenetrable insensibility, the same primitively natural
+condition of the moral being, prevented him from being troubled by the
+slightest sense of pity for Anne. "She's out of my way!" was his first
+thought. "She's provided for, without any trouble to Me!" was his second.
+He was not in the least uneasy about her. Not the slightest doubt
+crossed his mind that, when once she had realized her own situation,
+when once she saw herself placed between the two alternatives of facing
+her own ruin or of claiming Arnold as a last resource, she would claim
+Arnold. She would do it as a matter of course; because _he_ would have
+done it in her place.
+
+But he wanted it over. He was wild, as he paced round and round the
+walnut-tree, to hurry on the crisis and be done with it. Give me my
+freedom to go to the other woman, and to train for the foot-race--that's
+what I want. _They_ injured? Confusion to them both! It's I who am
+injured by them. They are the worst enemies I have! They stand in my
+way.
+
+How to be rid of them? There was the difficulty. He had made up his mind
+to be rid of them that day. How was he to begin?
+
+There was no picking a quarrel with Arnold, and so beginning with _him._
+This course of proceeding, in Arnold's position toward Blanche, would
+lead to a scandal at the outset--a scandal which would stand in the way
+of his making the right impression on Mrs. Glenarm. The woman--lonely
+and friendless, with her sex and her position both against her if _she_
+tried to make a scandal of it--the woman was the one to begin with.
+Settle it at once and forever with Anne; and leave Arnold to hear of it
+and deal with it, sooner or later, no matter which.
+
+How was he to break it to her before the day was out?
+
+By going to the inn and openly addressing her to her face as Mrs. Arnold
+Brinkworth? No! He had had enough, at Windygates, of meeting her face
+to face. The easy way was to write to her, and send the letter, by the
+first messenger he could find, to the inn. She might appear afterward at
+Windygates; she might follow him to his brother's; she might appeal to
+his father. It didn't matter; he had got the whip-hand of her now. "You
+are a married woman." There was the one sufficient answer, which was
+strong enough to back him in denying any thing!
+
+He made out the letter in his own mind. "Something like this would do,"
+he thought, as he went round and round the walnut-tree: "You may be
+surprised not to have seen me. You have only yourself to thank for it.
+I know what took place between you and him at the inn. I have had a
+lawyer's advice. You are Arnold Brinkworth's wife. I wish you joy, and
+good-by forever." Address those lines: "To Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;"
+instruct the messenger to leave the letter late that night, without
+waiting for an answer; start the first thing the next morning for his
+brother's house; and behold, it was done!
+
+But even here there was an obstacle--one last exasperating
+obstacle--still in the way.
+
+If she was known at the inn by any name at all, it was by the name of
+Mrs. Silvester. A letter addressed to "Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth" would
+probably not be taken in at the door; or if it was admitted and if
+it was actually offered to her, she might decline to receive it, as a
+letter not addressed to herself. A man of readier mental resources would
+have seen that the name on the outside of the letter mattered little or
+nothing, so long as the contents were read by the person to whom they
+were addressed. But Geoffrey's was the order of mind which expresses
+disturbance by attaching importance to trifles. He attached an absurd
+importance to preserving absolute consistency in his letter, outside and
+in. If he declared her to be Arnold Brinkworth's wife, he must direct
+to her as Arnold Brinkworth's wife; or who could tell what the law might
+say, or what scrape he might not get himself into by a mere scratch of
+the pen! The more he thought of it, the more persuaded he felt of his
+own cleverness here, and the hotter and the angrier he grew.
+
+There is a way out of every thing. And there was surely a way out of
+this, if he could only see it.
+
+He failed to see it. After dealing with all the great difficulties, the
+small difficulty proved too much for him. It struck him that he might
+have been thinking too long about it--considering that he was not
+accustomed to thinking long about any thing. Besides, his head was
+getting giddy, with going mechanically round and round the tree. He
+irritably turned his back on the tree and struck into another path:
+resolved to think of something else, and then to return to his
+difficulty, and see it with a new eye.
+
+Leaving his thoughts free to wander where they liked, his thoughts
+naturally busied themselves with the next subject that was uppermost
+in his mind, the subject of the Foot-Race. In a week's time his
+arrangements ought to be made. Now, as to the training, first.
+
+He decided on employing two trainers this time. One to travel to
+Scotland, and begin with him at his brother's house. The other to take
+him up, with a fresh eye to him, on his return to London. He turned over
+in his mind the performances of the formidable rival against whom he was
+to be matched. That other man was the swiftest runner of the two.
+The betting in Geoffrey's favor was betting which calculated on the
+unparalleled length of the race, and on Geoffrey's prodigious powers of
+endurance. How long he should "wait on" the man? Whereabouts it would
+be safe to "pick the man up?" How near the end to calculate the man's
+exhaustion to a nicety, and "put on the spurt," and pass him? These were
+nice points to decide. The deliberations of a pedestrian-privy-council
+would be required to help him under this heavy responsibility. What men
+could he trust? He could trust A. and B.--both of them authorities:
+both of them stanch. Query about C.? As an authority, unexceptionable;
+as a man, doubtful. The problem relating to C. brought him to a
+standstill--and declined to be solved, even then. Never mind! he could
+always take the advice of A. and B. In the mean time devote C. to the
+infernal regions; and, thus dismissing him, try and think of something
+else. What else? Mrs. Glenarm? Oh, bother the women! one of them is the
+same as another. They all waddle when they run; and they all fill their
+stomachs before dinner with sloppy tea. That's the only difference
+between women and men--the rest is nothing but a weak imitation of Us.
+Devote the women to the infernal regions; and, so dismissing _them,_ try
+and think of something else. Of what? Of something worth thinking of,
+this time--of filling another pipe.
+
+He took out his tobacco-pouch; and suddenly suspended operations at the
+moment of opening it.
+
+What was the object he saw, on the other side of a row of dwarf
+pear-trees, away to the right? A woman--evidently a servant by her
+dress--stooping down with her back to him, gathering something: herbs
+they looked like, as well as he could make them out at the distance.
+
+What was that thing hanging by a string at the woman's side? A slate?
+Yes. What the deuce did she want with a slate at her side? He was in
+search of something to divert his mind--and here it was found. "Any
+thing will do for me," he thought. "Suppose I 'chaff' her a little about
+her slate?"
+
+He called to the woman across the pear-trees. "Hullo!"
+
+The woman raised herself, and advanced toward him slowly--looking at
+him, as she came on, with the sunken eyes, the sorrow-stricken face, the
+stony tranquillity of Hester Dethridge.
+
+Geoffrey was staggered. He had not bargained for exchanging the dullest
+producible vulgarities of human speech (called in the language of slang,
+"Chaff") with such a woman as this.
+
+"What's that slate for?" he asked, not knowing what else to say, to
+begin with.
+
+The woman lifted her hand to her lips--touched them--and shook her head.
+
+"Dumb?"
+
+The woman bowed her head.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+The woman wrote on her slate, and handed it to him over the pear-trees.
+He read:--"I am the cook."
+
+"Well, cook, were you born dumb?"
+
+The woman shook her head.
+
+"What struck you dumb?"
+
+The woman wrote on her slate:--"A blow."
+
+"Who gave you the blow?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Won't you tell me?"
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+Her eyes had rested on his face while he was questioning her; staring
+at him, cold, dull, and changeless as the eyes of a corpse. Firm as his
+nerves were--dense as he was, on all ordinary occasions, to any thing in
+the shape of an imaginative impression--the eyes of the dumb cook slowly
+penetrated him with a stealthy inner chill. Something crept at the
+marrow of his back, and shuddered under the roots of his hair. He felt
+a sudden impulse to get away from her. It was simple enough; he had only
+to say good-morning, and go on. He did say good-morning--but he never
+moved. He put his hand into his pocket, and offered her some money, as a
+way of making _her_ go. She stretched out her hand across the pear-trees
+to take it--and stopped abruptly, with her arm suspended in the air. A
+sinister change passed over the deathlike tranquillity of her face. Her
+closed lips slowly dropped apart. Her dull eyes slowly dilated; looked
+away, sideways, from _his_ eyes; stopped again; and stared, rigid and
+glittering, over his shoulder--stared as if they saw a sight of horror
+behind him. "What the devil are you looking at?" he asked--and turned
+round quickly, with a start. There was neither person nor thing to be
+seen behind him. He turned back again to the woman. The woman had left
+him, under the influence of some sudden panic. She was hurrying away
+from him--running, old as she was--flying the sight of him, as if the
+sight of him was the pestilence.
+
+"Mad!" he thought--and turned his back on the sight of her.
+
+He found himself (hardly knowing how he had got there) under the
+walnut-tree once more. In a few minutes his hardy nerves had recovered
+themselves--he could laugh over the remembrance of the strange
+impression that had been produced on him. "Frightened for the first time
+in my life," he thought--"and that by an old woman! It's time I went
+into training again, when things have come to this!"
+
+He looked at his watch. It was close on the luncheon hour up at the
+house; and he had not decided yet what to do about his letter to Anne.
+He resolved to decide, then and there.
+
+The woman--the dumb woman, with the stony face and the horrid
+eyes--reappeared in his thoughts, and got in the way of his decision.
+Pooh! some crazed old servant, who might once have been cook; who was
+kept out of charity now. Nothing more important than that. No more of
+her! no more of her!
+
+He laid himself down on the grass, and gave his mind to the serious
+question. How to address Anne as "Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth?" and how to
+make sure of her receiving the letter?
+
+The dumb old woman got in his way again.
+
+He closed his eyes impatiently, and tried to shut her out in a darkness
+of his own making.
+
+The woman showed herself through the darkness. He saw her, as if he
+had just asked her a question, writing on her slate. What she wrote he
+failed to make out. It was all over in an instant. He started up, with
+a feeling of astonishment at himself--and, at the same moment his brain
+cleared with the suddenness of a flash of light. He saw his way, without
+a conscious effort on his own part, through the difficulty that had
+troubled him. Two envelopes, of course: an inner one, unsealed, and
+addressed to "Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;" an outer one, sealed, and
+addressed to "Mrs. Silvester:" and there was the problem solved! Surely
+the simplest problem that had ever puzzled a stupid head.
+
+Why had he not seen it before? Impossible to say.
+
+How came he to have seen it now?
+
+The dumb old woman reappeared in his thoughts--as if the answer to the
+question lay in something connected with _her._
+
+He became alarmed about himself, for the first time in his life. Had
+this persistent impression, produced by nothing but a crazy old woman,
+any thing to do with the broken health which the surgeon had talked
+about? Was his head on the turn? Or had he smoked too much on an empty
+stomach, and gone too long (after traveling all night) without his
+customary drink of ale?
+
+He left the garden to put that latter theory to the test forthwith. The
+betting would have gone dead against him if the public had seen him at
+that moment. He looked haggard and anxious--and with good reason too.
+His nervous system had suddenly forced itself on his notice, without the
+slightest previous introduction, and was saying (in an unknown tongue),
+Here I am!
+
+Returning to the purely ornamental part of the grounds, Geoffrey
+encountered one of the footmen giving a message to one of the gardeners.
+He at once asked for the butler--as the only safe authority to consult
+in the present emergency.
+
+Conducted to the butler's pantry, Geoffrey requested that functionary to
+produce a jug of his oldest ale, with appropriate solid nourishment in
+the shape of "a hunk of bread and cheese."
+
+The butler stared. As a form of condescension among the upper classes
+this was quite new to him.
+
+"Luncheon will be ready directly, Sir."
+
+"What is there for lunch?"
+
+The butler ran over an appetizing list of good dishes and rare wines.
+
+"The devil take your kickshaws!" said Geoffrey. "Give me my old ale, and
+my hunk of bread and cheese."
+
+"Where will you take them, Sir?"
+
+"Here, to be sure! And the sooner the better."
+
+The butler issued the necessary orders with all needful alacrity. He
+spread the simple refreshment demanded, before his distinguished guest,
+in a state of blank bewilderment. Here was a nobleman's son, and a
+public celebrity into the bargain, filling himself with bread and cheese
+and ale, in at once the most voracious and the most unpretending
+manner, at _his_ table! The butler ventured on a little complimentary
+familiarity. He smiled, and touched the betting-book in his
+breast-pocket. "I've put six pound on you, Sir, for the Race." "All
+right, old boy! you shall win your money!" With those noble words the
+honorable gentleman clapped him on the back, and held out his tumbler
+for some more ale. The butler felt trebly an Englishman as he filled the
+foaming glass. Ah! foreign nations may have their revolutions! foreign
+aristocracies may tumble down! The British aristocracy lives in the
+hearts of the people, and lives forever!
+
+"Another!" said Geoffrey, presenting his empty glass. "Here's luck!" He
+tossed off his liquor at a draught, and nodded to the butler, and went
+out.
+
+Had the experiment succeeded? Had he proved his own theory about himself
+to be right? Not a doubt of it! An empty stomach, and a determination of
+tobacco to the head--these were the true causes of that strange state of
+mind into which he had fallen in the kitchen-garden. The dumb woman
+with the stony face vanished as if in a mist. He felt nothing now but
+a comfortable buzzing in his head, a genial warmth all over him, and an
+unlimited capacity for carrying any responsibility that could rest on
+mortal shoulders. Geoffrey was himself again.
+
+He went round toward the library, to write his letter to Anne--and so
+have done with that, to begin with. The company had collected in the
+library waiting for the luncheon-bell. All were idly talking; and some
+would be certain, if he showed himself, to fasten on _him._ He turned
+back again, without showing himself. The only way of writing in peace
+and quietness would be to wait until they were all at luncheon, and then
+return to the library. The same opportunity would serve also for finding
+a messenger to take the letter, without exciting attention, and for
+going away afterward, unseen, on a long walk by himself. An absence of
+two or three hours would cast the necessary dust in Arnold's eyes;
+for it would be certainly interpreted by him as meaning absence at an
+interview with Anne.
+
+He strolled idly through the grounds, farther and farther away from the
+house.
+
+
+
+The talk in the library--aimless and empty enough, for the most
+part--was talk to the purpose, in one corner of the room, in which Sir
+Patrick and Blanche were sitting together.
+
+"Uncle! I have been watching you for the last minute or two."
+
+"At my age, Blanche? that is paying me a very pretty compliment."
+
+"Do you know what I have seen?"
+
+"You have seen an old gentleman in want of his lunch."
+
+"I have seen an old gentleman with something on his mind. What is it?"
+
+"Suppressed gout, my dear."
+
+"That won't do! I am not to be put off in that way. Uncle! I want to
+know--"
+
+"Stop there, Blanche! A young lady who says she 'wants to know,'
+expresses very dangerous sentiments. Eve 'wanted to know'--and see what
+it led to. Faust 'wanted to know'--and got into bad company, as the
+necessary result."
+
+"You are feeling anxious about something," persisted Blanche. "And,
+what is more, Sir Patrick, you behaved in a most unaccountable manner a
+little while since."
+
+"When?"
+
+"When you went and hid yourself with Mr. Delamayn in that snug corner
+there. I saw you lead the way in, while I was at work on Lady Lundie's
+odious dinner-invitations."
+
+"Oh! you call that being at work, do you? I wonder whether there was
+ever a woman yet who could give the whole of her mind to any earthly
+thing that she had to do?"
+
+"Never mind the women! What subject in common could you and Mr. Delamayn
+possibly have to talk about? And why do I see a wrinkle between your
+eyebrows, now you have done with him?--a wrinkle which certainly wasn't
+there before you had that private conference together?"
+
+Before answering, Sir Patrick considered whether he should take Blanche
+into his confidence or not. The attempt to identify Geoffrey's unnamed
+"lady," which he was determined to make, would lead him to Craig Fernie,
+and would no doubt end in obliging him to address himself to Anne.
+Blanche's intimate knowledge of her friend might unquestionably be made
+useful to him under these circumstances; and Blanche's discretion was
+to be trusted in any matter in which Miss Silvester's interests were
+concerned. On the other hand, caution was imperatively necessary, in
+the present imperfect state of his information--and caution, in Sir
+Patrick's mind, carried the day. He decided to wait and see what came
+first of his investigation at the inn.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn consulted me on a dry point of law, in which a friend of
+his was interested," said Sir Patrick. "You have wasted your curiosity,
+my dear, on a subject totally unworthy of a lady's notice."
+
+Blanche's penetration was not to be deceived on such easy terms as
+these. "Why not say at once that you won't tell me?" she rejoined.
+"_You_ shutting yourself up with Mr. Delamayn to talk law! _You_ looking
+absent and anxious about it afterward! I am a very unhappy girl!" said
+Blanche, with a little, bitter sigh. "There is something in me that
+seems to repel the people I love. Not a word in confidence can I get
+from Anne. And not a word in confidence can I get from you. And I do so
+long to sympathize! It's very hard. I think I shall go to Arnold."
+
+Sir Patrick took his niece's hand.
+
+"Stop a minute, Blanche. About Miss Silvester? Have you heard from her
+to-day?"
+
+"No. I am more unhappy about her than words can say."
+
+"Suppose somebody went to Craig Fernie and tried to find out the cause
+of Miss Silvester's silence? Would you believe that somebody sympathized
+with you then?"
+
+Blanche's face flushed brightly with pleasure and surprise. She raised
+Sir Patrick's hand gratefully to her lips.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean that _you_ would do that?"
+
+"I am certainly the last person who ought to do it--seeing that you went
+to the inn in flat rebellion against my orders, and that I only forgave
+you, on your own promise of amendment, the other day. It is a miserably
+weak proceeding on the part of 'the head of the family' to be turning
+his back on his own principles, because his niece happens to be anxious
+and unhappy. Still (if you could lend me your little carriage), I
+_might_ take a surly drive toward Craig Fernie, all by myself, and I
+_might_ stumble against Miss Silvester--in case you have any thing to
+say."
+
+"Any thing to say?" repeated Blanche. She put her arm round her uncle's
+neck, and whispered in his ear one of the most interminable messages
+that ever was sent from one human being to another. Sir Patrick
+listened, with a growing interest in the inquiry on which he was
+secretly bent. "The woman must have some noble qualities," he thought,
+"who can inspire such devotion as this."
+
+While Blanche was whispering to her uncle, a second private
+conference--of the purely domestic sort--was taking place between Lady
+Lundie and the butler, in the hall outside the library door.
+
+"I am sorry to say, my lady, Hester Dethridge has broken out again."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"She was all right, my lady, when she went into the kitchen-garden, some
+time since. She's taken strange again, now she has come back. Wants the
+rest of the day to herself, your ladyship. Says she's overworked, with
+all the company in the house--and, I must say, does look like a person
+troubled and worn out in body and mind."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Roberts! The woman is obstinate and idle and
+insolent. She is now in the house, as you know, under a month's notice
+to leave. If she doesn't choose to do her duty for that month I shall
+refuse to give her a character. Who is to cook the dinner to-day if I
+give Hester Dethridge leave to go out?"
+
+"Any way, my lady, I am afraid the kitchen-maid will have to do her
+best to-day. Hester is very obstinate, when the fit takes her--as your
+ladyship says."
+
+"If Hester Dethridge leaves the kitchen-maid to cook the dinner,
+Roberts, Hester Dethridge leaves my service to-day. I want no more words
+about it. If she persists in setting my orders at defiance, let her
+bring her account-book into the library, while we are at lunch, and lay
+it out my desk. I shall be back in the library after luncheon--and if I
+see the account-book I shall know what it means. In that case, you will
+receive my directions to settle with her and send her away. Ring the
+luncheon-bell."
+
+The luncheon-bell rang. The guests all took the direction of the dining
+-room; Sir Patrick following, from the far end of the library, with
+Blanche on his arm. Arrived at the dining-room door, Blanche stopped,
+and asked her uncle to excuse her if she left him to go in by himself.
+
+"I will be back directly," she said. "I have forgotten something up
+stairs."
+
+Sir Patrick went in. The dining-room door closed; and Blanche returned
+alone to the library. Now on one pretense, and now on another, she had,
+for three days past, faithfully fulfilled the engagement she had made at
+Craig Fernie to wait ten minutes after luncheon-time in the library, on
+the chance of seeing Anne. On this, the fourth occasion, the faithful
+girl sat down alone in the great room, and waited with her eyes fixed on
+the lawn outside.
+
+Five minutes passed, and nothing living appeared but the birds hopping
+about the grass.
+
+In less than a minute more Blanche's quick ear caught the faint sound of
+a woman's dress brushing over the lawn. She ran to the nearest window,
+looked out, and clapped her hands with a cry of delight. There was
+the well-known figure, rapidly approaching her! Anne was true to their
+friendship--Anne had kept her engagement at last!
+
+Blanche hurried out, and drew her into the library in triumph. "This
+makes amends, love for every thing! You answer my letter in the best of
+all ways--you bring me your own dear self."
+
+She placed Anne in a chair, and, lifting her veil, saw her plainly in
+the brilliant mid-day light.
+
+The change in the whole woman was nothing less than dreadful to the
+loving eyes that rested on her. She looked years older than her real
+age. There was a dull calm in her face, a stagnant, stupefied submission
+to any thing, pitiable to see. Three days and nights of solitude and
+grief, three days and nights of unresting and unpartaken suspense, had
+crushed that sensitive nature, had frozen that warm heart. The animating
+spirit was gone--the mere shell of the woman lived and moved, a mockery
+of her former self.
+
+"Oh, Anne! Anne! What _can_ have happened to you? Are you frightened?
+There's not the least fear of any body disturbing us. They are all at
+luncheon, and the servants are at dinner. We have the room entirely to
+ourselves. My darling! you look so faint and strange! Let me get you
+something."
+
+Anne drew Blanche's head down and kissed her. It was done in a dull,
+slow way--without a word, without a tear, without a sigh.
+
+"You're tired--I'm sure you're tired. Have you walked here? You sha'n't
+go back on foot; I'll take care of that!"
+
+Anne roused herself at those words. She spoke for the first time. The
+tone was lower than was natural to her; sadder than was natural to
+her--but the charm of her voice, the native gentleness and beauty of it,
+seemed to have survived the wreck of all besides.
+
+"I don't go back, Blanche. I have left the inn."
+
+"Left the inn? With your husband?"
+
+She answered the first question--not the second.
+
+"I can't go back," she said. "The inn is no place for me. A curse seems
+to follow me, Blanche, wherever I go. I am the cause of quarreling
+and wretchedness, without meaning it, God knows. The old man who is
+head-waiter at the inn has been kind to me, my dear, in his way, and
+he and the landlady had hard words together about it. A quarrel, a
+shocking, violent quarrel. He has lost his place in consequence. The
+woman, his mistress, lays all the blame of it to my door. She is a hard
+woman; and she has been harder than ever since Bishopriggs went away. I
+have missed a letter at the inn--I must have thrown it aside, I suppose,
+and forgotten it. I only know that I remembered about it, and couldn't
+find it last night. I told the landlady, and she fastened a quarrel on
+me almost before the words were out of my mouth. Asked me if I charged
+her with stealing my letter. Said things to me--I can't repeat them.
+I am not very well, and not able to deal with people of that sort. I
+thought it best to leave Craig Fernie this morning. I hope and pray I
+shall never see Craig Fernie again."
+
+She told her little story with a total absence of emotion of any sort,
+and laid her head back wearily on the chair when it was done.
+
+Blanche's eyes filled with tears at the sight of her.
+
+"I won't tease you with questions, Anne," she said, gently. "Come up
+stairs and rest in my room. You're not fit to travel, love. I'll take
+care that nobody comes near us."
+
+The stable-clock at Windygates struck the quarter to two. Anne raised
+herself in the chair with a start.
+
+"What time was that?" she asked.
+
+Blanche told her.
+
+"I can't stay," she said. "I have come here to find something out if I
+can. You won't ask me questions? Don't, Blanche, don't! for the sake of
+old times."
+
+Blanche turned aside, heart-sick. "I will do nothing, dear, to annoy
+you," she said, and took Anne's hand, and hid the tears that were
+beginning to fall over her cheeks.
+
+"I want to know something, Blanche. Will you tell me?"
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"Who are the gentlemen staying in the house?"
+
+Blanche looked round at her again, in sudden astonishment and alarm.
+A vague fear seized her that Anne's mind had given way under the heavy
+weight of trouble laid on it. Anne persisted in pressing her strange
+request.
+
+"Run over their names, Blanche. I have a reason for wishing to know who
+the gentlemen are who are staying in the house."
+
+Blanche repeated the names of Lady Lundie's guests, leaving to the last
+the guests who had arrived last.
+
+"Two more came back this morning," she went on. "Arnold Brinkworth and
+that hateful friend of his, Mr. Delamayn."
+
+Anne's head sank back once more on the chair. She had found her way
+without exciting suspicion of the truth, to the one discovery which she
+had come to Windygates to make. He was in Scotland again, and he had
+only arrived from London that morning. There was barely time for him to
+have communicated with Craig Fernie before she left the inn--he, too,
+who hated letter-writing! The circumstances were all in his favor: there
+was no reason, there was really and truly no reason, so far, to believe
+that he had deserted her. The heart of the unhappy woman bounded in
+her bosom, under the first ray of hope that had warmed it for four days
+past. Under that sudden revulsion of feeling, her weakened frame shook
+from head to foot. Her face flushed deep for a moment--then turned
+deadly pale again. Blanche, anxiously watching her, saw the serious
+necessity for giving some restorative to her instantly.
+
+"I am going to get you some wine--you will faint, Anne, if you don't
+take something. I shall be back in a moment; and I can manage it without
+any body being the wiser."
+
+She pushed Anne's chair close to the nearest open window--a window at
+the upper end of the library--and ran out.
+
+Blanche had barely left the room, by the door that led into the hall,
+when Geoffrey entered it by one of the lower windows opening from the
+lawn.
+
+With his mind absorbed in the letter that he was about to write, he
+slowly advanced up the room toward the nearest table. Anne, hearing
+the sound of footsteps, started, and looked round. Her failing strength
+rallied in an instant, under the sudden relief of seeing him again. She
+rose and advanced eagerly, with a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. He
+looked up. The two stood face to face together--alone.
+
+"Geoffrey!"
+
+He looked at her without answering--without advancing a step, on his
+side. There was an evil light in his eyes; his silence was the brute
+silence that threatens dumbly. He had made up his mind never to see her
+again, and she had entrapped him into an interview. He had made up his
+mind to write, and there she stood forcing him to speak. The sum of
+her offenses against him was now complete. If there had ever been the
+faintest hope of her raising even a passing pity in his heart, that hope
+would have been annihilated now.
+
+She failed to understand the full meaning of his silence. She made her
+excuses, poor soul, for venturing back to Windygates--her excuses to the
+man whose purpose at that moment was to throw her helpless on the world.
+
+"Pray forgive me for coming here," she said. "I have done nothing to
+compromise you, Geoffrey. Nobody but Blanche knows I am at Windygates.
+And I have contrived to make my inquiries about you without allowing
+her to suspect our secret." She stopped, and began to tremble. She saw
+something more in his face than she had read in it at first. "I got your
+letter," she went on, rallying her sinking courage. "I don't complain
+of its being so short: you don't like letter-writing, I know. But you
+promised I should hear from you again. And I have never heard. And oh,
+Geoffrey, it was so lonely at the inn!"
+
+She stopped again, and supported herself by resting her hand on the
+table. The faintness was stealing back on her. She tried to go on again.
+It was useless--she could only look at him now.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked, in the tone of a man who was putting an
+unimportant question to a total stranger.
+
+A last gleam of her old energy flickered up in her face, like a dying
+flame.
+
+"I am broken by what I have gone through," she said. "Don't insult me by
+making me remind you of your promise."
+
+"What promise?"'
+
+"For shame, Geoffrey! for shame! Your promise to marry me."
+
+"You claim my promise after what you have done at the inn?"
+
+She steadied herself against the table with one hand, and put the other
+hand to her head. Her brain was giddy. The effort to think was too much
+for her. She said to herself, vacantly, "The inn? What did I do at the
+inn?"
+
+"I have had a lawyer's advice, mind! I know what I am talking about."
+
+She appeared not to have heard him. She repeated the words, "What did
+I do at the inn?" and gave it up in despair. Holding by the table, she
+came close to him and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Do you refuse to marry me?" she asked.
+
+He saw the vile opportunity, and said the vile words.
+
+"You're married already to Arnold Brinkworth."
+
+Without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself, she
+dropped senseless at his feet; as her mother had dropped at his father's
+feet in the by-gone time.
+
+He disentangled himself from the folds of her dress. "Done!" he said,
+looking down at her as she lay on the floor.
+
+As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner
+part of the house. One of the library doors had not been completely
+closed. Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.
+
+He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the
+open window at the lower end of the room.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.
+
+GONE.
+
+BLANCHE came in, with a glass of wine in her hand, and saw the swooning
+woman on the floor.
+
+She was alarmed, but not surprised, as she knelt by Anne, and raised her
+head. Her own previous observation of her friend necessarily prevented
+her from being at any loss to account for the fainting fit. The
+inevitable delay in getting the wine was--naturally to her mind--alone
+to blame for the result which now met her view.
+
+If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause,
+she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened,
+out-of-doors, to frighten Anne--might have seen Geoffrey before he had
+time to turn the corner of the house--and, making that one discovery,
+might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming
+life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own
+destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness
+at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which
+persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of
+creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited,
+because other planets are not surrounded by an atmosphere which _we_ can
+breathe!
+
+After trying such simple remedies as were within her reach, and trying
+them without success, Blanche became seriously alarmed. Anne lay, to all
+outward appearance, dead in her arms. She was on the point of calling
+for help--come what might of the discovery which would ensue--when the
+door from the hall opened once more, and Hester Dethridge entered the
+room.
+
+The cook had accepted the alternative which her mistress's message had
+placed before her, if she insisted on having her own time at her own
+sole disposal for the rest of that day. Exactly as Lady Lundie had
+desired, she intimated her resolution to carry her point by placing her
+account-book on the desk in the library. It was only when this had been
+done that Blanche received any answer to her entreaties for help. Slowly
+and deliberately Hester Dethridge walked up to the spot where the young
+girl knelt with Anne's head on her bosom, and looked at the two without
+a trace of human emotion in her stern and stony face.
+
+"Don't you see what's happened?" cried Blanche. "Are you alive or dead?
+Oh, Hester, I can't bring her to! Look at her! look at her!"
+
+Hester Dethridge looked at her, and shook her head. Looked again,
+thought for a while and wrote on her slate. Held out the slate over
+Anne's body, and showed what she had written:
+
+"Who has done it?"
+
+"You stupid creature!" said Blanche. "Nobody has done it."
+
+The eyes of Hester Dethridge steadily read the worn white face, telling
+its own tale of sorrow mutely on Blanche's breast. The mind of Hester
+Dethridge steadily looked back at her own knowledge of her own miserable
+married life. She again returned to writing on her slate--again showed
+the written words to Blanche.
+
+"Brought to it by a man. Let her be--and God will take her."
+
+"You horrid unfeeling woman! how dare you write such an abominable
+thing!" With this natural outburst of indignation, Blanche looked
+back at Anne; and, daunted by the death-like persistency of the swoon,
+appealed again to the mercy of the immovable woman who was looking down
+at her. "Oh, Hester! for Heaven's sake help me!"
+
+The cook dropped her slate at her side and bent her head gravely in
+sign that she submitted. She motioned to Blanche to loosen Anne's dress,
+and then--kneeling on one knee--took Anne to support her while it was
+being done.
+
+The instant Hester Dethridge touched her, the swooning woman gave signs
+of life.
+
+A faint shudder ran through her from head to foot--her eyelids
+trembled--half opened for a moment--and closed again. As they closed, a
+low sigh fluttered feebly from her lips.
+
+Hester Dethridge put her back in Blanche's arms--considered a little
+with herself--returned to writing on her slate--and held out the written
+words once more:
+
+"Shivered when I touched her. That means I have been walking over her
+grave."
+
+Blanche turned from the sight of the slate, and from the sight of the
+woman, in horror. "You frighten me!" she said. "You will frighten _her_
+if she sees you. I don't mean to offend you; but--leave us, please leave
+us."
+
+Hester Dethridge accepted her dismissal, as she accepted every thing
+else. She bowed her head in sign that she understood--looked for the
+last time at Anne--dropped a stiff courtesy to her young mistress--and
+left the room.
+
+An hour later the butler had paid her, and she had left the house.
+
+Blanche breathed more freely when she found herself alone. She could
+feel the relief now of seeing Anne revive.
+
+"Can you hear me, darling?" she whispered. "Can you let me leave you for
+a moment?"
+
+Anne's eyes slowly opened and looked round her--in that torment and
+terror of reviving life which marks the awful protest of humanity
+against its recall to existence when mortal mercy has dared to wake it
+in the arms of Death.
+
+Blanche rested Anne's head against the nearest chair, and ran to the
+table upon which she had placed the wine on entering the room.
+
+After swallowing the first few drops Anne begun to feel the effect of
+the stimulant. Blanche persisted in making her empty the glass, and
+refrained from asking or answering questions until her recovery under
+the influence of the wine was complete.
+
+"You have overexerted yourself this morning," she said, as soon as
+it seemed safe to speak. "Nobody has seen you, darling--nothing has
+happened. Do you feel like yourself again?"
+
+Anne made an attempt to rise and leave the library; Blanche placed her
+gently in the chair, and went on:
+
+"There is not the least need to stir. We have another quarter of an
+hour to ourselves before any body is at all likely to disturb us. I have
+something to say, Anne--a little proposal to make. Will you listen to
+me?"
+
+Anne took Blanche's hand, and p ressed it gratefully to her lips. She
+made no other reply. Blanche proceeded:
+
+"I won't ask any questions, my dear--I won't attempt to keep you here
+against your will--I won't even remind you of my letter yesterday. But
+I can't let you go, Anne, without having my mind made easy about you in
+some way. You will relieve all my anxiety, if you will do one thing--one
+easy thing for my sake."
+
+"What is it, Blanche?"
+
+She put that question with her mind far away from the subject before
+her. Blanche was too eager in pursuit of her object to notice the absent
+tone, the purely mechanical manner, in which Anne had spoken to her.
+
+"I want you to consult my uncle," she answered. "Sir Patrick is
+interested in you; Sir Patrick proposed to me this very day to go and
+see you at the inn. He is the wisest, the kindest, the dearest old man
+living--and you can trust him as you could trust nobody else. Will you
+take my uncle into your confidence, and be guided by his advice?"
+
+With her mind still far away from the subject, Anne looked out absently
+at the lawn, and made no answer.
+
+"Come!" said Blanche. "One word isn't much to say. Is it Yes or No?"
+
+Still looking out on the lawn--still thinking of something else--Anne
+yielded, and said "Yes."
+
+Blanche was enchanted. "How well I must have managed it!" she thought.
+"This is what my uncle means, when my uncle talks of 'putting it
+strongly.'"
+
+She bent down over Anne, and gayly patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"That's the wisest 'Yes,' darling, you ever said in your life. Wait
+here--and I'll go in to luncheon, or they will be sending to know what
+has become of me. Sir Patrick has kept my place for me, next to himself.
+I shall contrive to tell him what I want; and _he_ will contrive (oh,
+the blessing of having to do with a clever man; these are so few of
+them!)--he will contrive to leave the table before the rest, without
+exciting any body's suspicions. Go away with him at once to the
+summer-house (we have been at the summer-house all the morning; nobody
+will go back to it now), and I will follow you as soon as I have
+satisfied Lady Lundie by eating some lunch. Nobody will be any the
+wiser but our three selves. In five minutes or less you may expect Sir
+Patrick. Let me go! We haven't a moment to lose!"
+
+Anne held her back. Anne's attention was concentrated on her now.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Are you going on happily with Arnold, Blanche?"
+
+"Arnold is nicer than ever, my dear."
+
+"Is the day fixed for your marriage?"
+
+"The day will be ages hence. Not till we are back in town, at the end of
+the autumn. Let me go, Anne!"
+
+"Give me a kiss, Blanche."
+
+Blanche kissed her, and tried to release her hand. Anne held it as if
+she was drowning, as if her life depended on not letting it go.
+
+"Will you always love me, Blanche, as you love me now?"
+
+"How can you ask me!"
+
+"_I_ said Yes just now. _You_ say Yes too."
+
+Blanche said it. Anne's eyes fastened on her face, with one long,
+yearning look, and then Anne's hand suddenly dropped hers.
+
+She ran out of the room, more agitated, more uneasy, than she liked
+to confess to herself. Never had she felt so certain of the urgent
+necessity of appealing to Sir Patrick's advice as she felt at that
+moment.
+
+
+
+The guests were still safe at the luncheon-table when Blanche entered
+the dining-room.
+
+Lady Lundie expressed the necessary surprise, in the properly graduated
+tone of reproof, at her step-daughter's want of punctuality. Blanche
+made her apologies with the most exemplary humility. She glided into her
+chair by her uncle's side, and took the first thing that was offered to
+her. Sir Patrick looked at his niece, and found himself in the company
+of a model young English Miss--and marveled inwardly what it might mean.
+
+The talk, interrupted for the moment (topics, Politics and Sport--and
+then, when a change was wanted, Sport and Politics), was resumed
+again all round the table. Under cover of the conversation, and in
+the intervals of receiving the attentions of the gentlemen, Blanche
+whispered to Sir Patrick, "Don't start, uncle. Anne is in the library."
+(Polite Mr. Smith offered some ham. Gratefully declined.) "Pray, pray,
+pray go to her; she is waiting to see you--she is in dreadful trouble."
+(Gallant Mr. Jones proposed fruit tart and cream. Accepted with thanks.)
+"Take her to the summer-house: I'll follow you when I get the chance.
+And manage it at once, uncle, if you love me, or you will be too late."
+
+Before Sir Patrick could whisper back a word in reply, Lady Lundie,
+cutting a cake of the richest Scottish composition, at the other end of
+the table, publicly proclaimed it to be her "own cake," and, as such,
+offered her brother-in-law a slice. The slice exhibited an eruption of
+plums and sweetmeats, overlaid by a perspiration of butter. It has been
+said that Sir Patrick had reached the age of seventy--it is, therefore,
+needless to add that he politely declined to commit an unprovoked
+outrage on his own stomach.
+
+"MY cake!" persisted Lady Lundie, elevating the horrible composition on
+a fork. "Won't that tempt you?"
+
+Sir Patrick saw his way to slipping out of the room under cover of a
+compliment to his sister-in-law. He summoned his courtly smile, and laid
+his hand on his heart.
+
+"A fallible mortal," he said, "is met by a temptation which he can not
+possibly resist. If he is a wise mortal, also, what does he do?"
+
+"He eats some of My cake," said the prosaic Lady Lundie.
+
+"No!" said Sir Patrick, with a look of unutterable devotion directed at
+his sister-in-law.
+
+"He flies temptation, dear lady--as I do now." He bowed, and escaped,
+unsuspected, from the room.
+
+Lady Lundie cast down her eyes, with an expression of virtuous
+indulgence for human frailty, and divided Sir Patrick's compliment
+modestly between herself and her cake.
+
+
+
+Well aware that his own departure from the table would be followed in a
+few minutes by the rising of the lady of the house, Sir Patrick hurried
+to the library as fast as his lame foot would let him. Now that he was
+alone, his manner became anxious, and his face looked grave. He entered
+the room.
+
+Not a sign of Anne Silvester was to be seen any where. The library was a
+perfect solitude.
+
+"Gone!" said Sir Patrick. "This looks bad."
+
+After a moment's reflection he went back into the hall to get his hat.
+It was possible that she might have been afraid of discovery if
+she staid in the library, and that she might have gone on to the
+summer-house by herself.
+
+If she was not to be found in the summer-house, the quieting of
+Blanche's mind and the clearing up of her uncle's suspicions alike
+depended on discovering the place in which Miss Silvester had taken
+refuge. In this case time would be of importance, and the capacity of
+making the most of it would be a precious capacity at starting. Arriving
+rapidly at these conclusions, Sir Patrick rang the bell in the hall
+which communicated with the servants' offices, and summoned his own
+valet--a person of tried discretion and fidelity, nearly as old as
+himself.
+
+"Get your hat, Duncan," he said, when the valet appeared, "and come out
+with me."
+
+Master and servant set forth together silently on their way through the
+grounds. Arrived within sight of the summer-house, Sir Patrick ordered
+Duncan to wait, and went on by himself.
+
+There was not the least need for the precaution that he had taken.
+The summer-house was as empty as the library. He stepped out again
+and looked about him. Not a living creature was visible. Sir Patrick
+summoned his servant to join him.
+
+"Go back to the stables, Duncan," he said, "and say that Miss Lundie
+lends me her pony-carriage to-day. Let it be got ready at once and kept
+in the stable-yard. I want to attract as little notice as possible.
+You are to go with me, and nobody else. Provide yourself with a railway
+time-table. Have you got any money?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Did you happen to see the governess (Miss Silvester) on the day when we
+came here--the day of the lawn-party?"
+
+"I did, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Should you know her again?"
+
+"I thought her a very distinguished-looking person, Sir Patrick. I
+should certainly know her again."
+
+"Have you any reason to think she noticed you?"
+
+"She never even looked at me, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Very good. Put a change of linen into your bag, Duncan--I may possibly
+want you to take a journey by railway. Wait for me in the stable-yard.
+This is a matter in which every thing is trusted to my discretion, and
+to yours."
+
+"Thank you, Sir Patrick."
+
+With that acknowledgment of the compliment which had been just paid to
+him, Duncan gravely went his way to the stables; and Duncan's master
+returned to the summer-house, to wait there until he was joined by
+Blanche.
+
+Sir Patrick showed signs of failing patience during the interval of
+expectation through which he was now condemned to pass. He applied
+perpetually to the snuff-box in the knob of his cane. He fidgeted
+incessantly in and out of the summer-house. Anne's disappearance had
+placed a serious obstacle in the way of further discovery; and there
+was no attacking that obstacle, until precious time had been wasted in
+waiting to see Blanche.
+
+At last she appeared in view, from the steps of the summer-house;
+breathless and eager, hasting to the place of meeting as fast as her
+feet would take her to it.
+
+Sir Patrick considerately advanced, to spare her the shock of making the
+inevitable discovery. "Blanche," he said. "Try to prepare yourself, my
+dear, for a disappointment. I am alone."
+
+"You don't mean that you have let her go?"
+
+"My poor child! I have never seen her at all."
+
+Blanche pushed by him, and ran into the summer-house. Sir Patrick
+followed her. She came out again to meet him, with a look of blank
+despair. "Oh, uncle! I did so truly pity her! And see how little pity
+she has for _me!_"
+
+Sir Patrick put his arm round his niece, and softly patted the fair
+young head that dropped on his shoulder.
+
+"Don't let us judge her harshly, my dear: we don't know what serious
+necessity may not plead her excuse. It is plain that she can trust
+nobody--and that she only consented to see me to get you out of the room
+and spare you the pain of parting. Compose yourself, Blanche. I don't
+despair of discovering where she has gone, if you will help me."
+
+Blanche lifted her head, and dried her tears bravely.
+
+"My father himself wasn't kinder to me than you are," she said. "Only
+tell me, uncle, what I can do!"
+
+"I want to hear exactly what happened in the library," said Sir Patrick.
+"Forget nothing, my dear child, no matter how trifling it may be.
+Trifles are precious to us, and minutes are precious to us, now."
+
+Blanche followed her instructions to the letter, her uncle listening
+with the closest attention. When she had completed her narrative,
+Sir Patrick suggested leaving the summer-house. "I have ordered your
+chaise," he said; "and I can tell you what I propose doing on our way to
+the stable-yard."
+
+"Let me drive you, uncle!"
+
+"Forgive me, my dear, for saying No to that. Your step-mother's
+suspicions are very easily excited--and you had better not be seen with
+me if my inquiries take me to the Craig Fernie inn. I promise, if you
+will remain here, to tell you every thing when I come back. Join the
+others in any plan they have for the afternoon--and you will prevent my
+absence from exciting any thing more than a passing remark. You will do
+as I tell you? That's a good girl! Now you shall hear how I propose to
+search for this poor lady, and how your little story has helped me."
+
+He paused, considering with himself whether he should begin by telling
+Blanche of his consultation with Geoffrey. Once more, he decided that
+question in the negative. Better to still defer taking her into his
+confidence until he had performed the errand of investigation on which
+he was now setting forth.
+
+"What you have told me, Blanche, divides itself, in my mind, into two
+heads," began Sir Patrick. "There is what happened in the library before
+your own eyes; and there is what Miss Silvester told you had happened at
+the inn. As to the event in the library (in the first place), it is too
+late now to inquire whether that fainting-fit was the result, as you
+say, of mere exhaustion--or whether it was the result of something that
+occurred while you were out of the room."
+
+"What could have happened while I was out of the room?"
+
+"I know no more than you do, my dear. It is simply one of the
+possibilities in the case, and, as such, I notice it. To get on to what
+practically concerns us; if Miss Silvester is in delicate health it is
+impossible that she could get, unassisted, to any great distance from
+Windygates. She may have taken refuge in one of the cottages in our
+immediate neighborhood. Or she may have met with some passing vehicle
+from one of the farms on its way to the station, and may have asked the
+person driving to give her a seat in it. Or she may have walked as far
+as she can, and may have stopped to rest in some sheltered place, among
+the lanes to the south of this house."
+
+"I'll inquire at the cottages, uncle, while you are gone."
+
+"My dear child, there must be a dozen cottages, at least, within a
+circle of one mile from Windygates! Your inquiries would probably occupy
+you for the whole afternoon. I won't ask what Lady Lundie would think of
+your being away all that time by yourself. I will only remind you of two
+things. You would be making a public matter of an investigation which
+it is essential to pursue as privately as possible; and, even if you
+happened to hit on the right cottage your inquiries would be completely
+baffled, and you would discover nothing."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I know the Scottish peasant better than you do, Blanche. In his
+intelligence and his sense of self-respect he is a very different being
+from the English peasant. He would receive you civilly, because you
+are a young lady; but he would let you see, at the same time, that
+he considered you had taken advantage of the difference between your
+position and his position to commit an intrusion. And if Miss Silvester
+had appealed, in confidence, to his hospitality, and if he had granted
+it, no power on earth would induce him to tell any person living that
+she was under his roof--without her express permission."
+
+"But, uncle, if it's of no use making inquiries of any body, how are we
+to find her?"
+
+"I don't say that nobody will answer our inquiries, my dear--I only say
+the peasantry won't answer them, if your friend has trusted herself to
+their protection. The way to find her is to look on, beyond what Miss
+Silvester may be doing at the present moment, to what Miss Silvester
+contemplates doing--let us say, before the day is out. We may assume,
+I think (after what has happened), that, as soon as she can leave this
+neighborhood, she assuredly will leave it. Do you agree, so far?"
+
+"Yes! yes! Go on."
+
+"Very well. She is a woman, and she is (to say the least of it) not
+strong. She can only leave this neighborhood either by hiring a vehicle
+or by traveling on the railway. I propose going first to the station.
+At the rate at which your pony gets over the ground, there is a fair
+chance, in spite of the time we have lost, of my being there as soon as
+she is--assuming that she leaves by the first train, up or down, that
+passes."
+
+"There is a train in half an hour, uncle. She can never get there in
+time for that."
+
+"She may be less exhausted than we think; or she may get a lift; or she
+may not be alone. How do we know but somebody may have been waiting in
+the lane--her husband, if there is such a person--to help her? No! I
+shall assume she is now on her way to the station; and I shall get there
+as fast as possible--"
+
+"And stop her, if you find her there?"
+
+"What I do, Blanche, must be left to my discretion. If I find her there,
+I must act for the best. If I don't find her there, I shall leave Duncan
+(who goes with me) on the watch for the remaining trains, until the last
+to-night. He knows Miss Silvester by sight, and he is sure that _she_
+has never noticed _him._ Whether she goes north or south, early or late,
+Duncan will have my orders to follow her. He is thoroughly to be relied
+on. If she takes the railway, I answer for it we shall know where she
+goes."
+
+"How clever of you to think of Duncan!"
+
+"Not in the least, my dear. Duncan is my factotum; and the course I am
+taking is the obvious course which would have occurred to any body.
+Let us get to the re ally difficult part of it now. Suppose she hires a
+carriage?"
+
+"There are none to be had, except at the station."
+
+"There are farmers about here--and farmers have light carts, or chaises,
+or something of the sort. It is in the last degree unlikely that
+they would consent to let her have them. Still, women break through
+difficulties which stop men. And this is a clever woman, Blanche--a
+woman, you may depend on it, who is bent on preventing you from tracing
+her. I confess I wish we had somebody we could trust lounging about
+where those two roads branch off from the road that leads to the
+railway. I must go in another direction; _I_ can't do it."
+
+"Arnold can do it!"
+
+Sir Patrick looked a little doubtful. "Arnold is an excellent fellow,"
+he said. "But can we trust to his discretion?"
+
+"He is, next to you, the most perfectly discreet person I know,"
+rejoined Blanche, in a very positive manner; "and, what is more, I have
+told him every thing about Anne, except what has happened to-day. I am
+afraid I shall tell him _that,_ when I feel lonely and miserable,
+after you have gone. There is something in Arnold--I don't know what
+it is--that comforts me. Besides, do you think he would betray a secret
+that I gave him to keep? You don't know how devoted he is to me!"
+
+"My dear Blanche, I am not the cherished object of his devotion; of
+course I don't know! You are the only authority on that point. I stand
+corrected. Let us have Arnold, by all means. Caution him to be careful;
+and send him out by himself, where the roads meet. We have now only one
+other place left in which there is a chance of finding a trace of her. I
+undertake to make the necessary investigation at the Craig Fernie inn."
+
+"The Craig Fernie inn? Uncle! you have forgotten what I told you."
+
+"Wait a little, my dear. Miss Silvester herself has left the inn, I
+grant you. But (if we should unhappily fail in finding her by any other
+means) Miss Silvester has left a trace to guide us at Craig Fernie. That
+trace must be picked up at once, in case of accidents. You don't seem
+to follow me? I am getting over the ground as fast as the pony gets
+over it. I have arrived at the second of those two heads into which your
+story divides itself in my mind. What did Miss Silvester tell you had
+happened at the inn?"
+
+"She lost a letter at the inn."
+
+"Exactly. She lost a letter at the inn; that is one event. And
+Bishopriggs, the waiter, has quarreled with Mrs. Inchbare, and has left
+his situation; that is another event. As to the letter first. It is
+either really lost, or it has been stolen. In either case, if we can
+lay our hands on it, there is at least a chance of its helping us to
+discover something. As to Bishopriggs, next--"
+
+"You're not going to talk about the waiter, surely?"
+
+"I am! Bishopriggs possesses two important merits. He is a link in my
+chain of reasoning; and he is an old friend of mine."
+
+"A friend of yours?"
+
+"We live in days, my dear, when one workman talks of another workman as
+'that gentleman.'--I march with the age, and feel bound to mention my
+clerk as my friend. A few years since Bishopriggs was employed in the
+clerks' room at my chambers. He is one of the most intelligent and
+most unscrupulous old vagabonds in Scotland; perfectly honest as to
+all average matters involving pounds, shillings, and pence; perfectly
+unprincipled in the pursuit of his own interests, where the violation
+of a trust lies on the boundary-line which marks the limit of the law. I
+made two unpleasant discoveries when I had him in my employment. I found
+that he had contrived to supply himself with a duplicate of my seal; and
+I had the strongest reason to suspect him of tampering with some papers
+belonging to two of my clients. He had done no actual mischief, so far;
+and I had no time to waste in making out the necessary case against him.
+He was dismissed from my service, as a man who was not to be trusted to
+respect any letters or papers that happened to pass through his hands."
+
+"I see, uncle! I see!"
+
+"Plain enough now--isn't it? If that missing letter of Miss Silvester's
+is a letter of no importance, I am inclined to believe that it is merely
+lost, and may be found again. If, on the other hand, there is any thing
+in it that could promise the most remote advantage to any person in
+possession of it, then, in the execrable slang of the day, I will lay
+any odds, Blanche, that Bishopriggs has got the letter!"
+
+"And he has left the inn! How unfortunate!"
+
+"Unfortunate as causing delay--nothing worse than that. Unless I am very
+much mistaken, Bishopriggs will come back to the inn. The old rascal
+(there is no denying it) is a most amusing person. He left a terrible
+blank when he left my clerks' room. Old customers at Craig Fernie
+(especially the English), in missing Bishopriggs, will, you may rely on
+it, miss one of the attractions of the inn. Mrs. Inchbare is not a woman
+to let her dignity stand in the way of her business. She and Bishopriggs
+will come together again, sooner or later, and make it up. When I have
+put certain questions to her, which may possibly lead to very important
+results, I shall leave a letter for Bishopriggs in Mrs. Inchbare's
+hands. The letter will tell him I have something for him to do, and will
+contain an address at which he can write to me. I shall hear of him,
+Blanche and, if the letter is in his possession, I shall get it."
+
+"Won't he be afraid--if he has stolen the letter--to tell you he has got
+it?"
+
+"Very well put, my child. He might hesitate with other people. But I
+have my own way of dealing with him--and I know how to make him tell
+Me.--Enough of Bishopriggs till his time comes. There is one other
+point, in regard to Miss Silvester. I may have to describe her. How
+was she dressed when she came here? Remember, I am a man--and (if an
+Englishwoman's dress _can_ be described in an Englishwoman's language)
+tell me, in English, what she had on."
+
+"She wore a straw hat, with corn-flowers in it, and a white veil.
+Corn-flowers at one side uncle, which is less common than cornflowers in
+front. And she had on a light gray shawl. And a _Pique;_--"
+
+"There you go with your French! Not a word more! A straw hat, with a
+white veil, and with corn-flowers at one side of the hat. And a light
+gray shawl. That's as much as the ordinary male mind can take in; and
+that will do. I have got my instructions, and saved precious time. So
+far so good. Here we are at the end of our conference--in other words,
+at the gate of the stable-yard. You understand what you have to do while
+I am away?"
+
+"I have to send Arnold to the cross-roads. And I have to behave (if I
+can) as if nothing had happened."
+
+"Good child! Well put again! you have got what I call grasp of mind,
+Blanche. An invaluable faculty! You will govern the future domestic
+kingdom. Arnold will be nothing but a constitutional husband. Those are
+the only husbands who are thoroughly happy. You shall hear every
+thing, my love, when I come lack. Got your bag, Duncan? Good. And the
+time-table? Good. You take the reins--I won't drive. I want to think.
+Driving is incompatible with intellectual exertion. A man puts his
+mind into his horse, and sinks to the level of that useful animal--as a
+necessary condition of getting to his destination without being upset.
+God bless you, Blanche! To the station, Duncan! to the station!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD.
+
+TRACED.
+
+THE chaise rattled our through the gates. The dogs barked furiously. Sir
+Patrick looked round, and waved his hand as he turned the corner of the
+road. Blanche was left alone in the yard.
+
+She lingered a little, absently patting the dogs. They had especial
+claims on her sympathy at that moment; they, too, evidently thought it
+hard to be left behind at the house. After a while she roused herself.
+Sir Patrick had left the responsibility of superintending the crossroads
+on her shoulders. There was something to be done yet before the
+arrangements for tracing Anne were complete. Blanche left the yard to do
+it.
+
+On her way back to the house she met Arnold, dispatched by Lady Lundie
+in search of her.
+
+The plan of occupation for the afternoon had been settled during
+Blanche's absence. Some demon had whispered to Lady Lundie to cultivate
+a taste for feudal antiquities, and to insist on spreading that taste
+among her guests. She had proposed an excursion to an old baronial
+castle among the hills--far to the westward (fortunately for Sir
+Patrick's chance of escaping discovery) of the hills at Craig Fernie.
+Some of the guests were to ride, and some to accompany their hostess in
+the open carriage. Looking right and left for proselytes, Lady Lundie
+had necessarily remarked the disappearance of certain members of her
+circle. Mr. Delamayn had vanished, nobody knew where. Sir Patrick and
+Blanche had followed his example. Her ladyship had observed, upon this,
+with some asperity, that if they were all to treat each other in
+that unceremonious manner, the sooner Windygates was turned into a
+Penitentiary, on the silent system, the fitter the house would be for
+the people who inhabited it. Under these circumstances, Arnold suggested
+that Blanche would do well to make her excuses as soon as possible at
+head-quarters, and accept the seat in the carriage which her step-mother
+wished her to take. "We are in for the feudal antiquities, Blanche; and
+we must help each other through as well as we can. If you will go in the
+carriage, I'll go too."
+
+Blanche shook her head.
+
+"There are serious reasons for _my_ keeping up appearances," she said.
+"I shall go in the carriage. You mustn't go at all."
+
+Arnold naturally looked a little surprised, and asked to be favored with
+an explanation.
+
+Blanche took his arm and hugged it close. Now that Anne was lost, Arnold
+was more precious to her than ever. She literally hungered to hear at
+that moment, from his own lips, how fond he was of her. It mattered
+nothing that she was already perfectly satisfied on this point. It was
+so nice (after he had said it five hundred times already) to make him
+say it once more!
+
+"Suppose I had no explanation to give?" she said. "Would you stay behind
+by yourself to please me?"
+
+"I would do any thing to please you!"
+
+"Do you really love me as much as that?"
+
+They were still in the yard; and the only witnesses present were
+the dogs. Arnold answered in the language without words--which is
+nevertheless the most expressive language in use, between men and women,
+all over the world.
+
+"This is not doing my duty," said Blanche, penitently. "But, oh Arnold,
+I am so anxious and so miserable! And it _is_ such a consolation to know
+that _you_ won't turn your back on me too!"
+
+With that preface she told him what had happened in the library. Even
+Blanche's estimate of her lover's capacity for sympathizing with her was
+more than realized by the effect which her narrative produced on Arnold.
+He was not merely surprised and sorry for her. His face showed plainly
+that he felt genuine concern and distress. He had never stood higher in
+Blanche's opinion than he stood at that moment.
+
+"What is to be done?" he asked. "How does Sir Patrick propose to find
+her?"
+
+Blanche repeated Sir Patrick's instructions relating to the crossroads,
+and also to the serious necessity of pursuing the investigation in the
+strictest privacy. Arnold (relieved from all fear of being sent back
+to Craig Fernie) undertook to do every thing that was asked of him, and
+promised to keep the secret from every body.
+
+They went back to the house, and met with an icy welcome from Lady
+Lundie. Her ladyship repeated her remark on the subject of turning
+Windygates into a Penitentiary for Blanche's benefit. She received
+Arnold's petition to be excused from going to see the castle with the
+barest civility. "Oh, take your walk by all means! You may meet your
+friend, Mr. Delamayn--who appears to have such a passion for walking
+that he can't even wait till luncheon is over. As for Sir Patrick--Oh!
+Sir Patrick has borrowed the pony-carriage? and gone out driving by
+himself?--I'm sure I never meant to offend my brother-in-law when I
+offered him a slice of my poor little cake. Don't let me offend any
+body else. Dispose of your afternoon, Blanche, without the slightest
+reference to me. Nobody seems inclined to visit the ruins--the most
+interesting relic of feudal times in Perthshire, Mr. Brinkworth. It
+doesn't matter--oh, dear me, it doesn't matter! I can't force my guests
+to feel an intelligent curiosity on the subject of Scottish Antiquities.
+No! no! my dear Blanche!--it won't be the first time, or the last, that
+I have driven out alone. I don't at all object to being alone. 'My
+mind to me a kingdom is,' as the poet says." So Lady Lundie's outraged
+self-importance asserted its violated claims on human respect, until
+her distinguished medical guest came to the rescue and smoothed his
+hostess's ruffled plumes. The surgeon (he privately detested ruins)
+begged to go. Blanche begged to go. Smith and Jones (profoundly
+interested in feudal antiquities) said they would sit behind, in the
+"rumble"--rather than miss this unexpected treat. One, Two, and Three
+caught the infection, and volunteered to be the escort on horseback.
+Lady Lundie's celebrated "smile" (warranted to remain unaltered on her
+face for hours together) made its appearance once more. She issued her
+orders with the most charming amiability. "We'll take the guidebook,"
+said her ladyship, with the eye to mean economy, which is only to be met
+with in very rich people, "and save a shilling to the man who shows the
+ruins." With that she went up stairs to array herself for the drive,
+and looked in the glass; and saw a perfectly virtuous, fascinating, and
+accomplished woman, facing her irresistibly in a new French bonnet!
+
+At a private signal from Blanche, Arnold slipped out and repaired to his
+post, where the roads crossed the road that led to the railway.
+
+There was a space of open heath on one side of him, and the stonewall
+and gates of a farmhouse inclosure on the other. Arnold sat down on
+the soft heather--and lit a cigar--and tried to see his way through the
+double mystery of Anne's appearance and Anne's flight.
+
+He had interpreted his friend's absence exactly as his friend had
+anticipated: he could only assume that Geoffrey had gone to keep a
+private appointment with Anne. Miss Silvester's appearance at Windygates
+alone, and Miss Silvester's anxiety to hear the names of the gentlemen
+who were staying in the house, seemed, under these circumstances,
+to point to the plain conclusion that the two had, in some way,
+unfortunately missed each other. But what could be the motive of her
+flight? Whether she knew of some other place in which she might meet
+Geoffrey? or whether she had gone back to the inn? or whether she had
+acted under some sudden impulse of despair?--were questions which Arnold
+was necessarily quite incompetent to solve. There was no choice but
+to wait until an opportunity offered of reporting what had happened to
+Geoffrey himself.
+
+After the lapse of half an hour, the sound of some approaching
+vehicle--the first sound of the sort that he had heard--attracted
+Arnold's attention. He started up, and saw the pony-chaise approaching
+him along the road from the station. Sir Patrick, this time, was
+compelled to drive himself--Duncan was not with him. On discovering
+Arnold, he stopped the pony.
+
+"So! so!" said the old gentleman. "You have heard all about it, I see?
+You understand that this is to be a secret from every body, till further
+notice? Very good, Has any thing happened since you have been here?"
+
+"Nothing. Have you made any discoveries, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"None. I got to the station before the train. No signs of Miss Silvester
+any where. I have left Duncan on the watch--with orders not to stir till
+the last train has passed to-night."
+
+"I don't think she will turn up at the station," said Arnold. "I fancy
+she has gone back to Craig Fernie."
+
+"Quite possible. I am now on my way to Craig Fernie, to make inquiries
+about her. I don't know how long I may be detained, or what it may
+lead to. If you see Blanche before I do tell her I have instructed the
+station-master to let me know (if Miss Silvester does take the railway)
+what place she books for. Thanks to that arrangement, we sha'n't have
+to wait for news till Duncan can telegraph that he has seen her to her
+journey's end. In the mean time, you understand what you are wanted to
+do here?"
+
+"Blanche has explained every thing to me."
+
+"Stick to your post, and make good use of your eyes. You were accustomed
+to that, you know, when you were at sea. It's no great hardship to pass
+a few hours in this delicious summer air. I see you have contracted the
+vile modern habit of smoking--that will be occupation enough to amuse
+you, no doubt! Keep the roads in view; and, if she does come your
+way, don't attempt to stop her--you can't do that. Speak to her (quite
+innocently, mind!), by way of getting time enough to notice the face of
+the man who is driving her, and the name (if there is one) on his cart.
+Do that, and you will do enough. Pah! how that cigar poisons the air!
+What will have become of your stomach when you get to my age?"
+
+"I sha'n't complain, Sir Patrick, if I can eat as good a dinner as you
+do."
+
+"That reminds me! I met somebody I knew at the station. Hester Dethridge
+has left her place, and gone to London by the train. We may feed at
+Windygates--we have done with dining now. It has been a final quarrel
+this time between the mistress and the cook. I have given Hester my
+address in London, and told her to let me know before she decides on
+another place. A woman who _can't_ talk, and a woman who _can_ cook, is
+simply a woman who has arrived at absolute perfection. Such a treasure
+shall not go out of the family, if I can help it. Did you notice the
+Bechamel sauce at lunch? Pooh! a young man who smokes cigars
+doesn't know the difference between Bechamel sauce and melted
+butter. Good afternoon! good afternoon!"
+
+He slackened the reins, and away he went to Craig Fernie. Counting by
+years, the pony was twenty, and the pony's driver was seventy. Counting
+by vivacity and spirit, two of the most youthful characters in Scotland
+had got together that afternoon in the same chaise.
+
+An hour more wore itself slowly out; and nothing had passed Arnold on
+the cross-roads but a few stray foot-passengers, a heavy wagon, and a
+gig with an old woman in it. He rose again from the heather, weary of
+inaction, and resolved to walk backward and forward, within view of his
+post, for a change. At the second turn, when his face happened to be set
+toward the open heath, he noticed another foot-passenger--apparently a
+man--far away in the empty distance. Was the person coming toward him?
+
+He advanced a little. The stranger was doubtless advancing too, so
+rapidly did his figure now reveal itself, beyond all doubt, as the
+figure of a man. A few minutes more and Arnold fancied he recognized it.
+Yet a little longer, and he was quite sure. There was no mistaking the
+lithe strength and grace of _that_ man, and the smooth easy swiftness
+with which he covered his ground. It was the hero of the coming
+foot-race. It was Geoffrey on his way back to Windygates House.
+
+Arnold hurried forward to meet him. Geoffrey stood still, poising
+himself on his stick, and let the other come up.
+
+"Have you heard what has happened at the house?" asked Arnold.
+
+He instinctively checked the next question as it rose to his lips.
+There was a settled defiance in the expression of Geoffrey's face, which
+Arnold was quite at a loss to understand. He looked like a man who
+had made up his mind to confront any thing that could happen, and to
+contradict any body who spoke to him.
+
+"Something seems to have annoyed you?" said Arnold.
+
+"What's up at the house?" returned Geoffrey, with his loudest voice and
+his hardest look.
+
+"Miss Silvester has been at the house."
+
+"Who saw her?"
+
+"Nobody but Blanche."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, she was miserably weak and ill, so ill that she fainted, poor
+thing, in the library. Blanche brought her to."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"We were all at lunch at the time. Blanche left the library, to speak
+privately to her uncle. When she went back Miss Silvester was gone, and
+nothing has been seen of her since."
+
+"A row at the house?"
+
+"Nobody knows of it at the house, except Blanche--"
+
+"And you? And how many besides?"
+
+"And Sir Patrick. Nobody else."
+
+"Nobody else? Any thing more?"
+
+Arnold remembered his promise to keep the investigation then on foot
+a secret from every body. Geoffrey's manner made him--unconsciously to
+himself--readier than he might otherwise have been to consider Geoffrey
+as included in the general prohibition.
+
+"Nothing more," he answered.
+
+Geoffrey dug the point of his stick deep into the soft, sandy ground.
+He looked at the stick, then suddenly pulled it out of the ground and
+looked at Arnold. "Good-afternoon!" he said, and went on his way again
+by himself.
+
+Arnold followed, and stopped him. For a moment the two men looked at
+each other without a word passing on either side. Arnold spoke first.
+
+"You're out of humor, Geoffrey. What has upset you in this way? Have you
+and Miss Silvester missed each other?"
+
+Geoffrey was silent.
+
+"Have you seen her since she left Windygates?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Do you know where Miss Silvester is now?"
+
+Still no reply. Still the same mutely-insolent defiance of look and
+manner. Arnold's dark color began to deepen.
+
+"Why don't you answer me?" he said.
+
+"Because I have had enough of it."
+
+"Enough of what?"
+
+"Enough of being worried about Miss Silvester. Miss Silvester's my
+business--not yours."
+
+"Gently, Geoffrey! Don't forget that I have been mixed up in that
+business--without seeking it myself."
+
+"There's no fear of my forgetting. You have cast it in my teeth often
+enough."
+
+"Cast it in your teeth?"
+
+"Yes! Am I never to hear the last of my obligation to you? The devil
+take the obligation! I'm sick of the sound of it."
+
+There was a spirit in Arnold--not easily brought to the surface,
+through the overlying simplicity and good-humor of his ordinary
+character--which, once roused, was a spirit not readily quelled.
+Geoffrey had roused it at last.
+
+"When you come to your senses," he said, "I'll remember old times--and
+receive your apology. Till you _do_ come to your senses, go your way by
+yourself. I have no more to say to you."
+
+Geoffrey set his teeth, and came one step nearer. Arnold's eyes met his,
+with a look which steadily and firmly challenged him--though he was
+the stronger man of the two--to force the quarrel a step further, if he
+dared. The one human virtue which Geoffrey respected and understood
+was the virtue of courage. And there it was before him--the undeniable
+courage of the weaker man. The callous scoundrel was touched on the
+one tender place in his whole being. He turned, and went on his way in
+silence.
+
+Left by himself, Arnold's head dropped on his breast. The friend who had
+saved his life--the one friend he possessed, who was associated with
+his earliest and happiest remembrances of old days--had grossly insulted
+him: and had left him deliberately, without the slightest expression of
+regret. Arnold's affectionate nature--simple, loyal, clinging where
+it once fastened--was wounded to the quick. Geoffrey's fast-retreating
+figure, in the open view before him, became blurred and indistinct. He
+put his hand over his eyes, and hid, with a boyish shame, the hot tears
+that told of the heartache, and that honored the man who shed them.
+
+He was still struggling with the emotion which had overpowered him, when
+something happened at the place where the roads met.
+
+The four roads pointed as nearly as might be toward the four points of
+the compass. Arnold was now on the road to the eastward, having advanced
+in that direction to meet Geoffrey, between two and three hundred yards
+from the farm-house inclosure before which he had kept his watch. The
+road to the westward, curving away behind the farm, led to the nearest
+market-town. The road to the south was the way to the station. And the
+road to the north led back to Windygates House.
+
+While Geoffrey was still fifty yards from the turning which would take
+him back to Windygates--while the tears were still standing thickly in
+Arnold's eyes--the gate of the farm inclosure opened. A light four-wheel
+chaise came out with a man driving, and a woman sitting by his side. The
+woman was Anne Silvester, and the man was the owner of the farm.
+
+Instead of taking the way which led to the station, the chaise pursued
+the westward road to the market-town. Proceeding in this direction, the
+backs of the persons in the vehicle were necessarily turned on Geoffrey,
+advancing behind them from the eastward. He just carelessly noticed
+the shabby little chaise, and then turned off north on his way to
+Windygates.
+
+By the time Arnold was composed enough to look round him, the chaise
+had taken the curve in the road which wound behind the farmhouse. He
+returned--faithful to the engagement which he had undertaken--to his
+post before the inclosure. The chaise was then a speck in the distance.
+In a minute more it was a speck out of sight.
+
+So (to use Sir Patrick's phrase) had the woman broken through
+difficulties which would have stopped a man. So, in her sore need, had
+Anne Silvester won the sympathy which had given her a place, by the
+farmer's side, in the vehicle that took him on his own business to the
+market-town. And so, by a hair's-breadth, did she escape the treble risk
+of discovery which threatened her--from Geoffrey, on his way back; from
+Arnold, at his post; and from the valet, on the watch for her appearance
+at the station.
+
+
+
+The afternoon wore on. The servants at Windygates, airing themselves
+in the grounds--in the absence of their mistress and her guests--were
+disturbed, for the moment, by the unexpected return of one of "the
+gentlefolks." Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn reappeared at the house alone; went
+straight to the smoking-room; and calling for another supply of the old
+ale, settled himself in an arm-chair with the newspaper, and began to
+smoke.
+
+He soon tired of reading, and fell into thinking of what had happened
+during the latter part of his walk.
+
+The prospect before him had more than realized the most sanguine
+anticipations that he could have formed of it. He had braced
+himself--after what had happened in the library--to face the outbreak
+of a serious scandal, on his return to the house. And here--when he came
+back--was nothing to face! Here were three people (Sir Patrick, Arnold,
+and Blanche) who must at least know that Anne was in some serious
+trouble keeping the secret as carefully as if they felt that his
+interests were at stake! And, more wonderful still, here was Anne
+herself--so far from raising a hue and cry after him--actually taking
+flight without saying a word that could compromise him with any living
+soul!
+
+What in the name of wonder did it mean? He did his best to find his way
+to an explanation of some sort; and he actually contrived to account for
+the silence of Blanche and her uncle, and Arnold. It was pretty clear
+that they must have all three combined to keep Lady Lundie in ignorance
+of her runaway governess's return to the house.
+
+But the secret of Anne's silence completely baffled him.
+
+He was simply incapable of conceiving that the horror of seeing herself
+set up as an obstacle to Blanche's marriage might have been vivid
+enough to overpower all sense of her own wrongs, and to hurry her away,
+resolute, in her ignorance of what else to do, never to return again,
+and never to let living eyes rest on her in the character of Arnold's
+wife. "It's clean beyond _my_ making out," was the final conclusion at
+which Geoffrey arrived. "If it's her interest to hold her tongue, it's
+my interest to hold mine, and there's an end of it for the present!"
+
+He put up his feet on a chair, and rested his magnificent muscles after
+his walk, and filled another pipe, in thorough contentment with himself.
+No interference to dread from Anne, no more awkward questions (on the
+terms they were on now) to come from Arnold. He looked back at the
+quarrel on the heath with a certain complacency--he did his friend
+justice; though they _had_ disagreed. "Who would have thought the fellow
+had so much pluck in him!" he said to himself as he struck the match and
+lit his second pipe.
+
+An hour more wore on; and Sir Patrick was the next person who returned.
+
+He was thoughtful, but in no sense depressed. Judging by appearances,
+his errand to Craig Fernie had certainly not ended in disappointment.
+The old gentleman hummed his favorite little Scotch air--rather
+absently, perhaps--and took his pinch of snuff from the knob of his
+ivory cane much as usual. He went to the library bell and summoned a
+servant.
+
+"Any body been here for me?"--"No, Sir Patrick."--"No letters?"--"No,
+Sir Patrick."--"Very well. Come up stairs to my room, and help me on
+with my dressing-gown." The man helped him to his dressing-gown and
+slippers "Is Miss Lundie at home?"--"No, Sir Patrick. They're all away
+with my lady on an excursion."--"Very good. Get me a cup of coffee; and
+wake me half an hour before dinner, in case I take a nap." The servant
+went out. Sir Patrick stretched himself on the sofa. "Ay! ay! a little
+aching in the back, and a certain stiffness in the legs. I dare say
+the pony feels just as I do. Age, I suppose, in both cases? Well! well!
+well! let's try and be young at heart. 'The rest' (as Pope says) 'is
+leather and prunella.'" He returned resignedly to his little Scotch air.
+The servant came in with the coffee. And then the room was quiet, except
+for the low humming of insects and the gentle rustling of the creepers
+at the window. For five minutes or so Sir Patrick sipped his coffee, and
+meditated--by no means in the character of a man who was depressed by
+any recent disappointment. In five minutes more he was asleep.
+
+A little later, and the party returned from the ruins.
+
+With the one exception of their lady-leader, the whole expedition was
+depressed--Smith and Jones, in particular, being quite speechless. Lady
+Lundie alone still met feudal antiquities with a cheerful front. She
+had cheated the man who showed the ruins of his shilling, and she was
+thoroughly well satisfied with herself. Her voice was flute-like in
+its melody, and the celebrated "smile" had never been in better order.
+"Deeply interesting!" said her ladyship, descending from the carriage
+with ponderous grace, and addressing herself to Geoffrey, lounging under
+the portico of the house. "You have had a loss, Mr. Delamayn. The next
+time you go out for a walk, give your hostess a word of warning, and you
+won't repent it." Blanche (looking very weary and anxious) questioned
+the servant, the moment she got in, about Arnold and her uncle. Sir
+Patrick was invisible up stairs. Mr. Brinkworth had not come back. It
+wanted only twenty minutes of dinner-time; and full evening-dress was
+insisted on at Windygates. Blanche, nevertheless, still lingered in the
+hall in the hope of seeing Arnold before she went up stairs. The hope
+was realized. As the clock struck the quarter he came in. And he, too,
+was out of spirits like the rest!
+
+"Have you seen her?" asked Blanche.
+
+"No," said Arnold, in the most perfect good faith. "The way she has
+escaped by is not the way by the cross-roads--I answer for that."
+
+They separated to dress. When the party assembled again, in the library,
+before dinner, Blanche found her way, the moment he entered the room, to
+Sir Patrick's side.
+
+"News, uncle! I'm dying for news."
+
+"Good news, my dear--so far."
+
+"You have found Anne?"
+
+"Not exactly that."
+
+"You have heard of her at Craig Fernie?"
+
+"I have made some important discoveries at Craig Fernie, Blanche. Hush!
+here's your step-mother. Wait till after dinner, and you may hear more
+than I can tell you now. There may be news from the station between this
+and then."
+
+The dinner was a wearisome ordeal to at least two other persons
+present besides Blanche. Arnold, sitting opposite to Geoffrey, without
+exchanging a word with him, felt the altered relations between his
+former friend and himself very painfully. Sir Patrick, missing the
+skilled hand of Hester Dethridge in every dish that was offered to
+him, marked the dinner among the wasted opportunities of his life, and
+resented his sister-in-law's flow of spirits as something simply inhuman
+under present circumstances. Blanche followed Lady Lundie into the
+drawing-room in a state of burning impatience for the rising of
+the gentlemen from their wine. Her step-mother--mapping out a new
+antiquarian excursion for the next day, and finding Blanche's ears
+closed to her occasional remarks on baronial Scotland five hundred years
+since--lamented, with satirical emphasis, the absence of an intelligent
+companion of her own sex; and stretched her majestic figure on the sofa
+to wait until an audience worthy of her flowed in from the dining-room.
+Before very long--so soothing is the influence of an after-dinner
+view of feudal antiquities, taken through the medium of an approving
+conscience--Lady Lundie's eyes closed; and from Lady Lundie's nose
+there poured, at intervals, a sound, deep like her ladyship's learning;
+regular, like her ladyship's habits--a sound associated with nightcaps
+and bedrooms, evoked alike by Nature, the leveler, from high and
+low--the sound (oh, Truth what enormities find publicity in thy
+name!)--the sound of a Snore.
+
+Free to do as she pleased, Blanche left the echoes of the drawing-room
+in undisturbed enjoyment of Lady Lundie's audible repose.
+
+She went into the library, and turned over the novels. Went out again,
+and looked across the hall at the dining-room door. Would the men never
+have done talking their politics and drinking their wine? She went up to
+her own room, and changed her ear-rings, and scolded her maid. Descended
+once more--and made an alarming discovery in a dark corner of the hall.
+
+Two men were standing there, hat in hand whispering to the butler. The
+butler, leaving them, went into the dining-room--came out again with Sir
+Patrick--and said to the two men, "Step this way, please." The two men
+came out into the light. Murdoch, the station-master; and Duncan, the
+valet! News of Anne!
+
+"Oh, uncle, let me stay!" pleaded Blanche.
+
+Sir Patrick hesitated. It was impossible to say--as matters stood at
+that moment--what distressing intelligence the two men might not have
+brought of the missing woman. Duncan's return, accompanied by the
+station-master, looked serious. Blanche instantly penetrated the secret
+of her uncle's hesitation. She turned pale, and caught him by the
+arm. "Don't send me away," she whispered. "I can bear any thing but
+suspense."
+
+"Out with it!" said Sir Patrick, holding his niece's hand. "Is she found
+or not?"
+
+"She's gone by the up-train," said the station-master. "And we know
+where."
+
+Sir Patrick breathed freely; Blanche's color came back. In different
+ways, the relief to both of them was equally great.
+
+"You had my orders to follow her," said Sir Patrick to Duncan. "Why have
+you come back?"
+
+"Your man is not to blame, Sir," interposed the station-master. "The
+lady took the train at Kirkandrew."
+
+Sir Patrick started and looked at the station-master. "Ay? ay? The next
+station--the market-town. Inexcusably stupid of me. I never thought of
+that."
+
+"I took the liberty of telegraphing your description of the lady to
+Kirkandrew, Sir Patrick, in case of accidents."
+
+"I stand corrected, Mr. Murdoch. Your head, in this matter, has been the
+sharper head of the two. Well?"
+
+"There's the answer, Sir."
+
+Sir Patrick and Blanche read the telegram together.
+
+"Kirkandrew. Up train. 7.40 P.M. Lady as described. No luggage. Bag in
+her hand. Traveling alone. Ticket--second-class. Place--Edinburgh."
+
+"Edinburgh!" repeated Blanche. "Oh, uncle! we shall lose her in a great
+place like that!"
+
+"We shall find her, my dear; and you shall see how. Duncan, get me
+pen, ink, and paper. Mr. Murdoch, you are going back to the station, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick."
+
+"I will give you a telegram, to be sent at once to Edinburgh."
+
+He wrote a carefully-worded telegraphic message, and addressed it to The
+Sheriff of Mid-Lothian.
+
+"The Sheriff is an old friend of mine," he explained to his niece. "And
+he is now in Edinburgh. Long before the train gets to the terminus
+he will receive this personal description of Miss Silvester, with my
+request to have all her movements carefully watched till further notice.
+The police are entirely at his disposal; and the best men will be
+selected for the purpose. I have asked for an answer by telegraph. Keep
+a special messenger ready for it at the station, Mr. Murdoch. Thank you;
+good-evening. Duncan, get your supper, and make yourself comfortable.
+Blanche, my dear, go back to the drawing-room, and expect us in to tea
+immediately. You will know where your friend is before you go to bed
+to-night."
+
+With those comforting words he returned to the gentlemen. In ten minutes
+more they all appeared in the drawing-room; and Lady Lundie (firmly
+persuaded that she had never closed her eyes) was back again in baronial
+Scotland five hundred years since.
+
+Blanche, watching her opportunity, caught her uncle alone.
+
+"Now for your promise," she said. "You have made some important
+discoveries at Craig Fernie. What are they?"
+
+Sir Patrick's eye turned toward Geoffrey, dozing in an arm-chair in a
+corner of the room. He showed a certain disposition to trifle with the
+curiosity of his niece.
+
+"After the discovery we have already made," he said, "can't you wait, my
+dear, till we get the telegram from Edinburgh?"
+
+"That is just what it's impossible for me to do! The telegram won't come
+for hours yet. I want something to go on with in the mean time."
+
+She seated herself on a sofa in the corner opposite Geoffrey, and
+pointed to the vacant place by her side.
+
+Sir Patrick had promised--Sir Patrick had no choice but to keep his
+word. After another look at Geoffrey, he took the vacant place by his
+niece.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.
+
+BACKWARD.
+
+"WELL?" whispered Blanche, taking her uncle confidentially by the arm.
+
+"Well," said Sir Patrick, with a spark of his satirical humor flashing
+out at his niece, "I am going to do a very rash thing. I am going to
+place a serious trust in the hands of a girl of eighteen."
+
+"The girl's hands will keep it, uncle--though she _is_ only eighteen."
+
+"I must run the risk, my dear; your intimate knowledge of Miss Silvester
+may be of the greatest assistance to me in the next step I take. You
+shall know all that I can tell you, but I must warn you first. I
+can only admit you into my confidence by startling you with a great
+surprise. Do you follow me, so far?"
+
+"Yes! yes!"
+
+"If you fail to control yourself, you place an obstacle in the way of
+my being of some future use to Miss Silvester. Remember that, and now
+prepare for the surprise. What did I tell you before dinner?"
+
+"You said you had made discoveries at Craig Fernie. What have you found
+out?"
+
+"I have found out that there is a certain person who is in full
+possession of the information which Miss Silvester has concealed from
+you and from me. The person is within our reach. The person is in this
+neighborhood. The person is in this room!"
+
+He caught up Blanche's hand, resting on his arm, and pressed it
+significantly. She looked at him with the cry of surprise suspended
+on her lips--waited a little with her eyes fixed on Fir Patrick's
+face--struggled resolutely, and composed herself.
+
+"Point the person out." She said the words with a self-possession which
+won her uncle's hearty approval. Blanche had done wonders for a girl in
+her teens.
+
+"Look!" said Sir Patrick; "and tell me what you see."
+
+"I see Lady Lundie, at the other end of the room, with the map of
+Perthshire and the Baronial Antiquities of Scotland on the table. And I
+see every body but you and me obliged to listen to her."
+
+"Every body?"
+
+Blanche looked carefully round the room, and noticed Geoffrey in the
+opposite corner; fast asleep by this time in his arm-chair.
+
+"Uncle! you don't mean--?"
+
+"There is the man."
+
+"Mr. Delamayn--!"
+
+"Mr. Delamayn knows every thing."
+
+Blanche held mechanically by her uncle's arm, and looked at the sleeping
+man as if her eyes could never see enough of him.
+
+"You saw me in the library in private consultation with Mr. Delamayn,"
+resumed Sir Patrick. "I have to acknowledge, my dear, that you were
+quite right in thinking this a suspicious circumstance, And I am now
+to justify myself for having purposely kept you in the dark up to the
+present time."
+
+With those introductory words, he briefly reverted to the earlier
+occurrences of the day, and then added, by way of commentary, a
+statement of the conclusions which events had suggested to his own mind.
+
+The events, it may be remembered, were three in number. First,
+Geoffrey's private conference with Sir Patrick on the subject of
+Irregular Marriages in Scotland. Secondly, Anne Silvester's appearance
+at Windygates. Thirdly, Anne's flight.
+
+The conclusions which had thereupon suggested themselves to Sir
+Patrick's mind were six in number.
+
+First, that a connection of some sort might possibly exist between
+Geoffrey's acknowledged difficulty about his friend, and Miss
+Silvester's presumed difficulty about herself. Secondly, that Geoffrey
+had really put to Sir Patrick--not his own case--but the case of a
+friend. Thirdly, that Geoffrey had some interest (of no harmless kind)
+in establishing the fact of his friend's marriage. Fourthly, that Anne's
+anxiety (as described by Blanche) to hear the names of the gentlemen who
+were staying at Windygates, pointed, in all probability, to Geoffrey.
+Fifthly, that this last inference disturbed the second conclusion, and
+reopened the doubt whether Geoffrey had not been stating his own case,
+after all, under pretense of stating the case of a friend. Sixthly, that
+the one way of obtaining any enlightenment on this point, and on all the
+other points involved in mystery, was to go to Craig Fernie, and consult
+Mrs. Inchbare's experience during the period of Anne's residence at the
+inn. Sir Patrick's apology for keeping all this a secret from his niece
+followed. He had shrunk from agitating her on the subject until he
+could be sure of proving his conclusions to be true. The proof had been
+obtained; and he was now, therefore, ready to open his mind to Blanche
+without reserve.
+
+"So much, my dear," proceeded Sir Patrick, "for those necessary
+explanations which are also the necessary nuisances of human
+intercourse. You now know as much as I did when I arrived at Craig
+Fernie--and you are, therefore, in a position to appreciate the value of
+my discoveries at the inn. Do you understand every thing, so far?"
+
+"Perfectly!"
+
+"Very good. I drove up to the inn; and--behold me closeted with Mrs.
+Inchbare in her own private parlor! (My reputation may or may not
+suffer, but Mrs. Inchbare's bones are above suspicion!) It was a long
+business, Blanche. A more sour-tempered, cunning, and distrustful
+witness I never examined in all my experience at the Bar. She would have
+upset the temper of any mortal man but a lawyer. We have such wonderful
+tempers in our profession; and we can be so aggravating when we like! In
+short, my dear, Mrs. Inchbare was a she-cat, and I was a he-cat--and I
+clawed the truth out of her at last. The result was well worth
+arriving at, as you shall see. Mr. Delamayn had described to me certain
+remarkable circumstances as taking place between a lady and a gentleman
+at an inn: the object of the parties being to pass themselves off at
+the time as man and wife. Every one of those circumstances, Blanche,
+occurred at Craig Fernie, between a lady and a gentleman, on the day
+when Miss Silvester disappeared from this house And--wait!--being
+pressed for her name, after the gentleman had left her behind him at the
+inn, the name the lady gave was, 'Mrs. Silvester.' What do you think of
+that?"
+
+"Think! I'm bewildered--I can't realize it."
+
+"It's a startling discovery, my dear child--there is no denying that.
+Shall I wait a little, and let you recover yourself?"
+
+"No! no! Go on! The gentleman, uncle? The gentleman who was with Anne?
+Who is he? Not Mr. Delamayn?"
+
+"Not Mr. Delamayn," said Sir Patrick. "If I have proved nothing else, I
+have proved that."
+
+"What need was there to prove it? Mr. Delamayn went to London on the day
+of the lawn-party. And Arnold--"
+
+"And Arnold went with him as far as the second station from this. Quite
+true! But how was I to know what Mr. Delamayn might have done after
+Arnold had left him? I could only make sure that he had not gone back
+privately to the inn, by getting the proof from Mrs. Inchbare."
+
+"How did you get it?"
+
+"I asked her to describe the gentleman who was with Miss Silvester.
+Mrs. Inchbare's description (vague as you will presently find it to be)
+completely exonerates that man," said Sir Patrick, pointing to Geoffrey
+still asleep in his chair. "_He_ is not the person who passed Miss
+Silvester off as his wife at Craig Fernie. He spoke the truth when he
+described the case to me as the case of a friend."
+
+"But who is the friend?" persisted Blanche. "That's what I want to
+know."
+
+"That's what I want to know, too."
+
+"Tell me exactly, uncle, what Mrs. Inchbare said. I have lived with Anne
+all my life. I _must_ have seen the man somewhere."
+
+"If you can identify him by Mrs. Inchbare's description," returned
+Sir Patrick, "you will be a great deal cleverer than I am. Here is the
+picture of the man, as painted by the landlady: Young; middle-sized;
+dark hair, eyes, and complexion; nice temper, pleasant way of speaking.
+Leave out 'young,' and the rest is the exact contrary of Mr. Delamayn.
+So far, Mrs. Inchbare guides us plainly enough. But how are we to
+apply her description to the right person? There must be, at the
+lowest computation, five hundred thousand men in England who are young,
+middle-sized, dark, nice-tempered, and pleasant spoken. One of the
+footmen here answers that description in every particular."
+
+"And Arnold answers it," said Blanche--as a still stronger instance of
+the provoking vagueness of the description.
+
+"And Arnold answers it," repeated Sir Patrick, quite agreeing with her.
+
+They had barely said those words when Arnold himself appeared,
+approaching Sir Patrick with a pack of cards in his hand.
+
+There--at the very moment when they had both guessed the truth, without
+feeling the slightest suspicion of it in their own minds--there stood
+Discovery, presenting itself unconsciously to eyes incapable of seeing
+it, in the person of the man who had passed Anne Silvester off as
+his wife at the Craig Fernie inn! The terrible caprice of Chance, the
+merciless irony of Circumstance, could go no further than this. The
+three had their feet on the brink of the precipice at that moment. And
+two of them were smiling at an odd coincidence; and one of them was
+shuffling a pack of cards!
+
+"We have done with the Antiquities at last!" said Arnold; "and we are
+going to play at Whist. Sir Patrick, will you choose a card?"
+
+"Too soon after dinner, my good fellow, for _me_. Play the first rubber,
+and then give me another chance. By-the-way," he added "Miss Silvester
+has been traced to Kirkandrew. How is it that you never saw her go by?"
+
+"She can't have gone my way, Sir Patrick, or I must have seen her."
+
+Having justified himself in those terms, he was recalled to the other
+end of the room by the whist-party, impatient for the cards which he had
+in his hand.
+
+"What were we talking of when he interrupted us?" said Sir Patrick to
+Blanche.
+
+"Of the man, uncle, who was with Miss Silvester at the inn."
+
+"It's useless to pursue that inquiry, my dear, with nothing better than
+Mrs. Inchbare's description to help us."
+
+Blanche looked round at the sleeping Geoffrey.
+
+"And _he_ knows!" she said. "It's maddening, uncle, to look at the brute
+snoring in his chair!"
+
+Sir Patrick held up a warning hand. Before a word more could be said
+between them they were silenced again by another interruption.
+
+The whist-party comprised Lady Lundie and the surgeon, playing as
+partners against Smith and Jones. Arnold sat behind the surgeon, taking
+a lesson in the game. One, Two, and Three, thus left to their own
+devices, naturally thought of the billiard-table; and, detecting
+Geoffrey asleep in his corner, advanced to disturb his slumbers, under
+the all-sufficing apology of "Pool." Geoffrey roused himself, and rubbed
+his eyes, and said, drowsily, "All right." As he rose, he looked at
+the opposite corner in which Sir Patrick and his niece were sitting.
+Blanche's self-possession, resolutely as she struggled to preserve it,
+was not strong enough to keep her eyes from turning toward Geoffrey with
+an expression which betrayed the reluctant interest that she now felt in
+him. He stopped, noticing something entirely new in the look with which
+the young lady was regarding him.
+
+"Beg your pardon," said Geoffrey. "Do you wish to speak to me?"
+
+Blanche's face flushed all over. Her uncle came to the rescue.
+
+"Miss Lundie and I hope you have slept well Mr. Delamayn," said Sir
+Patrick, jocosely. "That's all."
+
+"Oh? That's all?" said Geoffrey still looking at Blanche. "Beg your
+pardon again. Deuced long walk, and deuced heavy dinner. Natural
+consequence--a nap."
+
+Sir Patrick eyed him closely. It was plain that he had been honestly
+puzzled at finding himself an object of special attention on Blanche's
+part. "See you in the billiard-room?" he said, carelessly, and followed
+his companions out of the room--as usual, without waiting for an answer.
+
+"Mind what you are about," said Sir Patrick to his niece. "That man is
+quicker than he looks. We commit a serious mistake if we put him on his
+guard at starting."
+
+"It sha'n't happen again, uncle," said Blanche. "But think of _his_
+being in Anne's confidence, and of _my_ being shut out of it!"
+
+"In his friend's confidence, you mean, my dear; and (if we only avoid
+awakening his suspicion) there is no knowing how soon he may say or do
+something which may show us who his friend is."
+
+"But he is going back to his brother's to-morrow--he said so at
+dinner-time."
+
+"So much the better. He will be out of the way of seeing strange things
+in a certain young lady's face. His brother's house is within easy reach
+of this; and I am his legal adviser. My experience tells me that he has
+not done consulting me yet--and that he will let out something more
+next time. So much for our chance of seeing the light through Mr.
+Delamayn--if we can't see it in any other way. And that is not our only
+chance, remember. I have something to tell you about Bishopriggs and the
+lost letter."
+
+"Is it found?"
+
+"No. I satisfied myself about that--I had it searched for, under my own
+eye. The letter is stolen, Blanche; and Bishopriggs has got it. I have
+left a line for him, in Mrs. Inchbare's care. The old rascal is missed
+already by the visitors at the inn, just as I told you he would be. His
+mistress is feeling the penalty of having been fool enough to vent her
+ill temper on her head-waiter. She lays the whole blame of the quarrel
+on Miss Silvester, of course. Bishopriggs neglected every body at
+the inn to wait on Miss Silvester. Bishopriggs was insolent on being
+remonstrated with, and Miss Silvester encouraged him--and so on. The
+result will be--now Miss Silvester has gone--that Bishopriggs will
+return to Craig Fernie before the autumn is over. We are sailing with
+wind and tide, my dear. Come, and learn to play whist."
+
+He rose to join the card-players. Blanche detained him.
+
+"You haven't told me one thing yet," she said. "Whoever the man may be,
+is Anne married to him?"
+
+"Whoever the man may be," returned Sir Patrick, "he had better not
+attempt to marry any body else."
+
+So the niece unconsciously put the question, and so the uncle
+unconsciously gave the answer on which depended the whole happiness of
+Blanche's life to come, The "man!" How lightly they both talked of the
+"man!" Would nothing happen to rouse the faintest suspicion--in their
+minds or in Arnold's mind--that Arnold was the "man" himself?
+
+"You mean that she _is_ married?" said Blanche.
+
+"I don't go as far as that."
+
+"You mean that she is _not_ married?"
+
+"I don't go so far as _that._"
+
+"Oh! the law!"
+
+"Provoking, isn't it, my dear? I can tell you, professionally, that (in
+my opinion) she has grounds to go on if she claims to be the man's wife.
+That is what I meant by my answer; and, until we know more, that is all
+I can say."
+
+"When shall we know more? When shall we get the telegram?"
+
+"Not for some hours yet. Come, and learn to play whist."
+
+"I think I would rather talk to Arnold, uncle, if you don't mind."
+
+"By all means! But don't talk to him about what I have been telling you
+to-night. He and Mr. Delamayn are old associates, remember; and he might
+blunder into telling his friend what his friend had better not know. Sad
+(isn't it?) for me to be instilling these lessons of duplicity into the
+youthful mind. A wise person once said, 'The older a man gets the
+worse he gets.' That wise person, my dear, had me in his eye, and was
+perfectly right."
+
+He mitigated the pain of that confession with a pinch of snuff, and went
+to the whist table to wait until the end of the rubber gave him a place
+at the game.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.
+
+FORWARD.
+
+BLANCHE found her lover as attentive as usual to her slightest wish, but
+not in his customary good spirits. He pleaded fatigue, after his long
+watch at the cross-roads, as an excuse for his depression. As long as
+there was any hope of a reconciliation with Geoffrey, he was unwilling
+to tell Blanche what had happened that afternoon. The hope grew fainter
+and fainter as the evening advanced. Arnold purposely suggested a
+visit to the billiard-room, and joined the game, with Blanche, to give
+Geoffrey an opportunity of saying the few gracious words which would
+have made them friends again. Geoffrey never spoke the words; he
+obstinately ignored Arnold's presence in the room.
+
+At the card-table the whist went on interminably. Lady Lundie, Sir
+Patrick, and the surgeon, were all inveterate players, evenly matched.
+Smith and Jones (joining the game alternately) were aids to whist,
+exactly as they were aids to conversation. The same safe and modest
+mediocrity of style distinguished the proceedings of these two gentlemen
+in all the affairs of life.
+
+The time wore on to midnight. They went to bed late and they rose late
+at Windygates House. Under that hospitable roof, no intrusive hints, in
+the shape of flat candlesticks exhibiting themselves with ostentatious
+virtue on side-tables, hurried the guest to his room; no vile bell
+rang him ruthlessly out of bed the next morning, and insisted on his
+breakfasting at a given hour. Life has surely hardships enough that
+are inevitable without gratuitously adding the hardship of absolute
+government, administered by a clock?
+
+It was a quarter past twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the
+whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of
+going to bed. Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a
+last rubber. Blanche vanished while her stepmother's eye was on her;
+and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the
+hands of her maid. Nobody followed the example of the mistress of the
+house but Arnold. He left the billiard-room with the certainty that it
+was all over now between Geoffrey and himself. Not even the attraction
+of Blanche proved strong enough to detain him that night. He went his
+way to bed.
+
+It was past one o'clock. The final rubber was at an end, the accounts
+were settled at the card-table; the surgeon had strolled into the
+billiard-room, and Smith and Jones had followed him, when Duncan came
+in, at last, with the telegram in his hand.
+
+Blanche turned from the broad, calm autumn moonlight which had drawn her
+to the window, and looked over her uncle's shoulder while he opened the
+telegram.
+
+She read the first line--and that was enough. The whole scaffolding of
+hope built round that morsel of paper fell to the ground in an instant.
+The train from Kirkandrew had reached Edinburgh at the usual time. Every
+passenger in it had passed under the eyes of the police, and nothing had
+been seen of any person who answered the description given of Anne!
+
+Sir Patrick pointed to the two last sentences in the telegram:
+"Inquiries telegraphed to Falkirk. If with any result, you shall know."
+
+"We must hope for the best, Blanche. They evidently suspect her of
+having got out at the junction of the two railways for the purpose
+of giving the telegraph the slip. There is no help for it. Go to bed,
+child--go to bed."
+
+Blanche kissed her uncle in silence and went away. The bright young face
+was sad with the first hopeless sorrow which the old man had yet seen in
+it. His niece's parting look dwelt painfully on his mind when he was up
+in his room, with the faithful Duncan getting him ready for his bed.
+
+"This is a bad business, Duncan. I don't like to say so to Miss Lundie;
+but I greatly fear the governess has baffled us."
+
+"It seems likely, Sir Patrick. The poor young lady looks quite
+heart-broken about it."
+
+"You noticed that too, did you? She has lived all her life, you see,
+with Miss Silvester; and there is a very strong attachment between them.
+I am uneasy about my niece, Duncan. I am afraid this disappointment will
+have a serious effect on her."
+
+"She's young, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Yes, my friend, she's young; but the young (when they are good for any
+thing) have warm hearts. Winter hasn't stolen on _them,_ Duncan! And
+they feel keenly."
+
+"I think there's reason to hope, Sir, that Miss Lundie may get over it
+more easily than you suppose."
+
+"What reason, pray?"
+
+"A person in my position can hardly venture to speak freely, Sir, on a
+delicate matter of this kind."
+
+Sir Patrick's temper flashed out, half-seriously, half-whimsically, as
+usual.
+
+"Is that a snap at Me, you old dog? If I am not your friend, as well as
+your master, who is? Am _I_ in the habit of keeping any of my harmless
+fellow-creatures at a distance? I despise the cant of modern Liberalism;
+but it's not the less true that I have, all my life, protested against
+the inhuman separation of classes in England. We are, in that respect,
+brag as we may of our national virtue, the most unchristian people in
+the civilized world."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Patrick--"
+
+"God help me! I'm talking polities at this time of night! It's your
+fault, Duncan. What do you mean by casting my station in my teeth,
+because I can't put my night-cap on comfortably till you have brushed
+my hair? I have a good mind to get up and brush yours. There! there! I'm
+uneasy about my niece--nervous irritability, my good fellow, that's all.
+Let's hear what you have to say about Miss Lundie. And go on with my
+hair. And don't be a humbug."
+
+"I was about to remind you, Sir Patrick, that Miss Lundie has another
+interest in her life to turn to. If this matter of Miss Silvester ends
+badly--and I own it begins to look as if it would--I should hurry my
+niece's marriage, Sir, and see if _that_ wouldn't console her."
+
+Sir Patrick started under the gentle discipline of the hair-brush in
+Duncan's hand.
+
+"That's very sensibly put," said the old gentleman. "Duncan! you are,
+what I call, a clear-minded man. Well worth thinking of, old Truepenny!
+If the worst comes to the worst, well worth thinking of!"
+
+It was not the first time that Duncan's steady good sense had struck
+light, under the form of a new thought, in his master's mind. But never
+yet had he wrought such mischief as the mischief which he had innocently
+done now. He had sent Sir Patrick to bed with the fatal idea of
+hastening the marriage of Arnold and Blanche.
+
+The situation of affairs at Windygates--now that Anne had apparently
+obliterated all trace of herself--was becoming serious. The one chance
+on which the discovery of Arnold's position depended, was the chance
+that accident might reveal the truth in the lapse of time. In this
+posture of circumstances, Sir Patrick now resolved--if nothing happened
+to relieve Blanche's anxiety in the course of the week--to advance the
+celebration of the marriage from the end of the autumn (as originally
+contemplated) to the first fortnight of the ensuing month. As dates
+then stood, the change led (so far as free scope for the development of
+accident was concerned) to this serious result. It abridged a lapse of
+three months into an interval of three weeks.
+
+
+
+The next morning came; and Blanche marked it as a memorable morning,
+by committing an act of imprudence, which struck away one more of
+the chances of discovery that had existed, before the arrival of the
+Edinburgh telegram on the previous day.
+
+She had passed a sleepless night; fevered in mind and body; thinking,
+hour after hour, of nothing but Anne. At sunrise she could endure it no
+longer. Her power to control herself was completely exhausted; her own
+impulses led her as they pleased. She got up, determined not to let
+Geoffrey leave the house without risking an effort to make him reveal
+what he knew about Anne. It was nothing less than downright treason to
+Sir Patrick to act on her own responsibility in this way. She knew it
+was wrong; she was heartily ashamed of herself for doing it. But the
+demon that possesses women with a recklessness all their own, at the
+critical moments of their lives, had got her--and she did it.
+
+Geoffrey had arranged overnight, to breakfast early, by himself, and to
+walk the ten miles to his brother's house; sending a servant to fetch
+his luggage later in the day.
+
+He had got on his hat; he was standing in the hall, searching his pocket
+for his second self, the pipe--when Blanche suddenly appeared from the
+morning-room, and placed herself between him and the house door.
+
+"Up early--eh?" said Geoffrey. "I'm off to my brother's."
+
+She made no reply. He looked at her closer. The girl's eyes were trying
+to read his face, with an utter carelessness of concealment, which
+forbade (even to his mind) all unworthy interpretation of her motive for
+stopping him on his way out.
+
+"Any commands for me?" he inquired
+
+This time she answered him. "I have something to ask you," she said.
+
+He smiled graciously, and opened his tobacco-pouch. He was fresh and
+strong after his night's sleep--healthy and handsome and good-humored.
+The house-maids had had a peep at him that morning, and had wished--like
+Desdemona, with a difference--that "Heaven had made all three of them
+such a man."
+
+"Well," he said, "what is it?"
+
+She put her question, without a single word of preface--purposely to
+surprise him.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn," she said, "do you know where Anne Silvester is this
+morning?"
+
+He was filling his pipe as she spoke, and he dropped some of the tobacco
+on the floor. Instead of answering before he picked up the tobacco he
+answered after--in surly self-possession, and in one word--"No."
+
+"Do you know nothing about her?"
+
+He devoted himself doggedly to the filling of his pipe. "Nothing."
+
+"On your word of honor, as a gentleman?"
+
+"On my word of honor, as a gentleman."
+
+He put back his tobacco-pouch in his pocket. His handsome face was as
+hard as stone. His clear blue eyes defied all the girls in England put
+together to see into _his_ mind. "Have you done, Miss Lundie?" he asked,
+suddenly changing to a bantering politeness of tone and manner.
+
+Blanche saw that it was hopeless--saw that she had compromised her own
+interests by her own headlong act. Sir Patrick's warning words came
+back reproachfully to her now when it was too late. "We commit a serious
+mistake if we put him on his guard at starting."
+
+There was but one course to take now. "Yes," she said. "I have done."
+
+"My turn now," rejoined Geoffrey. "You want to know where Miss Silvester
+is. Why do you ask Me?"
+
+Blanche did all that could be done toward repairing the error that she
+had committed. She kept Geoffrey as far away as Geoffrey had kept _her_
+from the truth.
+
+"I happen to know," she replied "that Miss Silvester left the place
+at which she had been staying about the time when you went out walking
+yesterday. And I thought you might have seen her."
+
+"Oh? That's the reason--is it?" said Geoffrey, with a smile.
+
+The smile stung Blanche's sensitive temper to the quick. She made a
+final effort to control herself, before her indignation got the better
+of her.
+
+"I have no more to say, Mr. Delamayn." With that reply she turned her
+back on him, and closed the door of the morning-room between them.
+
+Geoffrey descended the house steps and lit his pipe. He was not at the
+slightest loss, on this occasion, to account for what had happened. He
+assumed at once that Arnold had taken a mean revenge on him after his
+conduct of the day before, and had told the whole secret of his errand
+at Craig Fernie to Blanche. The thing would get next, no doubt, to Sir
+Patrick's ears; and Sir Patrick would thereupon be probably the first
+person who revealed to Arnold the position in which he had placed
+himself with Anne. All right! Sir Patrick would be an excellent witness
+to appeal to, when the scandal broke out, and when the time came for
+repudiating Anne's claim on him as the barefaced imposture of a woman
+who was married already to another man. He puffed away unconcernedly at
+his pipe, and started, at his swinging, steady pace, for his brother's
+house.
+
+Blanche remained alone in the morning-room. The prospect of getting at
+the truth, by means of what Geoffrey might say on the next occasion when
+he consulted Sir Patrick, was a prospect that she herself had closed
+from that moment. She sat down in despair by the window. It commanded a
+view of the little side-terrace which had been Anne's favorite walk at
+Windygates. With weary eyes and aching heart the poor child looked at
+the familiar place; and asked herself, with the bitter repentance that
+comes too late, if she had destroyed the last chance of finding Anne!
+
+She sat passively at the window, while the hours of the morning wore on,
+until the postman came. Before the servant could take the letter bag she
+was in the hall to receive it. Was it possible to hope that the bag had
+brought tidings of Anne? She sorted the letters; and lighted suddenly
+on a letter to herself. It bore the Kirkandrew postmark, and It was
+addressed to her in Anne's handwriting.
+
+She tore the letter open, and read these lines:
+
+"I have left you forever, Blanche. God bless and reward you! God make
+you a happy woman in all your life to come! Cruel as you will think me,
+love, I have never been so truly your sister as I am now. I can only
+tell you this--I can never tell you more. Forgive me, and forget me, our
+lives are parted lives from this day."
+
+
+
+Going down to breakfast about his usual hour, Sir Patrick missed
+Blanche, whom he was accustomed to see waiting for him at the table at
+that time. The room was empty; the other members of the household having
+all finished their morning meal. Sir Patrick disliked breakfasting
+alone. He sent Duncan with a message, to be given to Blanche's maid.
+
+The maid appeared in due time Miss Lundie was unable to leave her room.
+She sent a letter to her uncle, with her love--and begged he would read
+it.
+
+Sir Patrick opened the letter and saw what Anne had written to Blanche.
+
+He waited a little, reflecting, with evident pain and anxiety, on what
+he had read--then opened his own letters, and hurriedly looked at the
+signatures. There was nothing for him from his friend, the sheriff,
+at Edinburgh, and no communication from the railway, in the shape of a
+telegram. He had decided, overnight, on waiting till the end of the week
+before he interfered in the matter of Blanche's marriage. The events of
+the morning determined him on not waiting another day. Duncan returned
+to the breakfast-room to pour out his master's coffee. Sir Patrick sent
+him away again with a second message,
+
+"Do you know where Lady Lundie is, Duncan?"
+
+"Yes, Sir Patrick."
+
+"My compliments to her ladyship. If she is not otherwise engaged, I
+shall be glad to speak to her privately in an hour's time."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.
+
+DROPPED.
+
+SIR PATRICK made a bad breakfast. Blanche's absence fretted him, and
+Anne Silvester's letter puzzled him.
+
+He read it, short as it was, a second time, and a third. If it meant any
+thing, it meant that the motive at the bottom of Anne's flight was to
+accomplish the sacrifice of herself to the happiness of Blanche. She had
+parted for life from his niece for his niece's sake! What did this mean?
+And how was it to be reconciled with Anne's position--as described to
+him by Mrs. Inchbare during his visit to Craig Fernie?
+
+All Sir Patrick's ingenuity, and all Sir Patrick's experience, failed to
+find so much as the shadow of an answer to that question.
+
+While he was still pondering over the letter, Arnold and the surgeon
+entered the breakfast-room together.
+
+"Have you heard about Blanche?" asked Arnold, excitedly. "She is in no
+danger, Sir Patrick--the worst of it is over now."
+
+The surgeon interposed before Sir Patrick could appeal to him.
+
+"Mr. Brinkworth's interest in the young lady a little exaggerates the
+state of the case," he said. "I have seen her, at Lady Lundie's request;
+and I can assure you that there is not the slightest reason for any
+present alarm. Miss Lundie has had a nervous attack, which has yielded
+to the simplest domestic remedies. The only anxiety you need feel is
+connected with the management of her in the future. She is suffering
+from some mental distress, which it is not for me, but for her friends,
+to alleviate and remove. If you can turn her thoughts from the painful
+subject--whatever it may be--on which they are dwelling now, you will do
+all that needs to be done." He took up a newspaper from the table, and
+strolled out into the garden, leaving Sir Patrick and Arnold together.
+
+"You heard that?" said Sir Patrick.
+
+"Is he right, do you think?" asked Arnold.
+
+"Right? Do you suppose a man gets _his_ reputation by making mistakes?
+You're one of the new generation, Master Arnold. You can all of you
+stare at a famous man; but you haven't an atom of respect for his fame.
+If Shakspeare came to life again, and talked of playwriting, the first
+pretentious nobody who sat opposite at dinner would differ with him as
+composedly as he might differ with you and me. Veneration is dead among
+us; the present age has buried it, without a stone to mark the place. So
+much for that! Let's get back to Blanche. I suppose you can guess what
+the painful subject is that's dwelling on her mind? Miss Silvester has
+baffled me, and baffled the Edinburgh police. Blanche discovered that we
+had failed last night and Blanche received that letter this morning."
+
+He pushed Anne's letter across the breakfast-table.
+
+Arnold read it, and handed it back without a word. Viewed by the new
+light in which he saw Geoffrey's character after the quarrel on the
+heath, the letter conveyed but one conclusion to his mind. Geoffrey had
+deserted her.
+
+"Well?" said Sir Patrick. "Do you understand what it means?"
+
+"I understand Blanche's wretchedness when she read it."
+
+He said no more than that. It was plain that no information which he
+could afford--even if he had considered himself at liberty to give
+it--would be of the slightest use in assisting Sir Patrick to trace
+Miss Silvester, under present circumstances, There was--unhappily--no
+temptation to induce him to break the honorable silence which he
+had maintained thus far. And--more unfortunately still--assuming the
+temptation to present itself, Arnold's capacity to resist it had never
+been so strong a capacity as it was now.
+
+To the two powerful motives which had hitherto tied his tongue--respect
+for Anne's reputation, and reluctance to reveal to Blanche the deception
+which he had been compelled to practice on her at the inn--to these
+two motives there was now added a third. The meanness of betraying the
+confidence which Geoffrey had reposed in him would be doubled meanness
+if he proved false to his trust after Geoffrey had personally insulted
+him. The paltry revenge which that false friend had unhesitatingly
+suspected him of taking was a revenge of which Arnold's nature was
+simply incapable. Never had his lips been more effectually sealed
+than at this moment--when his whole future depended on Sir Patrick's
+discovering the part that he had played in past events at Craig Fernie.
+
+"Yes! yes!" resumed Sir Patrick, impatiently. "Blanche's distress is
+intelligible enough. But here is my niece apparently answerable for this
+unhappy woman's disappearance. Can you explain what my niece has got to
+do with it?"
+
+"I! Blanche herself is completely mystified. How should _I_ know?"
+
+Answering in those terms, he spoke with perfect sincerity. Anne's vague
+distrust of the position in which they had innocently placed themselves
+at the inn had produced no corresponding effect on Arnold at the time.
+He had not regarded it; he had not even understood it. As a necessary
+result, not the faintest suspicion of the motive under which Anne was
+acting existed in his mind now.
+
+Sir Patrick put the letter into his pocket-book, and abandoned all
+further attempt at interpreting the meaning of it in despair.
+
+"Enough, and more than enough, of groping in the dark," he said. "One
+point is clear to me after what has happened up stairs this morning. We
+must accept the position in which Miss Silvester has placed us. I shall
+give up all further effort to trace her from this moment."
+
+"Surely that will be a dreadful disappointment to Blanche, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"I don't deny it. We must face that result."
+
+"If you are sure there is nothing else to be done, I suppose we must."
+
+"I am not sure of anything of the sort, Master Arnold! There are two
+chances still left of throwing light on this matter, which are both of
+them independent of any thing that Miss Silvester can do to keep it in
+the dark."
+
+"Then why not try them, Sir? It seems hard to drop Miss Silvester when
+she is in trouble."
+
+"We can't help her against her own will," rejoined Sir Patrick. "And
+we can't run the risk, after that nervous attack this morning, of
+subjecting Blanche to any further suspense. I have thought of my niece's
+interests throughout this business; and if I now change my mind, and
+decline to agitate her by more experiments, ending (quite possibly) in
+more failures, it is because I am thinking of her interests still. I
+have no other motive. However numerous my weaknesses may be, ambition
+to distinguish myself as a detective policeman is not one of them. The
+case, from the police point of view, is by no means a lost case. I
+drop it, nevertheless, for Blanche's sake. Instead of encouraging her
+thoughts to dwell on this melancholy business, we must apply the remedy
+suggested by our medical friend."
+
+"How is that to be done?" asked Arnold.
+
+The sly twist of humor began to show itself in Sir Patrick's face.
+
+"Has she nothing to think of in the future, which is a pleasanter
+subject of reflection than the loss of her friend?" he asked. "You are
+interested, my young gentleman, in the remedy that is to cure Blanche.
+You are one of the drugs in the moral prescription. Can you guess what
+it is?"
+
+Arnold started to his feet, and brightened into a new being.
+
+"Perhaps you object to be hurried?" said Sir Patrick.
+
+"Object! If Blanche will only consent, I'll take her to church as soon
+as she comes down stairs!"
+
+"Thank you!" said Sir Patrick, dryly. "Mr. Arnold Brinkworth, may you
+always be as ready to take Time by the forelock as you are now! Sit down
+again; and don't talk nonsense. It is just possible--if Blanche consents
+(as you say), and if we can hurry the lawyers--that you may be married
+in three weeks' or a month's time."
+
+"What have the lawyers got to do with it?"
+
+"My good fellow, this is not a marriage in a novel! This is the most
+unromantic affair of the sort that ever happened. Here are a young
+gentleman and a young lady, both rich people; both well matched in birth
+and character; one of age, and the other marrying with the full consent
+and approval of her guardian. What is the consequence of this purely
+prosaic state of things? Lawyers and settlements, of course!"
+
+"Come into the library, Sir Patrick; and I'll soon settle the
+settlements! A bit of paper, and a dip of ink. 'I hereby give every
+blessed farthing I have got in the world to my dear Blanche.' Sign that;
+stick a wafer on at the side; clap your finger on the wafer; 'I deliver
+this as my act and deed;' and there it is--done!"
+
+"Is it, really? You are a born legislator. You create and codify your
+own system all in a breath. Moses-Justinian-Mahomet, give me your arm!
+There is one atom of sense in what you have just said. 'Come into the
+library'--is a suggestion worth attending to. Do you happen, among your
+other superfluities, to have such a thing as a lawyer about you?"
+
+"I have got two. One in London, and one in Edinburgh."
+
+"We will take the nearest of the two, because we are in a hurry. Who is
+the Edinburgh lawyer? Pringle of Pitt Street? Couldn't be a better man.
+Come and write to him. You have given me your abstract of a marriage
+settlement with the brevity of an ancient Roman. I scorn to be outdone
+by an amateur lawyer. Here is _my_ abstract: You are just and generous
+to Blanche; Blanche is just and generous to you; and you both combine
+to be just and generous together to your children. There is a model
+settlement! and there are your instructions to Pringle of Pitt Street!
+Can you do it by yourself? No; of course you can't. Now don't be
+slovenly-minded! See the points in their order as they come. You are
+going to be married; you state to whom, you add that I am the lady's
+guardian; you give the name and address of my lawyer in Edinburgh; you
+write your instructions plainly in the fewest words, and leave details
+to your legal adviser; you refer the lawyers to each other; you request
+that the draft settlements be prepared as speedily as possible, and you
+give your address at this house. There are the heads. Can't you do it
+now? Oh, the rising generation! Oh, the progress we are making in these
+enlightened modern times! There! there! you can marry Blanche, and make
+her happy, and increase the population--and all without knowing how
+to write the English language. One can only say with the learned
+Bevorskius, looking out of his window at the illimitable loves of the
+sparrows, 'How merciful is Heaven to its creatures!' Take up the pen.
+I'll dictate! I'll dictate!"
+
+Sir Patrick read the letter over, approved of it, and saw it safe in the
+box for the post. This done, he peremptorily forbade Arnold to speak to
+his niece on the subject of the marriage without his express permission.
+"There's somebody else's consent to be got," he said, "besides Blanche's
+consent and mine."
+
+"Lady Lundie?"
+
+"Lady Lundie. Strictly speaking, I am the only authority. But my
+sister-in-law is Blanche's step-mother, and she is appointed guardian in
+the event of my death. She has a right to be consulted--in courtesy, if
+not in law. Would you like to do it?"
+
+Arnold's face fell. He looked at Sir Patrick in silent dismay.
+
+"What! you can't even speak to such a perfectly pliable person as Lady
+Lundie? You may have been a very useful fellow at sea. A more helpless
+young man I never met with on shore. Get out with you into the garden
+among the other sparrows! Somebody must confront her ladyship. And if
+you won't--I must."
+
+He pushed Arnold out of the library, and applied meditatively to the
+knob of his cane. His gayety disappeared, now that he was alone. His
+experience of Lady Lundie's character told him that, in attempting to
+win her approval to any scheme for hurrying Blanche's marriage, he was
+undertaking no easy task. "I suppose," mused Sir Patrick, thinking of
+his late brother--"I suppose poor Tom had some way of managing her. How
+did he do it, I wonder? If she had been the wife of a bricklayer, she
+is the sort of woman who would have been kept in perfect order by a
+vigorous and regular application of her husband's fist. But Tom wasn't
+a bricklayer. I wonder how Tom did it?" After a little hard thinking on
+this point Sir Patrick gave up the problem as beyond human solution. "It
+must be done," he concluded. "And my own mother-wit must help me to do
+it."
+
+In that resigned frame of mind he knocked at the door of Lady Lundie's
+boudoir.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.
+
+OUTWITTED.
+
+SIR PATRICK found his sister-in-law immersed in domestic business. Her
+ladyship's correspondence and visiting list, her ladyship's household
+bills and ledgers; her ladyship's Diary and Memorandum-book (bound in
+scarlet morocco); her ladyship's desk, envelope-case, match-box, and
+taper candlestick (all in ebony and silver); her ladyship herself,
+presiding over her responsibilities, and wielding her materials, equal
+to any calls of emergency, beautifully dressed in correct morning
+costume, blessed with perfect health both of the secretions and the
+principles; absolutely void of vice, and formidably full of virtue,
+presented, to every properly-constituted mind, the most imposing
+spectacle known to humanity--the British Matron on her throne, asking
+the world in general, When will you produce the like of Me?
+
+"I am afraid I disturb you," said Sir Patrick. "I am a perfectly idle
+person. Shall I look in a little later?"
+
+Lady Lundie put her hand to her head, and smiled faintly.
+
+"A little pressure _here,_ Sir Patrick. Pray sit down. Duty finds me
+earnest; Duty finds me cheerful; Duty finds me accessible. From a poor,
+weak woman, Duty must expect no more. Now what is it?" (Her ladyship
+consulted her scarlet memorandum-book.) "I have got it here, under
+its proper head, distinguished by initial letters. P.--the poor.
+No. H.M.--heathen missions. No. V.T.A.--Visitors to arrive. No. P. I.
+P.--Here it is: private interview with Patrick. Will you forgive me the
+little harmless familiarity of omitting your title? Thank you! You are
+always so good. I am quite at your service when you like to begin. If
+it's any thing painful, pray don't hesitate. I am quite prepared."
+
+With that intimation her ladyship threw herself back in her chair, with
+her elbows on the arms, and her fingers joined at the tips, as if
+she was receiving a deputation. "Yes?" she said, interrogatively. Sir
+Patrick paid a private tribute of pity to his late brother's memory, and
+entered on his business.
+
+"We won't call it a painful matter," he began. "Let us say it's a matter
+of domestic anxiety. Blanche--"
+
+Lady Lundie emitted a faint scream, and put her hand over her eyes.
+
+"_Must_ you?" cried her ladyship, in a tone of touching remonstrance.
+"Oh, Sir Patrick, _must_ you?"
+
+"Yes. I must."
+
+Lady Lundie's magnificent eyes looked up at that hidden court of human
+appeal which is lodged in the ceiling. The hidden court looked down at
+Lady Lundie, and saw--Duty advertising itself in the largest capital
+letters.
+
+"Go on, Sir Patrick. The motto of woman is Self-sacrifice. You sha'n't
+see how you distress me. Go on."
+
+Sir Patrick went on impenetrably--without betraying the slightest
+expression of sympathy or surprise.
+
+"I was about to refer to the nervous attack from which Blanche has
+suffered this morning," he said. "May I ask whether you have been
+informed of the cause to which the attack is attributable?"
+
+"There!" exclaimed Lady Lundie with a sudden bound in her chair, and a
+sudden development of vocal power to correspond. "The one thing I shrank
+from speaking of! the cruel, cruel, cruel behavior I was prepared to
+pass over! And Sir Patrick hints on it! Innocently--don't let me do an
+injustice--innocently hints on it!"
+
+"Hints on what, my dear Madam?"
+
+"Blanche's conduct to me this morning. Blanche's heartless secrecy.
+Blanche's undutiful silence. I repeat the words: Heartless secrecy.
+Undutiful silence."
+
+"Allow me for one moment, Lady Lundie--"
+
+"Allow _me,_ Sir Patrick! Heaven knows how unwilling I am to speak of
+it. Heaven knows that not a word of reference to it escaped _my_ lips.
+But you leave me no choice now. As mistress of the household, as a
+Christian woman, as the widow of your dear brother, as a mother to this
+misguided girl, I must state the facts. I know you mean well; I know you
+wish to spare me. Quite useless! I must state the facts."
+
+Sir Patrick bowed, and submitted. (If he had only been a bricklayer! and
+if Lady Lundie had not been, what her ladyship unquestionably was, the
+strongest person of the two!)
+
+"Permit me to draw a veil, for your sake," said Lady Lundie, "over the
+horrors--I can not, with the best wish to spare you, conscientiously
+call them by any other name--the horrors that took place up stairs. The
+moment I heard that Blanche was ill I was at my post. Duty will always
+find me ready, Sir Patrick, to my dying day. Shocking as the whole thing
+was, I presided calmly over the screams and sobs of my step-daughter.
+I closed my ears to the profane violence of her language. I set
+the necessary example, as an English gentlewoman at the head of her
+household. It was only when I distinctly heard the name of a person,
+never to be mentioned again in my family circle, issue (if I may use
+the expression) from Blanche's lips that I began to be really alarmed. I
+said to my maid: 'Hopkins, this is not Hysteria. This is a possession of
+the devil. Fetch the chloroform.'"
+
+Chloroform, applied in the capacity of an exorcism, was entirely new to
+Sir Patrick. He preserved his gravity with considerable difficulty. Lady
+Lundie went on:
+
+"Hopkins is an excellent person--but Hopkins has a tongue. She met our
+distinguished medical guest in the corridor, and told him. He was so
+good as to come to the door. I was shocked to trouble him to act in his
+professional capacity while he was a visitor, an honored visitor, in my
+house. Besides, I considered it more a case for a clergyman than for a
+medical man. However, there was no help for it after Hopkins's tongue.
+I requested our eminent friend to favor us with--I think the exact
+scientific term is--a Prognosis. He took the purely material view
+which was only to be expected from a person in his profession. He
+prognosed--_am_ I right? Did he prognose? or did he diagnose? A habit of
+speaking correctly is _so_ important, Sir Patrick! and I should be _so_
+grieved to mislead you!"
+
+"Never mind, Lady Lundie! I have heard the medical report. Don't trouble
+yourself to repeat it."
+
+"Don't trouble myself to repeat it?" echoed Lady Lundie--with her
+dignity up in arms at the bare prospect of finding her remarks abridged.
+"Ah, Sir Patrick! that little constitutional impatience of yours!--Oh,
+dear me! how often you must have given way to it, and how often you must
+have regretted it, in your time!"
+
+"My dear lady! if you wish to repeat the report, why not say so, in
+plain words? Don't let me hurry you. Let us have the prognosis, by all
+means."
+
+Lady Lundie shook her head compassionately, and smiled with angelic
+sadness. "Our little besetting sins!" she said. "What slaves we are to
+our little besetting sins! Take a turn in the room--do!"
+
+Any ordinary man would have lost his temper. But the law (as Sir Patrick
+had told his niece) has a special temper of its own. Without
+exhibiting the smallest irritation, Sir Patrick dextrously applied his
+sister-in-law's blister to his sister-in-law herself.
+
+"What an eye you have!" he said. "I was impatient. I _am_ impatient. I
+am dying to know what Blanche said to you when she got better?"
+
+The British Matron froze up into a matron of stone on the spot.
+
+"Nothing!" answered her ladyship, with a vicious snap of her teeth, as
+if she had tried to bite the word before it escaped her.
+
+"Nothing!" exclaimed Sir Patrick.
+
+"Nothing," repeated Lady Lundie, with her most formidable emphasis of
+look and tone. "I applied all the remedies with my own hands; I cut her
+laces with my own scissors, I completely wetted her head through with
+cold water; I remained with her until she was quite exhausted--I took
+her in my arms, and folded her to my bosom; I sent every body out of the
+room; I said, 'Dear child, confide in me.' And how were my advances--my
+motherly advances--met? I have already told you. By heartless secrecy.
+By undutiful silence."
+
+Sir Patrick pressed the blister a little closer to the skin. "She was
+probably afraid to speak," he said.
+
+"Afraid? Oh!" cried Lady Lundie, distrusting the evidence of her own
+senses. "You can't have said that? I have evidently misapprehended you.
+You didn't really say, afraid?"
+
+"I said she was probably afraid--"
+
+"Stop! I can't be told to my face that I have failed to do my duty by
+Blanche. No, Sir Patrick! I can bear a great deal; but I can't bear
+that. After having been more than a mother to your dear brother's child;
+after having been an elder sister to Blanche; after having toiled--I say
+_toiled,_ Sir Patrick!--to cultivate her intelligence (with the sweet
+lines of the poet ever present to my memory: 'Delightful task to rear
+the tender mind, and teach the young idea how to shoot!'); after having
+done all I have done--a place in the carriage only yesterday, and a
+visit to the most interesting relic of feudal times in Perthshire--after
+having sacrificed all I have sacrificed, to be told that I have behaved
+in such a manner to Blanche as to frighten her when I ask her to confide
+in me, is a little too cruel. I have a sensitive--an unduly sensitive
+nature, dear Sir Patrick. Forgive me for wincing when I am wounded.
+Forgive me for feeling it when the wound is dealt me by a person whom I
+revere."
+
+Her ladyship put her handkerchief to her eyes. Any other man would have
+taken off the blister. Sir Patrick pressed it harder than ever.
+
+"You quite mistake me," he replied. "I meant that Blanche was afraid to
+tell you the true cause of her illness. The true cause is anxiety about
+Miss Silvester."
+
+Lady Lundie emitted another scream--a loud scream this time--and closed
+her eyes in horror.
+
+"I can run out of the house," cried her ladyship, wildly. "I can fly to
+the uttermost corners of the earth; but I can _not_ hear that person's
+name mentioned! No, Sir Patrick! not in my presence! not in my room!
+not while I am mistress at Windygates House!"
+
+"I am sorry to say any thing that is disagreeable to you, Lady Lundie.
+But the nature of my errand here obliges me to touch--as lightly as
+possible--on something which has happened in your house without your
+knowledge."
+
+Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes, and became the picture of
+attention. A casual observer might have supposed her ladyship to be not
+wholly inaccessible to the vulgar emotion of curiosity.
+
+"A visitor came to Windygates yesterday, while we were all at lunch,"
+proceeded Sir Patrick. "She--"
+
+Lady Lundie seized the scarlet memorandum-book, and stopped her
+brother-in-law, before he could get any further. Her ladyship's next
+words escaped her lips spasmodically, like words let at intervals out of
+a trap.
+
+"I undertake--as a woman accustomed to self-restraint, Sir Patrick--I
+undertake to control myself, on one condition. I won't have the name
+mentioned. I won't have the sex mentioned. Say, 'The Person,' if
+you please. 'The Person,'" continued Lady Lundie, opening her
+memorandum-book and taking up her pen, "committed an audacious invasion
+of my premises yesterday?"
+
+Sir Patrick bowed. Her ladyship made a note--a fiercely-penned note
+that scratched the paper viciously--and then proceeded to examine her
+brother-in-law, in the capacity of witness.
+
+"What part of my house did 'The Person' invade? Be very careful, Sir
+Patrick! I propose to place myself under the protection of a justice of
+the peace; and this is a memorandum of my statement. The library--did I
+understand you to say? Just so--the library."
+
+"Add," said Sir Patrick, with another pressure on the blister, "that The
+Person had an interview with Blanche in the library."
+
+Lady Lundie's pen suddenly stuck in the paper, and scattered a little
+shower of ink-drops all round it. "The library," repeated her ladyship,
+in a voice suggestive of approaching suffocation. "I undertake to
+control myself, Sir Patrick! Any thing missing from the library?"
+
+"Nothing missing, Lady Lundie, but The Person herself. She--"
+
+"No, Sir Patrick! I won't have it! In the name of my own sex, I won't
+have it!"
+
+"Pray pardon me--I forgot that 'she' was a prohibited pronoun on the
+present occasion. The Person has written a farewell letter to Blanche,
+and has gone nobody knows where. The distress produced by these events
+is alone answerable for what has happened to Blanche this morning. If
+you bear that in mind--and if you remember what your own opinion is of
+Miss Silvester--you will understand why Blanche hesitated to admit you
+into her confidence."
+
+There he waited for a reply. Lady Lundie was too deeply absorbed in
+completing her memorandum to be conscious of his presence in the room.
+
+"'Carriage to be at the door at two-thirty,'" said Lady Lundie,
+repeating the final words of the memorandum while she wrote them.
+"'Inquire for the nearest justice of the peace, and place the privacy
+of Windygates under the protection of the law.'--I beg your pardon!"
+exclaimed her ladyship, becoming conscious again of Sir Patrick's
+presence. "Have I missed any thing particularly painful? Pray mention it
+if I have!"
+
+"You have missed nothing of the slightest importance," returned Sir
+Patrick. "I have placed you in possession of facts which you had a right
+to know; and we have now only to return to our medical friend's report
+on Blanche's health. You were about to favor me, I think, with the
+Prognosis?"
+
+"Diagnosis!" said her ladyship, spitefully. "I had forgotten at the
+time--I remember now. Prognosis is entirely wrong."
+
+"I sit corrected, Lady Lundie. Diagnosis."
+
+"You have informed me, Sir Patrick, that you were already acquainted
+with the Diagnosis. It is quite needless for me to repeat it now."
+
+"I was anxious to correct my own impression, my dear lady, by comparing
+it with yours."
+
+"You are very good. You are a learned man. I am only a poor ignorant
+woman. Your impression can not possibly require correcting by mine."
+
+"My impression, Lady Lundie, was that our so friend recommended moral,
+rather than medical, treatment for Blanche. If we can turn her thoughts
+from the painful subject on which they are now dwelling, we shall do all
+that is needful. Those were his own words, as I remember them. Do you
+confirm me?"
+
+"Can _I_ presume to dispute with you, Sir Patrick? You are a master of
+refined irony, I know. I am afraid it's all thrown away on poor me."
+
+(The law kept its wonderful temper! The law met the most exasperating of
+living women with a counter-power of defensive aggravation all its own!)
+
+"I take that as confirming me, Lady Lundie. Thank you. Now, as to the
+method of carrying out our friend's advice. The method seems plain. All
+we can do to divert Blanche's mind is to turn Blanche's attention to
+some other subject of reflection less painful than the subject which
+occupies her now. Do you agree, so far?"
+
+"Why place the whole responsibility on my shoulders?" inquired Lady
+Lundie.
+
+"Out of profound deference for your opinion," answered Sir Patrick.
+"Strictly speaking, no doubt, any serious responsibility rests with me.
+I am Blanche's guardian--"
+
+"Thank God!" cried Lady Lundie, with a perfect explosion of pious
+fervor.
+
+"I hear an outburst of devout thankfulness," remarked Sir Patrick. "Am
+I to take it as expressing--let me say--some little doubt, on your
+part, as to the prospect of managing Blanche successfully, under present
+circumstances?"
+
+Lady Lundie's temper began to give way again--exactly as her
+brother-in-law had anticipated.
+
+"You are to take it," she said, "as expressing my conviction that I
+saddled myself with the charge of an incorrigibly heartless, obstinate
+and perverse girl, when I undertook the care of Blanche."
+
+"Did you say 'incorrigibly?'"
+
+"I said 'incorrigibly.'"
+
+"If the case is as hopeless as that, my dear Madam--as Blanche's
+guardian, I ought to find means to relieve you of the charge of
+Blanche."
+
+"Nobody shall relieve _me_ of a duty that I have once undertaken!"
+retorted Lady Lundie. "Not if I die at my post!"
+
+"Suppose it was consistent with your duty," pleaded Sir Patrick, "to
+be relieved at your post? Suppose it was in harmony with that
+'self-sacrifice' which is 'the motto of women?'"
+
+"I don't understand you, Sir Patrick. Be so good as to explain
+yourself."
+
+Sir Patrick assumed a new character--the character of a hesitating man.
+He cast a look of respectful inquiry at his sister-in-law, sighed, and
+shook his head.
+
+"No!" he said. "It would be asking too much. Even with your high
+standard of duty, it would be asking too much."
+
+"Nothing which you can ask me in the name of duty is too much."
+
+"No! no! Let me remind you. Human nature has its limits."
+
+"A Christian gentlewoman's sense of duty knows no limits."
+
+"Oh, surely yes!"
+
+"Sir Patrick! after what I have just said your perseverance in doubting
+me amounts to something like an insult!"
+
+"Don't say that! Let me put a case. Let's suppose the future interests
+of another person depend on your saying, Yes--when all your own most
+cherished ideas and opinions urge you to say, No. Do you really mean to
+tell me that you could trample your own convictions under foot, if
+it could be shown that the purely abstract consideration of duty was
+involved in the sacrifice?"
+
+"Yes!" cried Lady Lundie, mounting the pedestal of her virtue on the
+spot. "Yes--without a moment's hesitation!"
+
+"I sit corrected, Lady Lundie. You embolden me to proceed. Allow me to
+ask (after what I just heard)--whether it is not your duty to act
+on advice given for Blanche's benefit, by one the highest medical
+authorities in England?" Her ladyship admitted that it was her
+duty; pending a more favorable opportunity for contradicting her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"Very good," pursued Sir Patrick. "Assuming that Blanche is like most
+other human beings, and has some prospect of happiness to contemplate,
+if she could only be made to see it--are we not bound to make her see
+it, by our moral obligation to act on the medical advice?" He cast a
+courteously-persuasive look at her ladyship, and paused in the most
+innocent manner for a reply.
+
+If Lady Lundie had not been bent--thanks to the irritation fomented by
+her brother-in-law--on disputing the ground with him, inch by inch, she
+must have seen signs, by this time, of the snare that was being set
+for her. As it was, she saw nothing but the opportunity of disparaging
+Blanche and contradicting Sir Patrick.
+
+"If my step-daughter had any such prospect as you describe,"
+she answered, "I should of course say, Yes. But Blanche's is an
+ill-regulated mind. An ill-regulated mind has no prospect of happiness."
+
+"Pardon me," said Sir Patrick. "Blanche _has_ a prospect of happiness.
+In other words, Blanche has a prospect of being married. And what is
+more, Arnold Brinkworth is ready to marry her as soon as the settlements
+can be prepared."
+
+Lady Lundie started in her chair--turned crimson with rage--and opened
+her lips to speak. Sir Patrick rose to his feet, and went on before she
+could utter a word.
+
+"I beg to relieve you, Lady Lundie--by means which you have just
+acknowledged it to be your duty to accept--of all further charge of an
+incorrigible girl. As Blanche's guardian, I have the honor of proposing
+that her marriage be advanced to a day to be hereafter named in the
+first fortnight of the ensuing month."
+
+In those words he closed the trap which he had set for his
+sister-in-law, and waited to see what came of it.
+
+A thoroughly spiteful woman, thoroughly roused, is capable of
+subordinating every other consideration to the one imperative necessity
+of gratifying her spite. There was but one way now of turning the tables
+on Sir Patrick--and Lady Lundie took it. She hated him, at that moment,
+so intensely, that not even the assertion of her own obstinate will
+promised her more than a tame satisfaction, by comparison with the
+priceless enjoyment of beating her brother-in-law with his own weapons.
+
+"My dear Sir Patrick!" she said, with a little silvery laugh, "you have
+wasted much precious time and many eloquent words in trying to entrap
+me into giving my consent, when you might have had it for the asking.
+I think the idea of hastening Blanche's marriage an excellent one. I am
+charmed to transfer the charge of such a person as my step-daughter to
+the unfortunate young man who is willing to take her off my hands. The
+less he sees of Blanche's character the more satisfied I shall feel of
+his performing his engagement to marry her. Pray hurry the lawyers, Sir
+Patrick, and let it be a week sooner rather than a week later, if you
+wish to please Me."
+
+Her ladyship rose in her grandest proportions, and made a courtesy
+which was nothing less than a triumph of polite satire in dumb show. Sir
+Patrick answered by a profound bow and a smile which said, eloquently,
+"I believe every word of that charming answer. Admirable woman--adieu!"
+
+So the one person in the family circle, whose opposition might have
+forced Sir Patrick to submit to a timely delay, was silenced by adroit
+management of the vices of her own character. So, in despite of herself,
+Lady Lundie was won over to the project for hurrying the marriage of
+Arnold and Blanche.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.
+
+STIFLED.
+
+IT is the nature of Truth to struggle to the light. In more than one
+direction, the truth strove to pierce the overlying darkness, and to
+reveal itself to view, during the interval between the date of Sir
+Patrick's victory and the date of the wedding-day.
+
+Signs of perturbation under the surface, suggestive of some hidden
+influence at work, were not wanting, as the time passed on. The one
+thing missing was the prophetic faculty that could read those signs
+aright at Windygates House.
+
+On the very day when Sir Patrick's dextrous treatment of his
+sister-in-law had smoothed the way to the hastening of the marriage,
+an obstacle was raised to the new arrangement by no less a person than
+Blanche herself. She had sufficiently recovered, toward noon, to be able
+to receive Arnold in her own little sitting-room. It proved to be a very
+brief interview. A quarter of an hour later, Arnold appeared before Sir
+Patrick--while the old gentleman was sunning himself in the garden--with
+a face of blank despair. Blanche had indignantly declined even to think
+of such a thing as her marriage, at a time when she was heart-broken by
+the discovery that Anne had left her forever.
+
+"You gave me leave to mention it, Sir Patrick--didn't you?" said Arnold.
+
+Sir Patrick shifted round a little, so as to get the sun on his back,
+and admitted that he had given leave.
+
+"If I had only known, I would rather have cut my tongue out than have
+said a word about it. What do you think she did? She burst out crying,
+and ordered me to leave the room."
+
+It was a lovely morning--a cool breeze tempered the heat of the sun; the
+birds were singing; the garden wore its brightest look. Sir Patrick was
+supremely comfortable. The little wearisome vexations of this mortal
+life had retired to a respectful distance from him. He positively
+declined to invite them to come any nearer.
+
+"Here is a world," said the old gentleman, getting the sun a little more
+broadly on his back, "which a merciful Creator has filled with lovely
+sights, harmonious sounds, delicious scents; and here are creatures
+with faculties expressly made for enjoyment of those sights, sounds, and
+scents--to say nothing of Love, Dinner, and Sleep, all thrown into the
+bargain. And these same creatures hate, starve, toss sleepless on their
+pillows, see nothing pleasant, hear nothing pleasant, smell nothing
+pleasant--cry bitter tears, say hard words, contract painful illnesses;
+wither, sink, age, die! What does it mean, Arnold? And how much longer
+is it all to go on?"
+
+The fine connecting link between the blindness of Blanche to the
+advantage of being married, and the blindness of humanity to the
+advantage of being in existence, though sufficiently perceptible no
+doubt to venerable Philosophy ripening in the sun, was absolutely
+invisible to Arnold. He deliberately dropped the vast question opened by
+Sir Patrick; and, reverting to Blanche, asked what was to be done.
+
+"What do you do with a fire, when you can't extinguish it?" said Sir
+Patrick. "You let it blaze till it goes out. What do you do with a woman
+when you can't pacify her? Let _her_ blaze till she goes out."
+
+Arnold failed to see the wisdom embodied in that excellent advice. "I
+thought you would have helped me to put things right with Blanche," he
+said.
+
+"I _am_ helping you. Let Blanche alone. Don't speak of the marriage
+again, the next time you see her. If she mentions it, beg her pardon,
+and tell her you won't press the question any more. I shall see her in
+an hour or two, and I shall take exactly the same tone myself. You have
+put the idea into her mind--leave it there to ripen. Give her distress
+about Miss Silvester nothing to feed on. Don't stimulate it by
+contradiction; don't rouse it to defend itself by disparagement of her
+lost friend. Leave Time to edge her gently nearer and nearer to the
+husband who is waiting for her--and take my word for it, Time will have
+her ready when the settlements are ready."
+
+Toward the luncheon hour Sir Patrick saw Blanche, and put in practice
+the principle which he had laid down. She was perfectly tranquil before
+her uncle left her. A little later, Arnold was forgiven. A little later
+still, the old gentleman's sharp observation noted that his niece was
+unusually thoughtful, and that she looked at Arnold, from time to time,
+with an interest of a new kind--an interest which shyly hid itself
+from Arnold's view. Sir Patrick went up to dress for dinner, with a
+comfortable inner conviction that the difficulties which had beset him
+were settled at last. Sir Patrick had never been more mistaken in his
+life.
+
+The business of the toilet was far advanced. Duncan had just placed the
+glass in a good light; and Duncan's master was at that turning point in
+his daily life which consisted in attaining, or not attaining, absolute
+perfection in the tying of his white cravat--when some outer barbarian,
+ignorant of the first principles of dressing a gentleman's throat,
+presumed to knock at the bedroom door. Neither master nor servant moved
+or breathed until the integrity of the cravat was placed beyond the
+reach of accident. Then Sir Patrick cast the look of final criticism in
+the glass, and breathed again when he saw that it was done.
+
+"A little labored in style, Duncan. But not bad, considering the
+interruption?"
+
+"By no means, Sir Patrick."
+
+"See who it is."
+
+Duncan went to the door; and returned, to his master, with an excuse for
+the interruption, in the shape of a telegram!
+
+Sir Patrick started at the sight of that unwelcome message. "Sign the
+receipt, Duncan," he said--and opened the envelope. Yes! Exactly as he
+had anticipated! News of Miss Silvester, on the very day when he had
+decided to abandon all further attempt at discovering her. The telegram
+ran thus:
+
+"Message received from Falkirk this morning. Lady, as described, left
+the train at Falkirk last night. Went on, by the first train this
+morning, to Glasgow. Wait further instructions."
+
+"Is the messenger to take any thing back, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"No. I must consider what I am to do. If I find it necessary I will send
+to the station. Here is news of Miss Silvester, Duncan," continued Sir
+Patrick, when the messenger had gone. "She has been traced to Glasgow."
+
+"Glasgow is a large place, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Yes. Even if they have telegraphed on and had her watched (which
+doesn't appear), she may escape us again at Glasgow. I am the last man
+in the world, I hope, to shrink from accepting my fair share of any
+responsibility. But I own I would have given something to have kept this
+telegram out of the house. It raises the most awkward question I have
+had to decide on for many a long day past. Help me on with my coat. I
+must think of it! I must think of it!"
+
+Sir Patrick went down to dinner in no agreeable frame of mind. The
+unexpected recovery of the lost trace of Miss Silvester--there is no
+disguising it--seriously annoyed him.
+
+The dinner-party that day, assembling punctually at the stroke of the
+bell, had to wait a quarter of an hour before the hostess came down
+stairs.
+
+Lady Lundie's apology, when she entered the library, informed her
+guests that she had been detained by some neighbors who had called at
+an unusually late hour. Mr. and Mrs. Julius Delamayn, finding themselves
+near Windygates, had favored her with a visit, on their way home, and
+had left cards of invitation for a garden-party at their house.
+
+Lady Lundie was charmed with her new acquaintances. They had included
+every body who was staying at Windygates in their invitation. They had
+been as pleasant and easy as old friends. Mrs. Delamayn had brought the
+kindest message from one of her guests--Mrs. Glenarm--to say that she
+remembered meeting Lady Lundie in London, in the time of the late Sir
+Thomas, and was anxious to improve the acquaintance. Mr. Julius Delamayn
+had given a most amusing account of his brother. Geoffrey had sent to
+London for a trainer; and the whole household was on the tip-toe of
+expectation to witness the magnificent spectacle of an athlete preparing
+himself for a foot-race. The ladies, with Mrs. Glenarm at their head,
+were hard at work, studying the profound and complicated question of
+human running--the muscles employed in it, the preparation required for
+it, the heroes eminent in it. The men had been all occupied that morning
+in assisting Geoffrey to measure a mile, for his exercising-ground, in a
+remote part of the park--where there was an empty cottage, which was
+to be fitted with all the necessary appliances for the reception of
+Geoffrey and his trainer. "You will see the last of my brother," Julius
+had said, "at the garden-party. After that he retires into athletic
+privacy, and has but one interest in life--the interest of watching the
+disappearance of his own superfluous flesh." Throughout the dinner Lady
+Lundie was in oppressively good spirits, singing the praises of her new
+friends. Sir Patrick, on the other hand, had never been so silent within
+the memory of mortal man. He talked with an effort; and he listened with
+a greater effort still. To answer or not to answer the telegram in his
+pocket? To persist or not to persist in his resolution to leave Miss
+Silvester to go her own way? Those were the questions which insisted on
+coming round to him as regularly as the dishes themselves came round in
+the orderly progression of the dinner.
+
+Blanche---who had not felt equal to taking her place at the
+table--appeared in the drawing-room afterward.
+
+Sir Patrick came in to tea, with the gentlemen, still uncertain as to
+the right course to take in the matter of the telegram. One look at
+Blanche's sad face and Blanche's altered manner decided him. What would
+be the result if he roused new hopes by resuming the effort to trace
+Miss Silvester, and if he lost the trace a second time? He had only to
+look at his niece and to see. Could any consideration justify him in
+turning her mind back on the memory of the friend who had left her at
+the moment when it was just beginning to look forward for relief to the
+prospect of her marriage? Nothing could justify him; and nothing should
+induce him to do it.
+
+Reasoning--soundly enough, from his own point of view--on that basis,
+Sir Patrick determined on sending no further instructions to his friend
+at Edinburgh. That night he warned Duncan to preserve the strictest
+silence as to the arrival of the telegram. He burned it, in case of
+accidents, with his own hand, in his own room.
+
+Rising the next day and looking out of his window, Sir Patrick saw
+the two young people taking their morning walk at a moment when
+they happened to cross the open grassy space which separated the two
+shrubberies at Windygates. Arnold's arm was round Blanche's waist, and
+they were talking confidentially with their heads close together.
+"She is coming round already!" thought the old gentleman, as the two
+disappeared again in the second shrubbery from view. "Thank Heaven!
+things are running smoothly at last!"
+
+Among the ornaments of Sir Patrick's bed room there was a view (taken
+from above) of one of the Highland waterfalls. If he had looked at the
+picture when he turned away from his window, he might have remarked that
+a river which is running with its utmost smoothness at one moment may be
+a river which plunges into its most violent agitation at another; and he
+might have remembered, with certain misgivings, that the progress of a
+stream of water has been long since likened, with the universal consent
+of humanity, to the progress of the stream of life.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH SCENE.--GLASGOW.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
+
+ANNE AMONG THE LAWYERS.
+
+ON the day when Sir Patrick received the second of the two telegrams
+sent to him from Edinburgh, four respectable inhabitants of the City of
+Glasgow were startled by the appearance of an object of interest on the
+monotonous horizon of their daily lives.
+
+The persons receiving this wholesome shock were--Mr. and Mrs. Karnegie
+of the Sheep's Head Hotel--and Mr. Camp, and Mr. Crum, attached as
+"Writers" to the honorable profession of the Law.
+
+It was still early in the day when a lady arrived, in a cab from the
+railway, at the Sheep's Head Hotel. Her luggage consisted of a black
+box, and of a well-worn leather bag which she carried in her hand. The
+name on the box (recently written on a new luggage label, as the color
+of the ink and paper showed) was a very good name in its way, common
+to a very great number of ladies, both in Scotland and England. It was
+"Mrs. Graham."
+
+Encountering the landlord at the entrance to the hotel, "Mrs. Graham"
+asked to be accommodated with a bedroom, and was transferred in due
+course to the chamber-maid on duty at the time. Returning to the little
+room behind the bar, in which the accounts were kept, Mr. Karnegie
+surprised his wife by moving more briskly, and looking much brighter
+than usual. Being questioned, Mr. Karnegie (who had cast the eye of
+a landlord on the black box in the passage) announced that one "Mrs.
+Graham" had just arrived, and was then and there to be booked as
+inhabiting Room Number Seventeen. Being informed (with considerable
+asperity of tone and manner) that this answer failed to account for
+the interest which appeared to have been inspired in him by a total
+stranger, Mr. Karnegie came to the point, and confessed that "Mrs.
+Graham" was one of the sweetest-looking women he had seen for many a
+long day, and that he feared she was very seriously out of health.
+
+Upon that reply the eyes of Mrs. Karnegie developed in size, and the
+color of Mrs. Karnegie deepened in tint. She got up from her chair and
+said that it might be just as well if she personally superintended the
+installation of "Mrs. Graham" in her room, and personally satisfied
+herself that "Mrs. Graham" was a fit inmate to be received at the
+Sheep's Head Hotel. Mr. Karnegie thereupon did what he always did--he
+agreed with his wife.
+
+Mrs. Karnegie was absent for some little time. On her return her eyes
+had a certain tigerish cast in them when they rested on Mr. Karnegie.
+She ordered tea and some light refreshment to be taken to Number
+Seventeen. This done--without any visible provocation to account for the
+remark--she turned upon her husband, and said, "Mr. Karnegie you are
+a fool." Mr. Karnegie asked, "Why, my dear?" Mrs. Karnegie snapped
+her fingers, and said, "_That_ for her good looks! You don't know a
+good-looking woman when you see her." Mr. Karnegie agreed with his wife.
+
+Nothing more was said until the waiter appeared at the bar with
+his tray. Mrs. Karnegie, having first waived the tray off, without
+instituting her customary investigation, sat down suddenly with a thump,
+and said to her husband (who had not uttered a word in the interval),
+"Don't talk to Me about her being out of health! _That_ for her health!
+It's trouble on her mind." Mr. Karnegie said, "Is it now?" Mrs. Karnegie
+replied, "When I have said, It is, I consider myself insulted if another
+person says, Is it?" Mr. Karnegie agreed with his wife.
+
+There was another interval. Mrs. Karnegie added up a bill, with a
+face of disgust. Mr. Karnegie looked at her with a face of wonder. Mrs.
+Karnegie suddenly asked him why he wasted his looks on _her_,  when he
+would have "Mrs. Graham" to look at before long. Mr. Karnegie, upon
+that, attempted to compromise the matter by looking, in the interim, at
+his own boots. Mrs. Karnegie wished to know whether after twenty years
+of married life, she was considered to be not worth answering by her own
+husband. Treated with bare civility (she expected no more), she might
+have gone on to explain that "Mrs. Graham" was going out. She might also
+have been prevailed on to mention that "Mrs. Graham" had asked her a
+very remarkable question of a business nature, at the interview between
+them up stairs. As it was, Mrs. Karnegie's lips were sealed, and let
+Mr. Karnegie deny if he dared, that he richly deserved it. Mr. Karnegie
+agreed with his wife.
+
+In half an hour more, "Mrs. Graham" came down stairs; and a cab was sent
+for. Mr. Karnegie, in fear of the consequences if he did otherwise, kept
+in a corner. Mrs. Karnegie followed him into the corner, and asked him
+how he dared act in that way? Did he presume to think, after twenty
+years of married life, that his wife was jealous? "Go, you brute, and
+hand Mrs. Graham into the cab!"
+
+Mr. Karnegie obeyed. He asked, at the cab window, to what part of
+Glasgow he should tell the driver to go. The reply informed him that the
+driver was to take "Mrs. Graham" to the office of Mr. Camp, the lawyer.
+Assuming "Mrs. Graham" to be a stranger in Glasgow, and remembering that
+Mr. Camp was Mr. Karnegie's lawyer, the inference appeared to be, that
+"Mrs. Graham's" remarkable question, addressed to the landlady, had
+related to legal business, and to the discovery of a trust-worthy person
+capable of transacting it for her.
+
+Returning to the bar, Mr. Karnegie found his eldest daughter in charge
+of the books, the bills, and the waiters. Mrs. Karnegie had retired to
+her own room, justly indignant with her husband for his infamous conduct
+in handing "Mrs. Graham" into the cab before her own eyes. "It's the old
+story, Pa," remarked Miss Karnegie, with the most perfect composure.
+"Ma told you to do it, of course; and then Ma says you've insulted her
+before all the servants. I wonder how you bear it?" Mr. Karnegie looked
+at his boots, and answered, "I wonder, too, my dear." Miss Karnegie
+said, "You're not going to Ma, are you?" Mr. Karnegie looked up from his
+boots, and answered, "I must, my dear."
+
+
+
+Mr. Camp sat in his private room, absorbed over his papers.
+Multitudinous as those documents were, they appeared to be not
+sufficiently numerous to satisfy Mr. Camp. He rang his bell, and ordered
+more.
+
+The clerk appearing with a new pile of papers, appeared also with a
+message. A lady, recommended by Mrs. Karnegie, of the Sheep's Head,
+wished to consult Mr. Camp professionally. Mr. Camp looked at his watch,
+counting out precious time before him, in a little stand on the table,
+and said, "Show the lady in, in ten minutes."
+
+In ten minutes the lady appeared. She took the client's chair and lifted
+her veil. The same effect which had been produced on Mr. Karnegie was
+once more produced on Mr. Camp. For the first time, for many a long year
+past, he felt personally interested in a total stranger. It might have
+been something in her eyes, or it might have been something in her
+manner. Whatever it was, it took softly hold of him, and made him, to
+his own exceeding surprise, unmistakably anxious to hear what she had to
+say!
+
+The lady announced--in a low sweet voice touched with a quiet
+sadness--that her business related to a question of marriage (as
+marriage is understood by Scottish law), and that her own peace of mind,
+and the happiness of a person very dear to her, were concerned alike
+in the opinion which Mr. Camp might give when he had been placed in
+possession of the facts.
+
+She then proceeded to state the facts, without mentioning names:
+relating in every particular precisely the same succession of events
+which Geoffrey Delamayn had already related to Sir Patrick Lundie--with
+this one difference, that she acknowledged herself to be the woman who
+was personally concerned in knowing whether, by Scottish law, she was
+now held to be a married woman or not.
+
+Mr. Camp's opinion given upon this, after certain questions had been
+asked and answered, differed from Sir Patrick's opinion, as given at
+Windygates. He too quoted the language used by the eminent judge--Lord
+Deas--but he drew an inference of his own from it. "In Scotland, consent
+makes marriage," he said; "and consent may be proved by inference. I see
+a plain inference of matrimonial consent in the circumstances which you
+have related to me and I say you are a married woman."
+
+The effect produced on the lady, when sentence was pronounced on her in
+those terms, was so distressing that Mr. Camp sent a message up stairs
+to his wife; and Mrs. Camp appeared in her husband's private room,
+in business hours, for the first time in her life. When Mrs. Camp's
+services had in some degree restored the lady to herself, Mr. Camp
+followed with a word of professional comfort. He, like Sir Patrick,
+acknowledged the scandalous divergence of opinions produced by the
+confusion and uncertainty of the marriage-law of Scotland. He, like
+Sir Patrick, declared it to be quite possible that another lawyer might
+arrive at another conclusion. "Go," he said, giving her his card, with a
+line of writing on it, "to my colleague, Mr. Crum; and say I sent you."
+
+The lady gratefully thanked Mr. Camp and his wife, and went next to the
+office of Mr. Crum.
+
+Mr. Crum was the older lawyer of the two, and the harder lawyer of the
+two; but he, too, felt the influence which the charm that there was in
+this woman exercised, more or less, over every man who came in contact
+with her. He listened with a patience which was rare with him: he put
+his questions with a gentleness which was rarer still; and when _he_
+was in possession of the circumstances---behold, _his_ opinion flatly
+contradicted the opinion of Mr. Camp!
+
+"No marriage, ma'am," he said, positively. "Evidence in favor of perhaps
+establishing a marriage, if you propose to claim the man. But that, as I
+understand it, is exactly what you don't wish to do."
+
+The relief to the lady, on hearing this, almost overpowered her. For
+some minutes she was unable to speak. Mr. Crum did, what he had never
+done yet in all his experience as a lawyer. He patted a client on the
+shoulder, and, more extraordinary still, he gave a client permission
+to waste his time. "Wait, and compose yourself," said Mr.
+Crum--administering the law of humanity. The lady composed herself. "I
+must ask you some questions, ma'am," said Mr. Crum--administering the
+law of the land. The lady bowed, and waited for him to begin.
+
+"I know, thus far, that you decline to claim the gentleman," said Mr.
+Cram. "I want to know now whether the gentleman is likely to claim
+_you._"
+
+The answer to this was given in the most positive terms. The gentleman
+was not even aware of the position in which he stood. And, more yet, he
+was engaged to be married to the dearest friend whom the lady had in the
+world.
+
+Mr. Crum opened his eyes--considered--and put another question as
+delicately as he could. "Would it be painful to you to tell me how the
+gentleman came to occupy the awkward position in which he stands now?"
+
+The lady acknowledged that it would be indescribably painful to her to
+answer that question.
+
+Mr. Crum offered a suggestion under the form of an inquiry:
+
+"Would it be painful to you to reveal the circumstances--in the
+interests of the gentleman's future prospects--to some discreet person
+(a legal person would be best) who is not, what I am, a stranger to you
+both?"
+
+The lady declared herself willing to make any sacrifice, on those
+conditions--no matter how painful it might be--for her friend's sake.
+
+Mr. Crum considered a little longer, and then delivered his word of
+advice:
+
+"At the present stage of the affair," he said, "I need only tell you
+what is the first step that you ought to take under the circumstances.
+Inform the gentleman at once--either by word of mouth or by writing--of
+the position in which he stands: and authorize him to place the case in
+the hands of a person known to you both, who is competent to decide on
+what you are to do next. Do I understand that you know of such a person
+so qualified?"
+
+The lady answered that she knew of such a person.
+
+Mr. Crum asked if a day had been fixed for the gentleman's marriage.
+
+The lady answered that she had made this inquiry herself on the last
+occasion when she had seen the gentleman's betrothed wife. The marriage
+was to take place, on a day to be hereafter chosen, at the end of the
+autumn.
+
+"That," said Mr. Crum, "is a fortunate circumstance. You have time
+before you. Time is, here, of very great importance. Be careful not to
+waste it."
+
+The lady said she would return to her hotel and write by that night's
+post, to warn the gentleman of the position in which he stood, and to
+authorize him to refer the matter to a competent and trust-worthy friend
+known to them both.
+
+On rising to leave the room she was seized with giddiness, and with some
+sudden pang of pain, which turned her deadly pale and forced her to
+drop back into her chair. Mr. Crum had no wife; but he possessed a
+housekeeper--and he offered to send for her. The lady made a sign in the
+negative. She drank a little water, and conquered the pain. "I am sorry
+to have alarmed you," she said. "It's nothing--I am better now." Mr.
+Crum gave her his arm, and put her into the cab. She looked so pale and
+faint that he proposed sending his housekeeper with her. No: it was only
+five minutes' drive to the hotel. The lady thanked him--and went her way
+back by herself.
+
+"The letter!" she said, when she was alone. "If I can only live long
+enough to write the letter!"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH.
+
+ANNE IN THE NEWSPAPERS.
+
+MRS. KARNEGIE was a woman of feeble intelligence and violent temper;
+prompt to take offense, and not, for the most part, easy to appease. But
+Mrs. Karnegie being--as we all are in our various degrees--a compound of
+many opposite qualities, possessed a character with more than one side
+to it, and had her human merits as well as her human faults. Seeds of
+sound good feeling were scattered away in the remoter corners of her
+nature, and only waited for the fertilizing occasion that was to help
+them to spring up. The occasion exerted that benign influence when the
+cab brought Mr. Crum's client back to the hotel. The face of the weary,
+heart-sick woman, as she slowly crossed the hall, roused all that was
+heartiest and best in Mrs. Karnegie's nature, and said to her, as if in
+words, "Jealous of this broken creature? Oh, wife and mother is there no
+appeal to your common womanhood _here?_"
+
+"I am afraid you have overtired yourself, ma'am. Let me send you
+something up stairs?"
+
+"Send me pen, ink, and paper," was the answer. "I must write a letter. I
+must do it at once."
+
+It was useless to remonstrate with her. She was ready to accept any
+thing proposed, provided the writing materials were supplied first. Mrs.
+Karnegie sent them up, and then compounded a certain mixture of eggs and
+hot wine for which The Sheep's Head was famous, with her own hands. In
+five minutes or so it was ready--and Miss Karnegie was dispatched by
+her mother (who had other business on hand at the time) to take it up
+stairs.
+
+After the lapse of a few moments a cry of alarm was heard from the upper
+landing. Mrs. Karnegie recognized her daughter's voice, and hastened to
+the bedroom floor.
+
+"Oh, mamma! Look at her! look at her!"
+
+The letter was on the table with the first lines written. The woman was
+on the sofa with her handkerchief twisted between her set teeth, and her
+tortured face terrible to look at. Mrs. Karnegie raised her a little,
+examined her closely--then suddenly changed color, and sent her daughter
+out of the room with directions to dispatch a messenger instantly for
+medical help.
+
+Left alone with the sufferer, Mrs. Karnegie carried her to her bed. As
+she was laid down her left hand fell helpless over the side of the bed.
+Mrs. Karnegie suddenly checked the word of sympathy as it rose to her
+lips--suddenly lifted the hand, and looked, with a momentary sternness
+of scrutiny, at the third finger. There was a ring on it. Mrs.
+Karnegie's face softened on the instant: the word of pity that had been
+suspended the moment before passed her lips freely now. "Poor soul!"
+said the respectable landlady, taking appearances for granted. "Where's
+your husband, dear? Try and tell me."
+
+The doctor made his appearance, and went up to the patient.
+
+Time passed, and Mr. Karnegie and his daughter, carrying on the business
+of the hotel, received a message from up stairs which was ominous of
+something out of the common. The message gave the name and address of an
+experienced nurse--with the doctor's compliments, and would Mr. Karnegie
+have the kindness to send for her immediately.
+
+The nurse was found and sent up stairs.
+
+Time went on, and the business of the hotel went on, and it was getting
+to be late in the evening, when Mrs. Karnegie appeared at last in the
+parlor behind the bar. The landlady's face was grave, the landlady's
+manner was subdued. "Very, very ill," was the only reply she made to her
+daughter's inquiries. When she and her husband were together, a little
+later, she told the news from up stairs in greater detail. "A child born
+dead," said Mrs. Karnegie, in gentler tones than were customary with
+her. "And the mother dying, poor thing, so far as _I_ can see."
+
+A little later the doctor came down. Dead? No.--Likely to live?
+Impossible to say. The doctor returned twice in the course of the night.
+Both times he had but one answer. "Wait till to-morrow."
+
+The next day came. She rallied a little. Toward the afternoon she began
+to speak. She expressed no surprise at seeing strangers by her bedside:
+her mind wandered. She passed again into insensibility. Then back to
+delirium once more. The doctor said, "This may last for weeks. Or it may
+end suddenly in death. It's time you did something toward finding her
+friends."
+
+(Her friends! She had left the one friend she had forever!)
+
+Mr. Camp was summoned to give his advice. The first thing he asked for
+was the unfinished letter.
+
+It was blotted, it was illegible in more places than one. With pains and
+care they made out the address at the beginning, and here and there some
+fragments of the lines that followed. It began: "Dear Mr. Brinkworth."
+Then the writing got, little by little, worse and worse. To the eyes of
+the strangers who looked at it, it ran thus: "I should ill requite * *
+* Blanche's interests * * * For God's sake! * * * don't think of _me_ *
+* *" There was a little more, but not so much as one word, in those last
+lines, was legible.
+
+The names mentioned in the letter were reported by the doctor and the
+nurse to be also the names on her lips when she spoke in her wanderings.
+"Mr. Brinkworth" and "Blanche"--her mind ran incessantly on those two
+persons. The one intelligible thing that she mentioned in connection
+with them was the letter. She was perpetually trying, trying, trying to
+take that unfinished letter to the post; and she could never get there.
+Sometimes the post was across the sea. Sometimes it was at the top of an
+inaccessible mountain. Sometimes it was built in by prodigious walls all
+round it. Sometimes a man stopped her cruelly at the moment when she was
+close at the post, and forced her back thousands of miles away from it.
+She once or twice mentioned this visionary man by his name. They made it
+out to be "Geoffrey."
+
+Finding no clew to her identity either in the letter that she had tried
+to write or in the wild words that escaped her from time to time, it was
+decided to search her luggage, and to look at the clothes which she had
+worn when she arrived at the hotel.
+
+Her black box sufficiently proclaimed itself as recently purchased. On
+opening it the address of a Glasgow trunk-maker was discovered inside.
+The linen was also new, and unmarked. The receipted shop-bill was found
+with it. The tradesmen, sent for in each case and questioned, referred
+to their books. It was proved that the box and the linen had both been
+purchased on the day when she appeared at the hotel.
+
+Her black bag was opened next. A sum of between eighty and ninety pounds
+in Bank of England notes; a few simple articles belonging to the toilet;
+materials for needle-work; and a photographic portrait of a young
+lady, inscribed, "To Anne, from Blanche," were found in the bag--but no
+letters, and nothing whatever that could afford the slightest clew by
+which the owner could be traced. The pocket in her dress was searched
+next. It contained a purse, an empty card-case, and a new handkerchief
+unmarked.
+
+Mr. Camp shook his head.
+
+"A woman's luggage without any letters in it," he said, "suggests to
+my mind a woman who has a motive of her own for keeping her movements
+a secret. I suspect she has destroyed her letters, and emptied her
+card-case, with that view." Mrs. Karnegie's report, after examining the
+linen which the so-called "Mrs. Graham" had worn when she arrived at
+the inn, proved the soundness of the lawyer's opinion. In every case the
+marks had been cut out. Mrs. Karnegie began to doubt whether the ring
+which she had seen on the third finger of the lady's left hand had been
+placed there with the sanction of the law.
+
+There was but one chance left of discovering--or rather of attempting to
+discover--her friends. Mr. Camp drew out an advertisement to be inserted
+in the Glasgow newspapers. If those newspapers happened to be seen by
+any member of her family, she would, in all probability, be claimed.
+In the contrary event there would be nothing for it but to wait for her
+recovery or her death--with the money belonging to her sealed up, and
+deposited in the landlord's strongbox.
+
+The advertisement appeared. They waited for three days afterward, and
+nothing came of it. No change of importance occurred, during the same
+period, in the condition of the suffering woman. Mr. Camp looked in,
+toward evening, and said, "We have done our best. There is no help for
+it but to wait."
+
+
+
+Far away in Perthshire that third evening was marked as a joyful
+occasion at Windygates House. Blanche had consented at last to listen
+to Arnold's entreaties, and had sanctioned the writing of a letter to
+London to order her wedding-dress.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH SCENE.--SWANHAVEN LODGE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST
+
+SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (FIRST SOWING).
+
+"NOT SO large as Windygates. But--shall we say snug, Jones?"
+
+"And comfortable, Smith. I quite agree with you."
+
+Such was the judgment pronounced by the two choral gentlemen on Julius
+Delamayn's house in Scotland. It was, as usual with Smith and Jones, a
+sound judgment--as far as it went. Swanhaven Lodge was not half the
+size of Windygates; but it had been inhabited for two centuries when
+the foundations of Windygates were first laid--and it possessed the
+advantages, without inheriting the drawbacks, of its age. There is in an
+old house a friendly adaptation to the human character, as there is in
+an old hat a friendly adaptation to the human head. The visitor who left
+Swanhaven quitted it with something like a sense of leaving home. Among
+the few houses not our own which take a strong hold on our sympathies
+this was one. The ornamental grounds were far inferior in size and
+splendor to the grounds at Windygates. But the park was beautiful--less
+carefully laid out, but also less monotonous than an English park. The
+lake on the northern boundary of the estate, famous for its breed of
+swans, was one of the curiosities of the neighborhood; and the house had
+a history, associating it with more than one celebrated Scottish name,
+which had been written and illustrated by Julius Delamayn. Visitors
+to Swanhaven Lodge were invariably presented with a copy of the volume
+(privately printed). One in twenty read it. The rest were "charmed," and
+looked at the pictures.
+
+The day was the last day of August, and the occasion was the
+garden-party given by Mr. and Mrs. Delamayn.
+
+Smith and Jones--following, with the other guests at Windygates, in Lady
+Lundie's train--exchanged their opinions on the merits of the house,
+standing on a terrace at the back, near a flight of steps which led down
+into the garden. They formed the van-guard of the visitors, appearing by
+twos and threes from the reception rooms, and all bent on going to see
+the swans before the amusements of the day began. Julius Delamayn came
+out with the first detachment, recruited Smith and Jones, and other
+wandering bachelors, by the way, and set forth for the lake. An interval
+of a minute or two passed--and the terrace remained empty. Then two
+ladies--at the head of a second detachment of visitors--appeared under
+the old stone porch which sheltered the entrance on that side of the
+house. One of the ladies was a modest, pleasant little person, very
+simply dressed. The other was of the tall and formidable type of "fine
+women," clad in dazzling array. The first was Mrs. Julius Delamayn. The
+second was Lady Lundie.
+
+"Exquisite!" cried her ladyship, surveying the old mullioned windows
+of the house, with their framing of creepers, and the grand stone
+buttresses projecting at intervals from the wall, each with its bright
+little circle of flowers blooming round the base. "I am really grieved
+that Sir Patrick should have missed this."
+
+"I think you said, Lady Lundie, that Sir Patrick had been called to
+Edinburgh by family business?"
+
+"Business, Mrs. Delamayn, which is any thing but agreeable to me, as one
+member of the family. It has altered all my arrangements for the autumn.
+My step-daughter is to be married next week."
+
+"Is it so near as that? May I ask who the gentleman is?"
+
+"Mr. Arnold Brinkworth."
+
+"Surely I have some association with that name?"
+
+"You have probably heard of him, Mrs. Delamayn, as the heir to Miss
+Brinkworth's Scotch property?"
+
+"Exactly! Have you brought Mr. Brinkworth here to-day?"
+
+"I bring his apologies, as well as Sir Patrick's. They went to Edinburgh
+together the day before yesterday. The lawyers engage to have the
+settlements ready in three or four days more, if a personal consultation
+can be managed. Some formal question, I believe, connected with
+title-deeds. Sir Patrick thought the safest way and the speediest
+way would be to take Mr. Brinkworth with him to Edinburgh--to get the
+business over to-day--and to wait until we join them, on our way south,
+to-morrow."
+
+"You leave Windygates, in this lovely weather?"
+
+"Most unwillingly! The truth is, Mrs. Delamayn, I am at my
+step-daughter's mercy. Her uncle has the authority, as her guardian--and
+the use he makes of it is to give her her own way in every thing. It was
+only on Friday last that she consented to let the day be fixed--and even
+then she made it a positive condition that the marriage was not to take
+place in Scotland. Pure willfulness! But what can I do? Sir Patrick
+submits; and Mr. Brinkworth submits. If I am to be present at
+the marriage I must follow their example. I feel it my duty to be
+present--and, as a matter of course, I sacrifice myself. We start for
+London to-morrow."
+
+"Is Miss Lundie to be married in London at this time of year?"
+
+"No. We only pass through, on our way to Sir Patrick's place in
+Kent--the place that came to him with the title; the place associated
+with the last days of my beloved husband. Another trial for _me!_ The
+marriage is to be solemnized on the scene of my bereavement. My old
+wound is to be reopened on Monday next--simply because my step-daughter
+has taken a dislike to Windygates."
+
+"This day week, then, is the day of the marriage?"
+
+"Yes. This day week. There have been reasons for hurrying it which
+I need not trouble you with. No words can say how I wish it was
+over.--But, my dear Mrs. Delamayn, how thoughtless of me to assail
+_you_ with my family worries! You are so sympathetic. That is my only
+excuse. Don't let me keep you from your guests. I could linger in this
+sweet place forever! Where is Mrs. Glenarm?"
+
+"I really don't know. I missed her when we came out on the terrace. She
+will very likely join us at the lake. Do you care about seeing the lake,
+Lady Lundie?"
+
+"I adore the beauties of Nature, Mrs. Delamayn--especially lakes!"
+
+"We have something to show you besides; we have a breed of swans on the
+lake, peculiar to the place. My husband has gone on with some of our
+friends; and I believe we are expected to follow, as soon as the rest of
+the party--in charge of my sister--have seen the house."
+
+"And what a house, Mrs. Delamayn! Historical associations in every
+corner of it! It is _such_ a relief to my mind to take refuge in the
+past. When I am far away from this sweet place I shall people Swanhaven
+with its departed inmates, and share the joys and sorrows of centuries
+since."
+
+As Lady Lundie announced, in these terms, her intention of adding to the
+population of the past, the last of the guests who had been roaming over
+the old house appeared under the porch. Among the members forming this
+final addition to the garden-party were Blanche, and a friend of her own
+age whom she had met at Swanhaven. The two girls lagged behind the rest,
+talking confidentially, arm in arm--the subject (it is surely needless
+to add) being the coming marriage.
+
+"But, dearest Blanche, why are you not to be married at Windygates?"
+
+"I detest Windygates, Janet. I have the most miserable associations with
+the place. Don't ask me what they are! The effort of my life is not to
+think of them now. I long to see the last of Windygates. As for being
+married there, I have made it a condition that I am not to be married in
+Scotland at all."
+
+"What has poor Scotland done to forfeit your good opinion, my dear?"
+
+"Poor Scotland, Janet, is a place where people don't know whether they
+are married or not. I have heard all about it from my uncle. And I
+know somebody who has been a victim--an innocent victim--to a Scotch
+marriage."
+
+"Absurd, Blanche! You are thinking of runaway matches, and making
+Scotland responsible for the difficulties of people who daren't own the
+truth!"
+
+"I am not at all absurd. I am thinking of the dearest friend I have. If
+you only knew--"
+
+"My dear! _I_ am Scotch, remember! You can be married just as well--I
+really must insist on that--in Scotland as in England."
+
+"I hate Scotland!"
+
+"Blanche!"
+
+"I never was so unhappy in my life as I have been in Scotland. I never
+want to see it again. I am determined to be married in England--from the
+dear old house where I used to live when I was a little girl. My uncle
+is quite willing. _He_ understands me and feels for me."
+
+"Is that as much as to say that _I_ don't understand you and feel for
+you? Perhaps I had better relieve you of my company, Blanche?"
+
+"If you are going to speak to me in that way, perhaps you had!"
+
+"Am I to hear my native country run down and not to say a word in
+defense of it?"
+
+"Oh! you Scotch people make such a fuss about your native country!"
+
+"_We_ Scotch people! you are of Scotch extraction yourself, and you
+ought to be ashamed to talk in that way. I wish you good-morning!"
+
+"I wish you a better temper!"
+
+A minute since the two young ladies had been like twin roses on one
+stalk. Now they parted with red cheeks and hostile sentiments and
+cutting words. How ardent is the warmth of youth! how unspeakably
+delicate the fragility of female friendship!
+
+The flock of visitors followed Mrs. Delamayn to the shores of the lake.
+For a few minutes after the terrace was left a solitude. Then there
+appeared under the porch a single gentleman, lounging out with a flower
+in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. This was the strongest man at
+Swanhaven--otherwise, Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+After a moment a lady appeared behind him, walking softly, so as not to
+be heard. She was superbly dressed after the newest and the most
+costly Parisian design. The brooch on her bosom was a single diamond of
+resplendent water and great size. The fan in her hand was a master-piece
+of the finest Indian workmanship. She looked what she was, a person
+possessed of plenty of superfluous money, but not additionally blest
+with plenty of superfluous intelligence to correspond. This was the
+childless young widow of the great ironmaster--otherwise, Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+The rich woman tapped the strong man coquettishly on the shoulder with
+her fan. "Ah! you bad boy!" she said, with a slightly-labored archness
+of look and manner. "Have I found you at last?"
+
+Geoffrey sauntered on to the terrace--keeping the lady behind him with
+a thoroughly savage superiority to all civilized submission to the
+sex--and looked at his watch.
+
+"I said I'd come here when I'd got half an hour to myself," he mumbled,
+turning the flower carelessly between his teeth. "I've got half an hour,
+and here I am."
+
+"Did you come for the sake of seeing the visitors, or did you come for
+the sake of seeing Me?"
+
+Geoffrey smiled graciously, and gave the flower another turn in his
+teeth. "You. Of course."
+
+The iron-master's widow took his arm, and looked up at him--as only a
+young woman would have dared to look up--with the searching summer light
+streaming in its full brilliancy on her face.
+
+Reduced to the plain expression of what it is really worth, the average
+English idea of beauty in women may be summed up in three words--youth,
+health, plumpness. The more spiritual charm of intelligence and
+vivacity, the subtler attraction of delicacy of line and fitness of
+detail, are little looked for and seldom appreciated by the mass of
+men in this island. It is impossible otherwise to account for the
+extraordinary blindness of perception which (to give one instance only)
+makes nine Englishmen out of ten who visit France come back declaring
+that they have not seen a single pretty Frenchwoman, in or out of Paris,
+in the whole country. Our popular type of beauty proclaims itself, in
+its fullest material development, at every shop in which an illustrated
+periodical is sold. The same fleshy-faced girl, with the same inane
+smile, and with no other expression whatever, appears under every form
+of illustration, week after week, and month after month, all the year
+round. Those who wish to know what Mrs. Glenarm was like, have only to
+go out and stop at any bookseller's or news-vendor's shop, and there
+they will see her in the first illustration, with a young woman in it,
+which they discover in the window. The one noticeable peculiarity in
+Mrs. Glenarm's purely commonplace and purely material beauty, which
+would have struck an observant and a cultivated man, was the curious
+girlishness of her look and manner. No stranger speaking to this
+woman--who had been a wife at twenty, and who was now a widow at
+twenty-four--would ever have thought of addressing her otherwise than as
+"Miss."
+
+"Is that the use you make of a flower when I give it to you?" she said
+to Geoffrey. "Mumbling it in your teeth, you wretch, as if you were a
+horse!"
+
+"If you come to that," returned Geoffrey, "I'm more a horse than a man.
+I'm going to run in a race, and the public are betting on me. Haw! haw!
+Five to four."
+
+"Five to four! I believe he thinks of nothing but betting. You great
+heavy creature, I can't move you. Don't you see I want to go like the
+rest of them to the lake? No! you're not to let go of my arm! You're to
+take me."
+
+"Can't do it. Must be back with Perry in half an hour."
+
+(Perry was the trainer from London. He had arrived sooner than he had
+been expected, and had entered on his functions three days since.)
+
+"Don't talk to me about Perry! A little vulgar wretch. Put him off. You
+won't? Do you mean to say you are such a brute that you would rather be
+with Perry than be with me?"
+
+"The betting's at five to four, my dear. And the race comes off in a
+month from this."
+
+"Oh! go away to your beloved Perry! I hate you. I hope you'll lose the
+race. Stop in your cottage. Pray don't come back to the house. And--mind
+this!--don't presume to say 'my dear' to me again."
+
+"It ain't presuming half far enough, is it? Wait a bit. Give me till the
+race is run--and then I'll presume to marry you."
+
+"You! You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am your wife.
+I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask him? She would be
+just the right person for you."
+
+Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as if he
+thought the idea worth considering.
+
+"All right," he said. "Any thing to be agreeable to you. I'll ask
+Perry."
+
+He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once. Mrs. Glenarm put
+out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored glove, and
+laid it on the athlete's mighty arm. She pinched those iron muscles (the
+pride and glory of England) gently. "What a man you are!" she said. "I
+never met with any body like you before!"
+
+The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her was in
+those words.
+
+They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten days; and
+in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm. On the day
+before the garden-party--in one of the leisure intervals allowed him by
+Perry--he had caught her alone, had taken her by the arm, and had asked
+her, in so many words, if she would marry him. Instances on record of
+women who have been wooed and won in ten days are--to speak it with all
+possible respect--not wanting. But an instance of a woman willing to
+have it known still remains to be discovered. The iron-master's widow
+exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When Geoffrey
+had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until she gave
+him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further hesitation, said
+Yes--having, be it observed, said No, in the course of the last two
+years, to at least half a dozen men who were Geoffrey's superiors in
+every conceivable respect, except personal comeliness and personal
+strength.
+
+There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for this.
+
+However persistently the epicene theorists of modern times may deny it,
+it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole past history of
+the sexes that the natural condition of a woman is to find her master in
+a man. Look in the face of any woman who is in no direct way dependent
+on a man: and, as certainly as you see the sun in a cloudless sky,
+you see a woman who is not happy. The want of a master is their
+great unknown want; the possession of a master is--unconsciously to
+themselves--the only possible completion of their lives. In ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of
+the otherwise inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own
+free will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her. This
+one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise inexplicable
+facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Up to the time of her meeting with Geoffrey, the young widow had
+gathered but one experience in her intercourse with the world--the
+experience of a chartered tyrant. In the brief six months of her married
+life with the man whose grand-daughter she might have been--and ought to
+have been--she had only to lift her finger to be obeyed. The doting old
+husband was the willing slave of the petulant young wife's slightest
+caprice. At a later period, when society offered its triple welcome to
+her birth, her beauty, and her wealth--go where she might, she found
+herself the object of the same prostrate admiration among the suitors
+who vied with each other in the rivalry for her hand. For the first time
+in her life she encountered a man with a will of his own when she met
+Geoffrey Delamayn at Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+Geoffrey's occupation of the moment especially favored the conflict
+between the woman's assertion of her influence and the man's assertion
+of his will.
+
+During the days that had intervened between his return to his brother's
+house and the arrival of the trainer, Geoffrey had submitted himself
+to all needful preliminaries of the physical discipline which was to
+prepare him for the race. He knew, by previous experience, what exercise
+he ought to take, what hours he ought to keep, what temptations at the
+table he was bound to resist. Over and over again Mrs. Glenarm tried to
+lure him into committing infractions of his own discipline--and over
+and over again the influence with men which had never failed her before
+failed her now. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do, would move
+_this_ man. Perry arrived; and Geoffrey's defiance of every attempted
+exercise of the charming feminine tyranny, to which every one else had
+bowed, grew more outrageous and more immovable than ever. Mrs. Glenarm
+became as jealous of Perry as if Perry had been a woman. She flew
+into passions; she burst into tears; she flirted with other men; she
+threatened to leave the house. All quite useless! Geoffrey never once
+missed an appointment with Perry; never once touched any thing to eat
+or drink that she could offer him, if Perry had forbidden it. No other
+human pursuit is so hostile to the influence of the sex as the pursuit
+of athletic sports. No men are so entirely beyond the reach of women as
+the men whose lives are passed in the cultivation of their own physical
+strength. Geoffrey resisted Mrs. Glenarm without the slightest effort.
+He casually extorted her admiration, and undesignedly forced her
+respect. She clung to him, as a hero; she recoiled from him, as a brute;
+she struggled with him, submitted to him, despised him, adored him, in a
+breath. And the clew to it all, confused and contradictory as it seemed,
+lay in one simple fact--Mrs. Glenarm had found her master.
+
+"Take me to the lake, Geoffrey!" she said, with a little pleading
+pressure of the blush-colored hand.
+
+Geoffrey looked at his watch. "Perry expects me in twenty minutes," he
+said.
+
+"Perry again!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mrs. Glenarm raised her fan, in a sudden outburst of fury, and broke it
+with one smart blow on Geoffrey's face.
+
+"There!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "My poor fan broken! You
+monster, all through you!"
+
+Geoffrey coolly took the broken fan and put it in his pocket. "I'll
+write to London," he said, "and get you another. Come along! Kiss, and
+make it up."
+
+He looked over each shoulder, to make sure that they were alone then
+lifted her off the ground (she was no light weight), held her up in the
+air like a baby, and gave her a rough loud-sounding kiss on each
+cheek. "With kind compliments from yours truly!" he said--and burst out
+laughing, and put her down again.
+
+"How dare you do that?" cried Mrs. Glenarm. "I shall claim Mrs.
+Delamayn's protection if I am to be insulted in this way! I will never
+forgive you, Sir!" As she said those indignant words she shot a look at
+him which flatly contradicted them. The next moment she was leaning on
+his arm, and was looking at him wonderingly, for the thousandth time, as
+an entire novelty in her experience of male human kind. "How rough
+you are, Geoffrey!" she said, softly. He smiled in recognition of that
+artless homage to the manly virtue of his character. She saw the smile,
+and instantly made another effort to dispute the hateful supremacy of
+Perry. "Put him off!" whispered the daughter of Eve, determined to lure
+Adam into taking a bite of the apple. "Come, Geoffrey, dear, never mind
+Perry, this once. Take me to the lake!"
+
+Geoffrey looked at his watch. "Perry expects me in a quarter of an
+hour," he said.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm's indignation assumed a new form. She burst out crying.
+Geoffrey surveyed her for a moment with a broad stare of surprise--and
+then took her by both arms, and shook her!
+
+"Look here!" he said, impatiently. "Can you coach me through my
+training?"
+
+"I would if I could!"
+
+"That's nothing to do with it! Can you turn me out, fit, on the day of
+the race? Yes? or No?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then dry your eyes and let Perry do it."
+
+Mrs. Glenarm dried her eyes, and made another effort.
+
+"I'm not fit to be seen," she said. "I'm so agitated, I don't know what
+to do. Come indoors, Geoffrey--and have a cup of tea."
+
+Geoffrey shook his head. "Perry forbids tea," he said, "in the middle of
+the day."
+
+"You brute!" cried Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+"Do you want me to lose the race?" retorted Geoffrey.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+With that answer she left him at last, and ran back into the house.
+
+Geoffrey took a turn on the terrace--considered a little--stopped--and
+looked at the porch under which the irate widow had disappeared from
+his view. "Ten thousand a year," he said, thinking of the matrimonial
+prospect which he was placing in peril. "And devilish well earned," he
+added, going into the house, under protest, to appease Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+The offended lady was on a sofa, in the solitary drawing-room. Geoffrey
+sat down by her. She declined to look at him. "Don't be a fool!"
+said Geoffrey, in his most persuasive manner. Mrs. Glenarm put her
+handkerchief to her eyes. Geoffrey took it away again without ceremony.
+Mrs. Glenarm rose to leave the room. Geoffrey stopped her by main force.
+Mrs. Glenarm threatened to summon the servants. Geoffrey said, "All
+right! I don't care if the whole house knows I'm fond of you!" Mrs.
+Glenarm looked at the door, and whispered "Hush! for Heaven's sake!"
+Geoffrey put her arm in his, and said, "Come along with me: I've got
+something to say to you." Mrs. Glenarm drew back, and shook her head.
+Geoffrey put his arm round her waist, and walked her out of the room,
+and out of the house--taking the direction, not of the terrace, but of
+a fir plantation on the opposite side of the grounds. Arrived among the
+trees, he stopped and held up a warning forefinger before the offended
+lady's face. "You're just the sort of woman I like," he said; "and there
+ain't a man living who's half as sweet on you as I am. You leave off
+bullying me about Perry, and I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll let you
+see me take a Sprint."
+
+He drew back a step, and fixed his big blue eyes on her, with a look
+which said, "You are a highly-favored woman, if ever there was one yet!"
+Curiosity instantly took the leading place among the emotions of Mrs.
+Glenarm. "What's a Sprint, Geoffrey?" she asked.
+
+"A short run, to try me at the top of my speed. There ain't another
+living soul in all England that I'd let see it but you. _Now_ am I a
+brute?"
+
+Mrs. Glenarm was conquered again, for the hundredth time at least. She
+said, softly, "Oh, Geoffrey, if you could only be always like this!" Her
+eyes lifted themselves admiringly to his. She took his arm again of her
+own accord, and pressed it with a loving clasp. Geoffrey prophetically
+felt the ten thousand a year in his pocket. "Do you really love me?"
+whispered Mrs. Glenarm. "Don't I!" answered the hero. The peace was
+made, and the two walked on again.
+
+They passed through the plantation, and came out on some open ground,
+rising and falling prettily, in little hillocks and hollows. The last
+of the hillocks sloped down into a smooth level plain, with a fringe of
+sheltering trees on its farther side--with a snug little stone cottage
+among the trees--and with a smart little man, walking up and down before
+the cottage, holding his hands behind him. The level plain was the
+hero's exercising ground; the cottage was the hero's retreat; and the
+smart little man was the hero's trainer.
+
+If Mrs. Glenarm hated Perry, Perry (judging by appearances) was in
+no danger of loving Mrs. Glenarm. As Geoffrey approached with his
+companion, the trainer came to a stand-still, and stared silently at the
+lady. The lady, on her side, declined to observe that any such person
+as the trainer was then in existence, and present in bodily form on the
+scene.
+
+"How about time?" said Geoffrey.
+
+Perry consulted an elaborate watch, constructed to mark time to the
+fifth of a second, and answered Geoffrey, with his eye all the while on
+Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+"You've got five minutes to spare."
+
+"Show me where you run, I'm dying to see it!" said the eager widow,
+taking possession of Geoffrey's arm with both hands.
+
+Geoffrey led her back to a place (marked by a sapling with a little
+flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided
+along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared
+to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited until she was out of
+hearing--and then he invoked (let us say) the blasts of heaven on the
+fashionably-dressed head of Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+"You take your place there," said Geoffrey, posting her by the sapling.
+"When I pass you--" He stopped, and surveyed her with a good-humored
+masculine pity. "How the devil am I to make you understand it?" he went
+on. "Look here! when I pass you, it will be at what you would call (if
+I was a horse) full gallop. Hold your tongue--I haven't done yet. You're
+to look on after me as I leave you, to where the edge of the cottage
+wall cuts the trees. When you have lost sight of me behind the wall,
+you'll have seen me run my three hundred yards from this flag. You're
+in luck's way! Perry tries me at the long Sprint to-day. You understand
+you're to stop here? Very well then--let me go and get my toggery on."
+
+"Sha'n't I see you again, Geoffrey?"
+
+"Haven't I just told you that you'll see me run?"
+
+"Yes--but after that?"
+
+"After that, I'm sponged and rubbed down--and rest in the cottage."
+
+"You'll come to us this evening?"
+
+He nodded, and left her. The face of Perry looked unutterable things
+when he and Geoffrey met at the door of the cottage.
+
+"I've got a question to ask you, Mr. Delamayn," said the trainer. "Do
+you want me? or don't you?"
+
+"Of course I want you."
+
+"What did I say when I first come here?" proceeded Perry, sternly. "I
+said, 'I won't have nobody a looking on at a man I'm training. These
+here ladies and gentlemen may all have made up their minds to see you.
+I've made up my mind not to have no lookers-on. I won't have you timed
+at your work by nobody but me. I won't have every blessed yard of ground
+you cover put in the noospapers. I won't have a living soul in
+the secret of what you can do, and what you can't, except our two
+selves.'--Did I say that, Mr. Delamayn? or didn't I?"
+
+"All right!"
+
+"Did I say it? or didn't I?"
+
+"Of course you did!"
+
+"Then don't you bring no more women here. It's clean against rules. And
+I won't have it."
+
+Any other living creature adopting this tone of remonstrance would
+probably have had reason to repent it. But Geoffrey himself was afraid
+to show his temper in the presence of Perry. In view of the coming race,
+the first and foremost of British trainers was not to be trifled with,
+even by the first and foremost of British athletes.
+
+"She won't come again," said Geoffrey. "She's going away from Swanhaven
+in two days' time."
+
+"I've put every shilling I'm worth in the world on you," pursued Perry,
+relapsing into tenderness. "And I tell you I felt it! It cut me to the
+heart when I see you coming along with a woman at your heels. It's a
+fraud on his backers, I says to myself--that's what it is, a fraud on
+his backers!"
+
+"Shut up!" said Geoffrey. "And come and help me to win your money." He
+kicked open the door of the cottage--and athlete and trainer disappeared
+from view.
+
+After waiting a few minutes by the little flag, Mrs. Glenarm saw the
+two men approaching her from the cottage. Dressed in a close-fitting
+costume, light and elastic, adapting itself to every movement, and made
+to answer every purpose required by the exercise in which he was abo
+ut to engage, Geoffrey's physical advantages showed themselves in their
+best and bravest aspect. His head sat proud and easy on his firm, white
+throat, bared to the air. The rising of his mighty chest, as he drew in
+deep draughts of the fragrant summer breeze; the play of his lithe and
+supple loins; the easy, elastic stride of his straight and shapely
+legs, presented a triumph of physical manhood in its highest type. Mrs.
+Glenarm's eyes devoured him in silent admiration. He looked like a
+young god of mythology--like a statue animated with color and life. "Oh,
+Geoffrey!" she exclaimed, softly, as he went by. He neither answered,
+nor looked: he had other business on hand than listening to soft
+nonsense. He was gathering himself up for the effort; his lips were set;
+his fists were lightly clenched. Perry posted himself at his place, grim
+and silent, with the watch in his hand. Geoffrey walked on beyond the
+flag, so as to give himself start enough to reach his full speed as he
+passed it. "Now then!" said Perry. In an instant more, he flew by (to
+Mrs. Glenarm's excited imagination) like an arrow from a bow. His action
+was perfect. His speed, at its utmost rate of exertion, preserved its
+rare underlying elements of strength and steadiness. Less and less and
+less he grew to the eyes that followed his course; still lightly flying
+over the ground, still firmly keeping the straight line. A moment
+more, and the runner vanished behind the wall of the cottage, and the
+stop-watch of the trainer returned to its place in his pocket.
+
+In her eagerness to know the result, Mrs. Glenarm forget her jealousy of
+Perry.
+
+"How long has he been?" she asked.
+
+"There's a good many besides you would be glad to know that," said
+Perry.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn will tell me, you rude man!"
+
+"That depends, ma'am, on whether _I_ tell _him._"
+
+With this reply, Perry hurried back to the cottage.
+
+Not a word passed while the trainer was attending to his man, and while
+the man was recovering his breath. When Geoffrey had been carefully
+rubbed down, and clothed again in his ordinary garments, Perry pulled
+a comfortable easy-chair out of a corner. Geoffrey fell into the
+chair, rather than sat down in it. Perry started, and looked at him
+attentively.
+
+"Well?" said Geoffrey. "How about the time? Long? short? or middling?"
+
+"Very good time," said Perry.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"When did you say the lady was going, Mr. Delamayn?"
+
+"In two days."
+
+"Very well, Sir. I'll tell you 'how long' when the lady's gone."
+
+Geoffrey made no attempt to insist on an immediate reply. He smiled
+faintly. After an interval of less than ten minutes he stretched out his
+legs and closed his eyes.
+
+"Going to sleep?" said Perry.
+
+Geoffrey opened his eyes with an effort. "No," he said. The word had
+hardly passed his lips before his eyes closed again.
+
+"Hullo!" said Perry, watching him. "I don't like that."
+
+He went closer to the chair. There was no doubt about it. The man was
+asleep.
+
+Perry emitted a long whistle under his breath. He stooped and laid two
+of his fingers softly on Geoffrey's pulse. The beat was slow, heavy, and
+labored. It was unmistakably the pulse of an exhausted man.
+
+The trainer changed color, and took a turn in the room. He opened a
+cupboard, and produced from it his diary of the preceding year. The
+entries relating to the last occasion on which he had prepared Geoffrey
+for a foot-race included the fullest details. He turned to the report
+of the first trial, at three hundred yards, full speed. The time was,
+by one or two seconds, not so good as the time on this occasion. But the
+result, afterward, was utterly different. There it was, in Perry's own
+words: "Pulse good. Man in high spirits. Ready, if I would have let him,
+to run it over again."
+
+Perry looked round at the same man, a year afterward--utterly worn out,
+and fast asleep in the chair.
+
+He fetched pen, ink, and paper out of the cupboard, and wrote two
+letters--both marked "Private." The first was to a medical man, a great
+authority among trainers. The second was to Perry's own agent in
+London, whom he knew he could trust. The letter pledged the agent to the
+strictest secrecy, and directed him to back Geoffrey's opponent in the
+Foot-Race for a sum equal to the sum which Perry had betted on Geoffrey
+himself. "If you have got any money of your own on him," the letter
+concluded, "do as I do. 'Hedge'--and hold your tongue."
+
+"Another of 'em gone stale!" said the trainer, looking round again at
+the sleeping man. "He'll lose the race."
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SECOND.
+
+SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (SECOND SOWING).
+
+AND what did the visitors say of the Swans?
+
+They said, "Oh, what a number of them!"--which was all that was to be
+said by persons ignorant of the natural history of aquatic birds.
+
+And what did the visitors say of the lake?
+
+Some of them said, "How solemn!" Some of them said, "How romantic!" Some
+of them said nothing--but privately thought it a dismal scene.
+
+Here again the popular sentiment struck the right note at starting. The
+lake was hidden in the centre of a fir wood. Except in the middle, where
+the sunlight reached them, the waters lay black under the sombre shadow
+of the trees. The one break in the plantation was at the farther end of
+the lake. The one sign of movement and life to be seen was the ghostly
+gliding of the swans on the dead-still surface of the water. It was
+solemn--as they said; it was romantic--as they said. It was dismal--as
+they thought. Pages of description could express no more. Let pages of
+description be absent, therefore, in this place.
+
+Having satiated itself with the swans, having exhausted the lake, the
+general curiosity reverted to the break in the trees at the farther
+end--remarked a startlingly artificial object, intruding itself on the
+scene, in the shape of a large red curtain, which hung between two of
+the tallest firs, and closed the prospect beyond from view--requested an
+explanation of the curtain from Julius Delamayn--and received for answer
+that the mystery should be revealed on the arrival of his wife with the
+tardy remainder of the guests who had loitered about the house.
+
+On the appearance of Mrs. Delamayn and the stragglers, the united party
+coasted the shore of the lake, and stood assembled in front of the
+curtain. Pointing to the silken cords hanging at either side of it,
+Julius Delamayn picked out two little girls (children of his wife's
+sister), and sent them to the cords, with instructions to pull, and
+see what happened. The nieces of Julius pulled with the eager hands
+of children in the presence of a mystery--the curtains parted in the
+middle, and a cry of universal astonishment and delight saluted the
+scene revealed to view.
+
+At the end of a broad avenue of firs a cool green glade spread its
+grassy carpet in the midst of the surrounding plantation. The ground
+at the farther end of the glade rose; and here, on the lower slopes,
+a bright little spring of water bubbled out between gray old granite
+rocks.
+
+Along the right-hand edge of the turf ran a row of tables, arrayed in
+spotless white, and covered with refreshments waiting for the guests. On
+the opposite side was a band of music, which burst into harmony at the
+moment when the curtains were drawn. Looking back through the avenue,
+the eye caught a distant glimpse of the lake, where the sunlight played
+on the water, and the plumage of the gliding swans flashed softly in
+brilliant white. Such was the charming surprise which Julius Delamayn
+had arranged for his friends. It was only at moments like these--or when
+he and his wife were playing Sonatas in the modest little music-room
+at Swanhaven--that Lord Holchester's eldest son was really happy.
+He secretly groaned over the duties which his position as a landed
+gentleman imposed upon him; and he suffered under some of the highest
+privileges of his rank and station as under social martyrdom in its
+cruelest form.
+
+"We'll dine first," said Julius, "and dance afterward. There is the
+programme!"
+
+He led the way to the tables, with the two ladies nearest to
+him--utterly careless whether they were or were not among the ladies of
+the highest rank then present. To Lady Lundie's astonishment he took the
+first seat he came to, without appearing to care what place he occupied
+at his own feast. The guests, following his example, sat where they
+pleased, reckless of precedents and dignities. Mrs. Delamayn, feeling
+a special interest in a young lady who was shortly to be a bride, took
+Blanche's arm. Lady Lundie attached herself resolutely to her hostess
+on the other side. The three sat together. Mrs. Delamayn did her best to
+encourage Blanche to talk, and Blanche did her best to meet the advances
+made to her. The experiment succeeded but poorly on either side. Mrs.
+Delamayn gave it up in despair, and turned to Lady Lundie, with a
+strong suspicion that some unpleasant subject of reflection was preying
+privately on the bride's mind. The conclusion was soundly drawn.
+Blanche's little outbreak of temper with her friend on the terrace, and
+Blanche's present deficiency of gayety and spirit, were attributable to
+the same cause. She hid it from her uncle, she hid it from Arnold--but
+she was as anxious as ever, and as wretched as ever, about Anne; and she
+was still on the watch (no matter what Sir Patrick might say or do) to
+seize the first opportunity of renewing the search for her lost friend.
+
+Meanwhile the eating, the drinking, and the talking went merrily on.
+The band played its liveliest melodies; the servants kept the glasses
+constantly filled: round all the tables gayety and freedom reigned
+supreme. The one conversation in progress, in which the talkers were
+not in social harmony with each other, was the conversation at Blanche's
+side, between her step-mother and Mrs. Delamayn.
+
+Among Lady Lundie's other accomplishments the power of making
+disagreeable discoveries ranked high. At the dinner in the glade she had
+not failed to notice--what every body else had passed over--the absence
+at the festival of the hostess's brother-in-law; and more remarkable
+still, the disappearance of a lady who was actually one of the guests
+staying in the house: in plainer words, the disappearance of Mrs.
+Glenarm.
+
+"Am I mistaken?" said her ladyship, lifting her eye-glass, and looking
+round the tables. "Surely there is a member of our party missing? I
+don't see Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+"Geoffrey promised to be here. But he is not particularly attentive, as
+you may have noticed, to keeping engagements of this sort. Every thing
+is sacrificed to his training. We only see him at rare intervals now."
+
+With that reply Mrs. Delamayn attempted to change the subject. Lady
+Lundie lifted her eye-glass, and looked round the tables for the second
+time.
+
+"Pardon me," persisted her ladyship--"but is it possible that I have
+discovered another absentee? I don't see Mrs. Glenarm. Yet surely she
+must be here! Mrs. Glenarm is not training for a foot-race. Do you see
+her? _I_ don't."
+
+"I missed her when we went out on the terrace, and I have not seen her
+since."
+
+"Isn't it very odd, dear Mrs. Delamayn?"
+
+"Our guests at Swanhaven, Lady Lundie, have perfect liberty to do as
+they please."
+
+In those words Mrs. Delamayn (as she fondly imagined) dismissed the
+subject. But Lady Lundie's robust curiosity proved unassailable by even
+the broadest hint. Carried away, in all probability, by the infection
+of merriment about her, her ladyship displayed unexpected reserves of
+vivacity. The mind declines to realize it; but it is not the less true
+that this majestic woman actually simpered!
+
+"Shall we put two and two together?" said Lady Lundie, with a ponderous
+playfulness wonderful to see. "Here, on the one hand, is Mr. Geoffrey
+Delamayn--a young single man. And here, on the other, is Mrs. Glenarm--a
+young widow. Rank on the side of the young single man; riches on the
+side of the young widow. And both mysteriously absent at the same time,
+from the same pleasant party. Ha, Mrs. Delamayn! should I guess wrong,
+if I guessed that _you_ will have a marriage in the family, too, before
+long?"
+
+Mrs. Delamayn looked a little annoyed. She had entered, with all her
+heart, into the conspiracy for making a match between Geoffrey and Mrs.
+Glenarm. But she was not prepared to own that the lady's facility
+had (in spite of all attempts to conceal it from discovery) made the
+conspiracy obviously successful in ten days' time.
+
+"I am not in the secrets of the lady and gentleman whom you mention,"
+she replied, dryly.
+
+A heavy body is slow to acquire movement--and slow to abandon movement,
+when once acquired. The playfulness of Lady Lundie, being essentially
+heavy, followed the same rule. She still persisted in being as lively as
+ever.
+
+"Oh, what a diplomatic answer!" exclaimed her ladyship. "I think I can
+interpret it, though, for all that. A little bird tells me that I shall
+see a Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn in London, next season. And I, for one,
+shall not be surprised to find myself congratulating Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+"If you persist in letting your imagination run away with you, Lady
+Lundie, I can't possibly help it. I can only request permission to keep
+the bridle on _mine._"
+
+This time, even Lady Lundie understood that it would be wise to say
+no more. She smiled and nodded, in high private approval of her own
+extraordinary cleverness. If she had been asked at that moment who was
+the most brilliant Englishwoman living, she would have looked inward on
+herself--and would have seen, as in a glass brightly, Lady Lundie, of
+Windygates.
+
+From the moment when the talk at her side entered on the subject of
+Geoffrey Delamayn and Mrs. Glenarm--and throughout the brief period
+during which it remained occupied with that topic--Blanche became
+conscious of a strong smell of some spirituous liquor wafted down on
+her, as she fancied, from behind and from above. Finding the odor grow
+stronger and stronger, she looked round to see whether any special
+manufacture of grog was proceeding inexplicably at the back of her
+chair. The moment she moved her head, her attention was claimed by a
+pair of tremulous gouty old hands, offering her a grouse pie, profusely
+sprinkled with truffles.
+
+"Eh, my bonny Miss!" whispered a persuasive voice at her ear, "ye're
+joost stairving in a land o' plenty. Tak' my advice, and ye'll tak' the
+best thing at tebble--groose-poy, and trufflers."
+
+Blanche looked up.
+
+There he was--the man of the canny eye, the fatherly manner, and the
+mighty nose--Bishopriggs--preserved in spirits and ministering at the
+festival at Swanhaven Lodge!
+
+Blanche had only seen him for a moment on the memorable night of the
+storm, when she had surprised Anne at the inn. But instants passed in
+the society of Bishopriggs were as good as hours spent in the company of
+inferior men. Blanche instantly recognized him; instantly called to
+mind Sir Patrick's conviction that he was in possession of Anne's
+lost letter; instantly rushed to the conclusion that, in discovering
+Bishopriggs, she had discovered a chance of tracing Anne. Her first
+impulse was to claim acquaintance with him on the spot. But the eyes of
+her neighbors were on her, warning her to wait. She took a little of the
+pie, and looked hard at Bishopriggs. That discreet man, showing no sign
+of recognition on his side, bowed respectfully, and went on round the
+table.
+
+"I wonder whether he has got the letter about him?" thought Blanche.
+
+He had not only got the letter about him--but, more than that, he was
+actually then on the look-out for the means of turning the letter to
+profitable pecuniary account.
+
+The domestic establishment of Swanhaven Lodge included no formidable
+array of servants. When Mrs. Delamayn gave a large party, she depended
+for such additional assistance as was needed partly on the contributions
+of her friends, partly on the resources of the principal inn at
+Kirkandrew. Mr. Bishopriggs, serving at the time (in the absence of any
+better employment) as a supernumerary at the inn, made one among the
+waiters who could be spared to assist at the garden-party. The name of
+the gentleman by whom he was to be employed for the day had struck him,
+when he first heard it, as having a familiar sound. He had made his
+inquiries; and had then betaken himself for additional information, to
+the letter which he had picked up from the parlor floor at Craig Fernie.
+
+The sheet of note-paper, lost by Anne, contained, it may be remembered,
+two letters--one signed by herself; the other signed by Geoffrey--and
+both suggestive, to a stranger's eye, of relations between the writers
+which they were interested in concealing from the public view.
+
+Thinking it just possible--if he kept his eyes and ears well open at
+Swanhaven--that he might improve his prospect of making a marketable
+commodity of the stolen correspondence, Mr. Bishopriggs had put the
+letter in his pocket when he left Kirkandrew. He had recognized Blanche,
+as a friend of the lady at the inn--and as a person who might perhaps be
+turned to account, in that capacity. And he had, moreover, heard every
+word of the conversation between Lady Lundie and Mrs. Delamayn on the
+subject of Geoffrey and Mrs. Glenarm. There were hours to be passed
+before the guests would retire, and before the waiters would be
+dismissed. The conviction was strong in the mind of Mr. Bishopriggs that
+he might find good reason yet for congratulating himself on the chance
+which had associated him with the festivities at Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+It was still early in the afternoon when the gayety at the dinner-table
+began, in certain quarters, to show signs of wearing out.
+
+The younger members of the party--especially the ladies--grew restless
+with the appearance of the dessert. One after another they looked
+longingly at the smooth level of elastic turf in the middle of the
+glade. One after another they beat time absently with their fingers
+to the waltz which the musicians happened to be playing at the moment.
+Noticing these symptoms, Mrs. Delamayn set the example of rising; and
+her husband sent a message to the band. In ten minutes more the
+first quadrille was in progress on the grass; the spectators were
+picturesquely grouped round, looking on; and the servants and waiters,
+no longer wanted, had retired out of sight, to a picnic of their own.
+
+The last person to leave the deserted tables was the venerable
+Bishopriggs. He alone, of the men in attendance, had contrived to
+combine a sufficient appearance of waiting on the company with a
+clandestine attention to his own personal need of refreshment. Instead
+of hurrying away to the servants' dinner with the rest, he made the
+round of the tables, apparently clearing away the crumbs--actually,
+emptying the wine-glasses. Immersed in this occupation, he was startled
+by a lady's voice behind him, and, turning as quickly as he could, found
+himself face to face with Miss Lundie.
+
+"I want some cold water," said Blanche. "Be so good as to get me some
+from the spring."
+
+She pointed to the bubbling rivulet at the farther end of the glade.
+
+Bishopriggs looked unaffectedly shocked.
+
+"Lord's sake, miss," he exclaimed "d'ye relly mean to offend yer stomach
+wi' cauld water--when there's wine to be had for the asking!"
+
+Blanche gave him a look. Slowness of perception was not on the list of
+the failings of Bishopriggs. He took up a tumbler, winked with his
+one available eye, and led the way to the rivulet. There was nothing
+remarkable in the spectacle of a young lady who wanted a glass of
+spring-water, or of a waiter who was getting it for her. Nobody was
+surprised; and (with the band playing) nobody could by any chance
+overhear what might be said at the spring-side.
+
+"Do you remember me at the inn on the night of the storm?" asked
+Blanche.
+
+Mr. Bishopriggs had his reasons (carefully inclosed in his pocketbook)
+for not being too ready to commit himself with Blanche at starting.
+
+"I'm no' saying I canna remember ye, miss. Whar's the man would mak' sic
+an answer as that to a bonny young leddy like you?"
+
+By way of assisting his memory Blanche took out her purse. Bishopriggs
+became absorbed in the scenery. He looked at the running water with the
+eye of a man who thoroughly distrusted it, viewed as a beverage.
+
+"There ye go," he said, addressing himself to the rivulet, "bubblin' to
+yer ain annihilation in the loch yonder! It's little I know that's gude
+aboot ye, in yer unconvairted state. Ye're a type o' human life, they
+say. I tak' up my testimony against _that._ Ye're a type o' naething
+at all till ye're heated wi' fire, and sweetened wi' sugar, and
+strengthened wi' whusky; and then ye're a type o' toddy--and human life
+(I grant it) has got something to say to ye in that capacity!"
+
+"I have heard more about you, since I was at the inn," proceeded
+Blanche, "than you may suppose." (She opened her purse: Mr. Bishopriggs
+became the picture of attention.) "You were very, very kind to a lady
+who was staying at Craig Fernie," she went on, earnestly. "I know that
+you have lost your place at the inn, because you gave all your attention
+to that lady. She is my dearest friend, Mr. Bishopriggs. I want to thank
+you. I do thank you. Please accept what I have got here?"
+
+All the girl's heart was in her eyes and in her voice as she emptied her
+purse into the gouty (and greedy) old hand of Bishopriggs.
+
+A young lady with a well-filled purse (no matter how rich the young
+lady may be) is a combination not often witnessed in any country on the
+civilized earth. Either the money is always spent, or the money has
+been forgotten on the toilet-table at home. Blanche's purse contained a
+sovereign and some six or seven shillings in silver. As pocket-money for
+an heiress it was contemptible. But as a gratuity to Bishopriggs it was
+magnificent. The old rascal put the money into his pocket with one hand,
+and dashed away the tears of sensibility, which he had _not_ shed, with
+the other.
+
+"Cast yer bread on the waters," cried Mr. Bishopriggs, with his one eye
+raised devotionally to the sky, "and ye sall find it again after monny
+days! Heeh! hech! didna I say when I first set eyes on that puir leddy,
+'I feel like a fether to ye?' It's seemply mairvelous to see hoo a man's
+ain gude deeds find him oot in this lower warld o' ours. If ever I heard
+the voice o' naitural affection speaking in my ain breast," pursued Mr.
+Bishopriggs, with his eye fixed in uneasy expectation on Blanche, "it
+joost spak' trumpet-tongued when that winsome creature first lookit at
+me. Will it be she now that told ye of the wee bit sairvice I rendered
+to her in the time when I was in bondage at the hottle?"
+
+"Yes--she told me herself."
+
+"Might I mak' sae bauld as to ask whar' she may be at the present time?"
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Bishopriggs. I am more miserable about it than I can
+say. She has gone away--and I don't know where."
+
+"Ow! ow! that's bad. And the bit husband-creature danglin' at her
+petticoat's tail one day, and awa' wi' the sunrise next mornin'--have
+they baith taken leg-bail together?"
+
+"I know nothing of him; I never saw him. You saw him. Tell me--what was
+he like?"
+
+"Eh! he was joost a puir weak creature. Didn't know a glass o' good
+sherry-wine when he'd got it. Free wi' the siller--that's a' ye can say
+for him--free wi' the siller!"
+
+Finding it impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer
+description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this,
+Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to
+waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the
+delicate and doubtful subject of the lost letter.
+
+"There is something else that I want to say to you," she resumed. "My
+friend had a loss while she was staying at the inn."
+
+The clouds of doubt rolled off the mind of Mr. Bishopriggs. The lady's
+friend knew of the lost letter. And, better still, the lady's friend
+looked as if she wanted it!
+
+"Ay! ay!" he said, with all due appearance of carelessness. "Like
+eneugh. From the mistress downward, they're a' kittle cattle at the inn
+since I've left 'em. What may it ha' been that she lost?"
+
+"She lost a letter."
+
+The look of uneasy expectation reappeared in the eye of Mr. Bishopriggs.
+It was a question--and a serious question, from his point of
+view--whether any suspicion of theft was attached to the disappearance
+of the letter.
+
+"When ye say 'lost,'" he asked, "d'ye mean stolen?"
+
+Blanche was quite quick enough to see the necessity of quieting his mind
+on this point.
+
+"Oh no!" she answered. "Not stolen. Only lost. Did you hear about it?"
+
+"Wherefore suld _I_ ha' heard aboot it?" He looked hard at Blanche--and
+detected a momentary hesitation in her face. "Tell me this, my young
+leddy," he went on, advancing warily near to the point. "When ye're
+speering for news o' your friend's lost letter--what sets ye on comin'
+to _me?_"
+
+Those words were decisive. It is hardly too much to say that Blanche's
+future depended on Blanche's answer to that question.
+
+If she could have produced the money; and if she had said, boldly, "You
+have got the letter, Mr. Bishopriggs: I pledge my word that no questions
+shall be asked, and I offer you ten pounds for it"--in all probability
+the bargain would have been struck; and the whole course of coming
+events would, in that case, have been altered. But she had no money
+left; and there were no friends, in the circle at Swanhaven, to whom she
+could apply, without being misinterpreted, for a loan of ten pounds,
+to be privately intrusted to her on the spot. Under stress of sheer
+necessity Blanche abandoned all hope of making any present appeal of a
+pecuniary nature to the confidence of Bishopriggs.
+
+The one other way of attaining her object that she could see was to arm
+herself with the influence of Sir Patrick's name. A man, placed in her
+position, would have thought it mere madness to venture on such a
+risk as this. But Blanche--with one act of rashness already on her
+conscience--rushed, woman-like, straight to the commission of another.
+The same headlong eagerness to reach her end, which had hurried her into
+questioning Geoffrey before he left Windygates, now drove her, just
+as recklessly, into taking the management of Bishopriggs out of Sir
+Patrick's skilled and practiced hands. The starving sisterly love in her
+hungered for a trace of Anne. Her heart whispered, Risk it! And Blanche
+risked it on the spot.
+
+"Sir Patrick set me on coming to you," she said.
+
+The opening hand of Mr. Bishopriggs--ready to deliver the letter, and
+receive the reward--closed again instantly as she spoke those words.
+
+"Sir Paitrick?" he repeated "Ow! ow! ye've een tauld Sir Paitrick aboot
+it, have ye? There's a chiel wi' a lang head on his shouthers, if ever
+there was ane yet! What might Sir Paitrick ha' said?"
+
+Blanche noticed a change in his tone. Blanche was rigidly careful (when
+it was too late) to answer him in guarded terms.
+
+"Sir Patrick thought you might have found the letter," she said, "and
+might not have remembered about it again until after you had left the
+inn."
+
+Bishopriggs looked back into his own personal experience of his old
+master--and drew the correct conclusion that Sir Patrick's view of
+his connection with the disappearance of the letter was not the purely
+unsuspicious view reported by Blanche. "The dour auld deevil," he
+thought to himself, "knows me better than _that!_"
+
+"Well?" asked Blanche, impatiently. "Is Sir Patrick right?"
+
+"Richt?" rejoined Bishopriggs, briskly. "He's as far awa' from the truth
+as John o' Groat's House is from Jericho."
+
+"You know nothing of the letter?"
+
+"Deil a bit I know o' the letter. The first I ha' heard o' it is what I
+hear noo."
+
+Blanche's heart sank within her. Had she defeated her own object, and
+cut the ground from under Sir Patrick's feet, for the second time?
+Surely not! There was unquestionably a chance, on this occasion, that
+the man might be prevailed upon to place the trust in her uncle which
+he was too cautious to confide to a stranger like herself. The one wise
+thing to do now was to pave the way for the exertion of Sir Patrick's
+superior influence, and Sir Patrick's superior skill. She resumed the
+conversation with that object in view.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that Sir Patrick has guessed wrong," she resumed.
+"My friend was anxious to recover the letter when I last saw her; and I
+hoped to hear news of it from you. However, right or wrong, Sir Patrick
+has some reasons for wishing to see you--and I take the opportunity of
+telling you so. He has left a letter to wait for you at the Craig Fernie
+inn."
+
+"I'm thinking the letter will ha' lang eneugh to wait, if it waits till
+I gae back for it to the hottle," remarked Bishopriggs.
+
+"In that case," said Blanche, promptly, "you had better give me an
+address at which Sir Patrick can write to you. You wouldn't, I suppose,
+wish me to say that I had seen you here, and that you refused to
+communicate with him?"
+
+"Never think it!" cried Bishopriggs, fervently. "If there's ain thing
+mair than anither that I'm carefu' to presairve intact, it's joost the
+respectful attention that I owe to Sir Paitrick. I'll make sae bauld,
+miss, au to chairge ye wi' that bit caird. I'm no' settled in ony place
+yet (mair's the pity at my time o' life!), but Sir Paitrick may hear o'
+me, when Sir Paitrick has need o' me, there." He handed a dirty
+little card to Blanche containing the name and address of a butcher in
+Edinburgh. "Sawmuel Bishopriggs," he went on, glibly. "Care o' Davie
+Dow, flesher; Cowgate; Embro. My Patmos in the weelderness, miss, for
+the time being."
+
+Blanche received the address with a sense of unspeakable relief. If
+she had once more ventured on taking Sir Patrick's place, and once
+more failed in justifying her rashness by the results, she had at
+least gained some atoning advantage, this time, by opening a means of
+communication between her uncle and Bishopriggs. "You will hear from Sir
+Patrick," she said, and nodded kindly, and returned to her place among
+the guests.
+
+"I'll hear from Sir Paitrick, wull I?" repeated Bishopriggs when he was
+left by himself. "Sir Paitrick will wark naething less than a meeracle
+if he finds Sawmuel Bishopriggs at the Cowgate, Embro!"
+
+He laughed softly over his own cleverness; and withdrew to a lonely
+place in the plantation, in which he could consult the stolen
+correspondence without fear of being observed by any living creature.
+Once more the truth had tried to struggle into light, before the day of
+the marriage, and once more Blanche had innocently helped the darkness
+to keep it from view.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.
+
+SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (THIRD SOWING).
+
+AFTER a new and attentive reading of Anne's letter to Geoffrey, and of
+Geoffrey's letter to Anne, Bishopriggs laid down comfortably under a
+tree, and set himself the task of seeing his position plainly as it was
+at that moment.
+
+The profitable disposal of the correspondence to Blanche was no longer
+among the possibilities involved in the case. As for treating with Sir
+Patrick, Bishopriggs determined to keep equally dear of the Cowgate,
+Edinburgh, and of Mrs. Inchbare's inn, so long as there was the faintest
+chance of his pushing his own interests in any other quarter. No person
+living would be capable of so certainly extracting the correspondence
+from him, on such ruinously cheap terms as his old master. "I'll no' put
+myself under Sir Paitrick's thumb," thought Bishopriggs, "till I've gane
+my ain rounds among the lave o' them first."
+
+Rendered into intelligible English, this resolution pledged him to hold
+no communication with Sir Patrick--until he had first tested his success
+in negotiating with other persons, who might be equally interested in
+getting possession of the correspondence, and more liberal in giving
+hush-money to the thief who had stolen it.
+
+Who were the "other persons" at his disposal, under these circumstances?
+
+He had only to recall the conversation which he had overheard between
+Lady Lundie and Mrs. Delamayn to arrive at the discovery of one person,
+to begin with, who was directly interested in getting possession of his
+own letter. Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn was in a fair way of being married to
+a lady named Mrs. Glenarm. And here was this same Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn
+in matrimonial correspondence, little more than a fortnight since, with
+another lady--who signed herself "Anne Silvester."
+
+Whatever his position between the two women might be, his interest in
+possessing himself of the correspondence was plain beyond all doubt. It
+was equally clear that the first thing to be done by Bishopriggs was
+to find the means of obtaining a personal interview with him. If the
+interview led to nothing else, it would decide one important question
+which still remained to be solved. The lady whom Bishopriggs had waited
+on at Craig Fernie might well be "Anne Silvester." Was Mr. Geoffrey
+Delamayn, in that case, the gentleman who had passed as her husband at
+the inn?
+
+Bishopriggs rose to his gouty feet with all possible alacrity, and
+hobbled away to make the necessary inquiries, addressing himself, not to
+the men-servants at the dinner-table, who would be sure to insist on
+his joining them, but to the women-servants left in charge of the empty
+house.
+
+He easily obtained the necessary directions for finding the cottage. But
+he was warned that Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn's trainer allowed nobody to see
+his patron at exercise, and that he would certainly be ordered off again
+the moment he appeared on the scene.
+
+Bearing this caution in mind, Bishopriggs made a circuit, on reaching
+the open ground, so as to approach the cottage at the back, under
+shelter of the trees behind it. One look at Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn was
+all that he wanted in the first instance. They were welcome to order him
+off again, as long as he obtained that.
+
+He was still hesitating at the outer line of the trees, when he heard a
+loud, imperative voice, calling from the front of the cottage, "Now, Mr.
+Geoffrey! Time's up!" Another voice answered, "All right!" and, after an
+interval, Geoffrey Delamayn appeared on the open ground, proceeding to
+the point from which he was accustomed to walk his measured mile.
+
+Advancing a few steps to look at his man more closely, Bishopriggs
+was instantly detected by the quick eye of the trainer. "Hullo!" cried
+Perry, "what do you want here?" Bishopriggs opened his lips to make an
+excuse. "Who the devil are you?" roared Geoffrey. The trainer answered
+the question out of the resources of his own experience. "A spy,
+Sir--sent to time you at your work." Geoffrey lifted his mighty fist,
+and sprang forward a step. Perry held his patron back. "You can't do
+that, Sir," he said; "the man's too old. No fear of his turning up
+again--you've scared him out of his wits." The statement was strictly
+true. The terror of Bishopriggs at the sight of Geoffrey's fist restored
+to him the activity of his youth. He ran for the first time for twenty
+years; and only stopped to remember his infirmities, and to catch his
+breath, when he was out of sight of the cottage, among the trees.
+
+He sat down to rest and recover himself, with the comforting inner
+conviction that, in one respect at least, he had gained his point.
+The furious savage, with the eyes that darted fire and the fist that
+threatened destruction, was a total stranger to him. In other words,
+_not_ the man who had passed as the lady's husband at the inn.
+
+At the same time it was equally certain that he _was_ the man involved
+in the compromising correspondence which Bishopriggs possessed. To
+appeal, however, to his interest in obtaining the letter was entirely
+incompatible (after the recent exhibition of his fist) with the strong
+regard which Bishopriggs felt for his own personal security. There was
+no alternative now but to open negotiations with the one other person
+concerned in the matter (fortunately, on this occasion, a person of
+the gentler sex), who was actually within reach. Mrs. Glenarm was at
+Swanhaven. She had a direct interest in clearing up the question of a
+prior claim to Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn on the part of another woman. And
+she could only do that by getting the correspondence into her own hands.
+
+"Praise Providence for a' its mercies!" said Bishopriggs, getting on his
+feet again. "I've got twa strings, as they say, to my boo. I trow the
+woman's the canny string o' the twa--and we'll een try the twanging of
+her."
+
+He set forth on his road back again, to search among the company at the
+lake for Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+The dance had reached its climax of animation when Bishopriggs
+reappeared on the scene of his duties; and the ranks of the company had
+been recruited, in his absence, by the very person whom it was now his
+foremost object to approach.
+
+Receiving, with supple submission, a reprimand for his prolonged absence
+from the chief of the servants, Bishopriggs--keeping his one observant
+eye carefully on the look-out--busied himself in promoting the
+circulation of ices and cool drinks.
+
+While he was thus occupied, his attention was attracted by two persons
+who, in very different ways, stood out prominently as marked characters
+among the rank and file of the guests.
+
+The first person was a vivacious, irascible old gentleman, who
+persisted in treating the undeniable fact of his age on the footing of a
+scandalous false report set afloat by Time. He was superbly strapped
+and padded. His hair, his teeth, and his complexion were triumphs of
+artificial youth. When he was not occupied among the youngest women
+present--which was very seldom--he attached himself exclusively to the
+youngest men. He insisted on joining every dance. Twice he measured his
+length upon the grass, but nothing daunted him. He was waltzing again,
+with another young woman, at the next dance, as if nothing had happened.
+Inquiring who this effervescent old gentleman might be, Bishopriggs
+discovered that he was a retired officer in the navy; commonly known
+(among his inferiors) as "The Tartar;" more formally described in
+society as Captain Newenden, the last male representative of one of the
+oldest families in England.
+
+The second person, who appeared to occupy a position of distinction at
+the dance in the glade, was a lady.
+
+To the eye of Bishopriggs, she was a miracle of beauty, with a small
+fortune for a poor man carried about her in silk, lace, and jewelry. No
+woman present was the object of such special attention among the men as
+this fascinating and priceless creature. She sat fanning herself with
+a matchless work of art (supposed to be a handkerchief) representing an
+island of cambric in the midst of an ocean of lace. She was surrounded
+by a little court of admirers, who fetched and carried at her slightest
+nod, like well-trained dogs. Sometimes they brought refreshments, which
+she had asked for, only to decline taking them when they came. Sometimes
+they brought information of what was going on among the dancers, which
+the lady had been eager to receive when they went away, and in which she
+had ceased to feel the smallest interest when they came back. Every body
+burst into ejaculations of distress when she was asked to account for
+her absence from the dinner, and answered, "My poor nerves." Every body
+said, "What should we have done without you!"--when she doubted if she
+had done wisely in joining the party at all. Inquiring who this favored
+lady might be, Bishopriggs discovered that she was the niece of the
+indomitable old gentleman who _would_ dance--or, more plainly still, no
+less a person than his contemplated customer, Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+With all his enormous assurance Bishopriggs was daunted when he found
+himself facing the question of what he was to do next.
+
+To open negotiations with Mrs. Glenarm, under present circumstances,
+was, for a man in his position, simply impossible. But, apart from this,
+the prospect of profitably addressing himself to that lady in the future
+was, to say the least of it, beset with difficulties of no common kind.
+
+Supposing the means of disclosing Geoffrey's position to her to be
+found--what would she do, when she received her warning? She would in
+all probability apply to one of two formidable men, both of whom were
+interested in the matter. If she went straight to the man accused
+of attempting to marry her, at a time when he was already engaged to
+another woman--Bishopriggs would find himself confronted with the owner
+of that terrible fist, which had justly terrified him even on a distant
+and cursory view. If, on the other hand she placed her interests in the
+care of her uncle--Bishopriggs had only to look at the captain, and to
+calculate his chance of imposing terms on a man who owed Life a bill of
+more than sixty years' date, and who openly defied time to recover the
+debt.
+
+With these serious obstacles standing in the way, what was to be done?
+The only alternative left was to approach Mrs. Glenarm under shelter of
+the dark.
+
+Reaching this conclusion, Bishopriggs decided to ascertain from the
+servants what the lady's future movements might be; and, thus informed,
+to startle her by anonymous warnings, conveyed through the post, and
+claiming their answer through the advertising channel of a newspaper.
+Here was the certainty of alarming her, coupled with the certainty of
+safety to himself! Little did Mrs. Glenarm dream, when she capriciously
+stopped a servant going by with some glasses of lemonade, that the
+wretched old creature who offered the tray contemplated corresponding
+with her before the week was out, in the double character of her
+"Well-Wisher" and her "True Friend."
+
+The evening advanced. The shadows lengthened. The waters of the lake
+grew pitchy black. The gliding of the ghostly swans became rare and more
+rare. The elders of the party thought of the drive home. The juniors
+(excepting Captain Newenden) began to flag at the dance. Little by
+little the comfortable attractions of the house--tea, coffee, and
+candle-light in snug rooms--resumed their influence. The guests
+abandoned the glade; and the fingers and lungs of the musicians rested
+at last.
+
+Lady Lundie and her party were the first to send for the carriage and
+say farewell; the break-up of the household at Windygates on the next
+day, and the journey south, being sufficient apologies for setting the
+example of retreat. In an hour more the only visitors left were the
+guests staying at Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+The company gone, the hired waiters from Kirkandrew were paid and
+dismissed.
+
+On the journey back the silence of Bishopriggs created some surprise
+among his comrades.
+
+"I've got my ain concerns to think of," was the only answer he
+vouchsafed to the remonstrances addressed to him. The "concerns" alluded
+to, comprehended, among other changes of plan, his departure from
+Kirkandrew the next day--with a reference, in case of inquiries, to his
+convenient friend at the Cowgate, Edinburgh. His actual destination--to
+be kept a secret from every body--was Perth. The neighborhood of this
+town--as stated on the authority of her own maid--was the part of
+Scotland to which the rich widow contemplated removing when she left
+Swanhaven in two days' time. At Perth, Bishopriggs knew of more than
+one place in which he could get temporary employment--and at Perth he
+determined to make his first anonymous advances to Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+The remainder of the evening passed quietly enough at the Lodge.
+
+The guests were sleepy and dull after the excitement of the day. Mrs.
+Glenarm retired early. At eleven o'clock Julius Delamayn was the only
+person left up in the house. He was understood to be in his study,
+preparing an address to the electors, based on instructions sent from
+London by his father. He was actually occupied in the music-room--now
+that there was nobody to discover him--playing exercises softly on his
+beloved violin.
+
+At the trainer's cottage a trifling incident occured, that night, which
+afforded materials for a note in Perry's professional diary.
+
+Geoffrey had sustained the later trial of walking for a given time and
+distance, at his full speed, without showing any of those symptoms of
+exhaustion which had followed the more serious experiment of running,
+to which he had been subjected earlier in the day. Perry, honestly
+bent--though he had privately hedged his own bets--on doing his best
+to bring his man in good order to the post on the day of the race, had
+forbidden Geoffrey to pay his evening visit to the house, and had sent
+him to bed earlier than usual. The trainer was alone, looking over
+his own written rules, and considering what modifications he should
+introduce into the diet and exercises of the next day, when he was
+startled by a sound of groaning from the bedroom in which his patron lay
+asleep.
+
+He went in, and found Geoffrey rolling to and fro on the pillow, with
+his face contorted, with his hands clenched, and with the perspiration
+standing thick on his forehead--suffering evidently under the nervous
+oppression produced by the phantom-terrors of a dream.
+
+Perry spoke to him, and pulled him up in the bed. He woke with a scream.
+He stared at his trainer in vacant terror, and spoke to his trainer in
+wild words. "What are your horrid eyes looking at over my shoulder?"
+he cried out. "Go to the devil--and take your infernal slate with you!"
+Perry spoke to him once more. "You've been dreaming of somebody, Mr.
+Delamayn. What's to do about a slate?" Geoffrey looked eagerly round the
+room, and heaved a heavy breath of relief. "I could have sworn she was
+staring at me over the dwarf pear-trees," he said. "All right, I know
+where I am now." Perry (attributing the dream to nothing more important
+than a passing indigestion) administered some brandy and water, and left
+him to drop off again to sleep. He fretfully forbade the extinguishing
+of the light. "Afraid of the dark?" said Perry, with a laugh. No. He was
+afraid of dreaming again of the dumb cook at Windygates House.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH SCENE.--HAM FARM.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH.
+
+THE NIGHT BEFORE.
+
+THE time was the night before the marriage. The place was Sir Patrick's
+house in Kent.
+
+The lawyers had kept their word. The settlements had been forwarded, and
+had been signed two days since.
+
+With the exception of the surgeon and one of the three young gentlemen
+from the University, who had engagements elsewhere, the visitors at
+Windygates had emigrated southward to be present at the marriage.
+Besides these gentlemen, there were some ladies among the guests invited
+by Sir Patrick--all of them family connections, and three of them
+appointed to the position of Blanche's bridesmaids. Add one or two
+neighbors to be invited to the breakfast--and the wedding-party would be
+complete.
+
+There was nothing architecturally remarkable about Sir Patrick's
+house. Ham Farm possessed neither the splendor of Windygates nor the
+picturesque antiquarian attraction of Swanhaven. It was a perfectly
+commonplace English country seat, surrounded by perfectly commonplace
+English scenery. Snug monotony welcomed you when you went in, and snug
+monotony met you again when you turned to the window and looked out.
+
+The animation and variety wanting at Ham Farm were far from being
+supplied by the company in the house. It was remembered, at an
+after-period, that a duller wedding-party had never been assembled
+together.
+
+Sir Patrick, having no early associations with the place, openly
+admitted that his residence in Kent preyed on his spirits, and that he
+would have infinitely preferred a room at the inn in the village. The
+effort to sustain his customary vivacity was not encouraged by persons
+and circumstances about him. Lady Lundie's fidelity to the memory of the
+late Sir Thomas, on the scene of his last illness and death, persisted
+in asserting itself, under an ostentation of concealment which tried
+even the trained temper of Sir Patrick himself. Blanche, still depressed
+by her private anxieties about Anne, was in no condition of mind to
+look gayly at the last memorable days of her maiden life. Arnold,
+sacrificed--by express stipulation on the part of Lady Lundie--to the
+prurient delicacy which forbids the bridegroom, before marriage, to
+sleep in the same house with the bride, found himself ruthlessly shut
+out from Sir Patrick's hospitality, and exiled every night to a bedroom
+at the inn. He accepted his solitary doom with a resignation which
+extended its sobering influence to his customary flow of spirits. As for
+the ladies, the elder among them existed in a state of chronic protest
+against Lady Lundie, and the younger were absorbed in the essentially
+serious occupation of considering and comparing their wedding-dresses.
+The two young gentlemen from the University performed prodigies of
+yawning, in the intervals of prodigies of billiard playing. Smith said,
+in despair, "There's no making things pleasant in this house, Jones."
+And Jones sighed, and mildly agreed with him.
+
+On the Sunday evening--which was the evening before the marriage--the
+dullness, as a matter of course, reached its climax.
+
+But two of the occupations in which people may indulge on week days are
+regarded as harmless on Sunday by the obstinately anti-Christian tone of
+feeling which prevails in this matter among the Anglo-Saxon race. It is
+not sinful to wrangle in religious controversy; and it is not sinful
+to slumber over a religious book. The ladies at Ham Farm practiced the
+pious observance of the evening on this plan. The seniors of the sex
+wrangled in Sunday controversy; and the juniors of the sex slumbered
+over Sunday books. As for the men, it is unnecessary to say that the
+young ones smoked when they were not yawning, and yawned when they were
+not smoking. Sir Patrick staid in the library, sorting old letters and
+examining old accounts. Every person in the house felt the oppression of
+the senseless social prohibitions which they had imposed on themselves.
+And yet every person in the house would have been scandalized if the
+plain question had been put: You know this is a tyranny of your own
+making, you know you don't really believe in it, you know you don't
+really like it--why do you submit? The freest people on the civilized
+earth are the only people on the civilized earth who dare not face that
+question.
+
+The evening dragged its slow length on; the welcome time drew nearer and
+nearer for oblivion in bed. Arnold was silently contemplating, for the
+last time, his customary prospects of banishment to the inn, when he
+became aware that Sir Patrick was making signs to him. He rose and
+followed his host into the empty dining-room. Sir Patrick carefully
+closed the door. What did it mean?
+
+It meant--so far as Arnold was concerned--that a private conversation
+was about to diversify the monotony of the long Sunday evening at Ham
+Farm.
+
+"I have a word to say to you, Arnold," the old gentleman began, "before
+you become a married man. Do you remember the conversation at dinner
+yesterday, about the dancing-party at Swanhaven Lodge?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you remember what Lady Lundie said while the topic was on the
+table?"
+
+"She told me, what I can't believe, that Geoffrey Delamayn was going to
+be married to Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+"Exactly! I observed that you appeared to be startled by what my
+sister-in-law had said; and when you declared that appearances must
+certainly have misled her, you looked and spoke (to my mind) like a man
+animated by a strong feeling of indignation. Was I wrong in drawing that
+conclusion?"
+
+"No, Sir Patrick. You were right."
+
+"Have you any objection to tell me why you felt indignant?"
+
+Arnold hesitated.
+
+"You are probably at a loss to know what interest _I_ can feel in the
+matter?"
+
+Arnold admitted it with his customary frankness.
+
+"In that case," rejoined Sir Patrick, "I had better go on at once with
+the matter in hand--leaving you to see for yourself the connection
+between what I am about to say, and the question that I have just put.
+When I have done, you shall then reply to me or not, exactly as you
+think right. My dear boy, the subject on which I want to speak to you
+is--Miss Silvester."
+
+Arnold started. Sir Patrick looked at him with a moment's attention, and
+went on:
+
+"My niece has her faults of temper and her failings of judgment," he
+said. "But she has one atoning quality (among many others) which ought
+to make--and which I believe will make--the happiness of your married
+life. In the popular phrase, Blanche is as true as steel. Once her
+friend, always her friend. Do you see what I am coming to? She has
+said nothing about it, Arnold; but she has not yielded one inch in
+her resolution to reunite herself to Miss Silvester. One of the first
+questions you will have to determine, after to-morrow, will be the
+question of whether you do, or not, sanction your wife in attempting to
+communicate with her lost friend."
+
+Arnold answered without the slightest reserve
+
+"I am heartily sorry for Blanche's lost friend, Sir Patrick. My
+wife will have my full approval if she tries to bring Miss Silvester
+back--and my best help too, if I can give it."
+
+Those words were earnestly spoken. It was plain that they came from his
+heart.
+
+"I think you are wrong," said Sir Patrick. "I, too, am sorry for Miss
+Silvester. But I am convinced that she has not left Blanche without a
+serious reason for it. And I believe you will be encouraging your wife
+in a hopeless effort, if you encourage her to persist in the search for
+her lost friend. However, it is your affair, and not mine. Do you wish
+me to offer you any facilities for tracing Miss Silvester which I may
+happen to possess?"
+
+"If you _can_ help us over any obstacles at starting, Sir Patrick, it
+will be a kindness to Blanche, and a kindness to me."
+
+"Very good. I suppose you remember what I said to you, one morning, when
+we were talking of Miss Silvester at Windygates?"
+
+"You said you had determined to let her go her own way."
+
+"Quite right! On the evening of the day when I said that I received
+information that Miss Silvester had been traced to Glasgow. You won't
+require me to explain why I never mentioned this to you or to
+Blanche. In mentioning it now, I communicate to you the only positive
+information, on the subject of the missing woman, which I possess. There
+are two other chances of finding her (of a more speculative kind) which
+can only be tested by inducing two men (both equally difficult to deal
+with) to confess what they know. One of those two men is--a person named
+Bishopriggs, formerly waiter at the Craig Fernie inn."
+
+Arnold started, and changed color. Sir Patrick (silently noticing him)
+stated the circumstances relating to Anne's lost letter, and to the
+conclusion in his own mind which pointed to Bishopriggs as the person in
+possession of it.
+
+"I have to add," he proceeded, "that Blanche, unfortunately, found an
+opportunity of speaking to Bishopriggs at Swanhaven. When she and Lady
+Lundie joined us at Edinburgh she showed me privately a card which had
+been given to her by Bishopriggs. He had described it as the address at
+which he might be heard of--and Blanche entreated me, before we started
+for London, to put the reference to the test. I told her that she had
+committed a serious mistake in attempting to deal with Bishopriggs on
+her own responsibility; and I warned her of the result in which I was
+firmly persuaded the inquiry would end. She declined to believe that
+Bishopriggs had deceived her. I saw that she would take the matter
+into her own hands again unless I interfered; and I went to the place.
+Exactly as I had anticipated, the person to whom the card referred me
+had not heard of Bishopriggs for years, and knew nothing whatever about
+his present movements. Blanche had simply put him on his guard, and
+shown him the propriety of keeping out of the way. If you should ever
+meet with him in the future--say nothing to your wife, and communicate
+with me. I decline to assist you in searching for Miss Silvester; but I
+have no objection to assist in recovering a stolen letter from a thief.
+So much for Bishopriggs.--Now as to the other man."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Your friend, Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+Arnold sprang to his feet in ungovernable surprise.
+
+"I appear to astonish you," remarked Sir Patrick.
+
+Arnold sat down again, and waited, in speechless suspense, to hear what
+was coming next.
+
+"I have reason to know," said Sir Patrick, "that Mr. Delamayn is
+thoroughly well acquainted with the nature of Miss Silvester's present
+troubles. What his actual connection is with them, and how he came into
+possession of his information, I have not found out. My discovery begins
+and ends with the simple fact that he has the information."
+
+"May I ask one question, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"How did you find out about Geoffrey Delamayn?"
+
+"It would occupy a long time," answered Sir Patrick, "to tell you
+how--and it is not at all necessary to our purpose that you should know.
+My present obligation merely binds me to tell you--in strict confidence,
+mind!--that Miss Silvester's secrets are no secrets to Mr. Delamayn. I
+leave to your discretion the use you may make of that information. You
+are now entirely on a par with me in relation to your knowledge of the
+case of Miss Silvester. Let us return to the question which I asked
+you when we first came into the room. Do you see the connection, now,
+between that question, and what I have said since?"
+
+Arnold was slow to see the connection. His mind was running on Sir
+Patrick's discovery. Little dreaming that he was indebted to Mrs. Inchb
+are's incomplete description of him for his own escape from detection,
+he was wondering how it had happened that _he_ had remained unsuspected,
+while Geoffrey's position had been (in part at least) revealed to view.
+
+"I asked you," resumed Sir Patrick, attempting to help him, "why the
+mere report that your friend was likely to marry Mrs. Glenarm roused
+your indignation, and you hesitated at giving an answer. Do you hesitate
+still?"
+
+"It's not easy to give an answer, Sir Patrick."
+
+"Let us put it in another way. I assume that your view of the report
+takes its rise in some knowledge, on your part, of Mr. Delamayn's
+private affairs, which the rest of us don't possess.--Is that conclusion
+correct?"
+
+"Quite correct."
+
+"Is what you know about Mr. Delamayn connected with any thing that you
+know about Miss Silvester?"
+
+If Arnold had felt himself at liberty to answer that question, Sir
+Patrick's suspicions would have been aroused, and Sir Patrick's
+resolution would have forced a full disclosure from him before he left
+the house.
+
+It was getting on to midnight. The first hour of the wedding-day was
+at hand, as the Truth made its final effort to struggle into light. The
+dark Phantoms of Trouble and Terror to come were waiting near them both
+at that moment. Arnold hesitated again--hesitated painfully. Sir Patrick
+paused for his answer. The clock in the hall struck the quarter to
+twelve.
+
+"I can't tell you!" said Arnold.
+
+"Is it a secret?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Committed to your honor?"
+
+"Doubly committed to my honor."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that Geoffrey and I have quarreled since he took me into his
+confidence. I am doubly bound to respect his confidence after that."
+
+"Is the cause of your quarrel a secret also?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Sir Patrick looked Arnold steadily in the face.
+
+"I have felt an inveterate distrust of Mr. Delamayn from the first,"
+he said. "Answer me this. Have you any reason to think--since we first
+talked about your friend in the summer-house at Windygates--that my
+opinion of him might have been the right one after all?"
+
+"He has bitterly disappointed me," answered Arnold. "I can say no more."
+
+"You have had very little experience of the world," proceeded Sir
+Patrick. "And you have just acknowledged that you have had reason to
+distrust your experience of your friend. Are you quite sure that you are
+acting wisely in keeping his secret from _me?_ Are you quite sure that
+you will not repent the course you are taking to-night?" He laid a
+marked emphasis on those last words. "Think, Arnold," he added, kindly.
+"Think before you answer."
+
+"I feel bound in honor to keep his secret," said Arnold. "No thinking
+can alter that."
+
+Sir Patrick rose, and brought the interview to an end.
+
+"There is nothing more to be said." With those words he gave Arnold his
+hand, and, pressing it cordially, wished him good-night.
+
+Going out into the hall, Arnold found Blanche alone, looking at the
+barometer.
+
+"The glass is at Set Fair, my darling," he whispered. "Good-night for
+the last time!"
+
+He took her in his arms, and kissed her. At the moment when he released
+her Blanche slipped a little note into his hand.
+
+"Read it," she whispered, "when you are alone at the inn."
+
+So they parted on the eve of their wedding day.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH.
+
+THE DAY.
+
+THE promise of the weather-glass was fulfilled. The sun shone on
+Blanche's marriage.
+
+At nine in the morning the first of the proceedings of the day began. It
+was essentially of a clandestine nature. The bride and bridegroom
+evaded the restraints of lawful authority, and presumed to meet together
+privately, before they were married, in the conservatory at Ham Farm.
+
+"You have read my letter, Arnold?"
+
+"I have come here to answer it, Blanche. But why not have told me? Why
+write?"
+
+"Because I put off telling you so long; and because I didn't know how
+you might take it; and for fifty other reasons. Never mind! I've made my
+confession. I haven't a single secret now which is not your secret too.
+There's time to say No, Arnold, if you think I ought to have no room
+in my heart for any body but you. My uncle tells me I am obstinate and
+wrong in refusing to give Anne up. If you agree with him, say the word,
+dear, before you make me your wife."
+
+"Shall I tell you what I said to Sir Patrick last night?"
+
+"About _this?_"
+
+"Yes. The confession (as you call it) which you make in your pretty
+note, is the very thing that Sir Patrick spoke to me about in the
+dining-room before I went away. He told me your heart was set on finding
+Miss Silvester. And he asked me what I meant to do about it when we were
+married."
+
+"And you said--?"
+
+Arnold repeated his answer to Sir Patrick, with fervid embellishments
+of the original language, suitable to the emergency. Blanche's delight
+expressed itself in the form of two unblushing outrages on propriety,
+committed in close succession. She threw her arms round Arnold's neck;
+and she actually kissed him three hours before the consent of State and
+Church sanctioned her in taking that proceeding. Let us shudder--but let
+us not blame her. These are the consequences of free institutions.
+
+"Now," said Arnold, "it's my turn to take to pen and ink. I have a
+letter to write before we are married as well as you. Only there's this
+difference between us--I want you to help me."
+
+"Who are you going to write to?"
+
+"To my lawyer in Edinburgh. There will be no time unless I do it now. We
+start for Switzerland this afternoon--don't we?'
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. I want to relieve your mind, my darling before we go.
+Wouldn't you like to know--while we are away--that the right people are
+on the look-out for Miss Silvester? Sir Patrick has told me of the last
+place that she has been traced to--and my lawyer will set the right
+people at work. Come and help me to put it in the proper language, and
+the whole thing will be in train."
+
+"Oh, Arnold! can I ever love you enough to reward you for this!"
+
+"We shall see, Blanche--in Switzerland."
+
+They audaciously penetrated, arm in arm, into Sir Patrick's own
+study--entirely at their disposal, as they well knew, at that hour
+of the morning. With Sir Patrick's pens and Sir Patrick's paper
+they produced a letter of instructions, deliberately reopening the
+investigation which Sir Patrick's superior wisdom had closed. Neither
+pains nor money were to be spared by the lawyer in at once taking
+measures (beginning at Glasgow) to find Anne. The report of the result
+was to be addressed to Arnold, under cover to Sir Patrick at Ham Farm.
+By the time the letter was completed the morning had advanced to
+ten o'clock. Blanche left Arnold to array herself in her bridal
+splendor--after another outrage on propriety, and more consequences of
+free institutions.
+
+The next proceedings were of a public and avowable nature, and strictly
+followed the customary precedents on such occasions.
+
+Village nymphs strewed flowers on the path to the church door (and sent
+in the bill the same day). Village swains rang the joy-bells (and got
+drunk on their money the same evening). There was the proper and awful
+pause while the bridegroom was kept waiting at the church. There was the
+proper and pitiless staring of all the female spectators when the bride
+was led to the altar. There was the clergyman's preliminary look at
+the license--which meant official caution. And there was the clerk's
+preliminary look at the bridegroom--which meant official fees. All the
+women appeared to be in their natural element; and all the men appeared
+to be out of it.
+
+Then the service began--rightly-considered, the most terrible, surely,
+of all mortal ceremonies--the service which binds two human beings, who
+know next to nothing of each other's natures, to risk the tremendous
+experiment of living together till death parts them--the service
+which says, in effect if not in words, Take your leap in the dark: we
+sanctify, but we don't insure, it!
+
+The ceremony went on, without the slightest obstacle to mar its effect.
+There were no unforeseen interruptions. There were no ominous mistakes.
+
+The last words were spoken, and the book was closed. They signed their
+names on the register; the husband was congratulated; the wife was
+embraced. They went back aga in to the house, with more flowers strewn
+at their feet. The wedding-breakfast was hurried; the wedding-speeches
+were curtailed: there was no time to be wasted, if the young couple were
+to catch the tidal train.
+
+In an hour more the carriage had whirled them away to the station,
+and the guests had given them the farewell cheer from the steps of the
+house. Young, happy, fondly attached to each other, raised securely
+above all the sordid cares of life, what a golden future was theirs!
+Married with the sanction of the Family and the blessing of the
+Church--who could suppose that the time was coming, nevertheless, when
+the blighting question would fall on them, in the spring-time of their
+love: Are you Man and Wife?
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH.
+
+THE TRUTH AT LAST.
+
+Two days after the marriage--on Wednesday, the ninth of September
+a packet of letters, received at Windygates, was forwarded by Lady
+Lundie's steward to Ham Farm.
+
+With one exception, the letters were all addressed either to Sir Patrick
+or to his sister-in-law. The one exception was directed to
+"Arnold Brinkworth, Esq., care of Lady Lundie, Windygates House,
+Perthshire"--and the envelope was specially protected by a seal.
+
+Noticing that the post-mark was "Glasgow," Sir Patrick (to whom the
+letter had been delivered) looked with a certain distrust at the
+handwriting on the address. It was not known to him--but it was
+obviously the handwriting of a woman. Lady Lundie was sitting opposite
+to him at the table. He said, carelessly, "A letter for Arnold"--and
+pushed it across to her. Her ladyship took up the letter, and dropped
+it, the instant she looked at the handwriting, as if it had burned her
+fingers.
+
+"The Person again!" exclaimed Lady Lundie. "The Person, presuming to
+address Arnold Brinkworth, at My house!"
+
+"Miss Silvester?" asked Sir Patrick.
+
+"No," said her ladyship, shutting her teeth with a snap. "The Person may
+insult me by addressing a letter to my care. But the Person's name shall
+not pollute my lips. Not even in your house, Sir Patrick. Not even to
+please _you._"
+
+Sir Patrick was sufficiently answered. After all that had
+happened--after her farewell letter to Blanche--here was Miss Silvester
+writing to Blanche's husband, of her own accord! It was unaccountable,
+to say the least of it. He took the letter back, and looked at it again.
+Lady Lundie's steward was a methodical man. He had indorsed each
+letter received at Windygates with the date of its delivery. The
+letter addressed to Arnold had been delivered on Monday, the seventh of
+September--on Arnold's wedding day.
+
+What did it mean?
+
+It was pure waste of time to inquire. Sir Patrick rose to lock the
+letter up in one of the drawers of the writing-table behind him. Lady
+Lundie interfered (in the interest of morality).
+
+"Sir Patrick!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Don't you consider it your duty to open that letter?"
+
+"My dear lady! what can you possibly be thinking of?"
+
+The most virtuous of living women had her answer ready on the spot.
+
+"I am thinking," said Lady Lundie, "of Arnold's moral welfare."
+
+Sir Patrick smiled. On the long list of those respectable disguises
+under which we assert our own importance, or gratify our own love of
+meddling in our neighbor's affairs, a moral regard for the welfare of
+others figures in the foremost place, and stands deservedly as number
+one.
+
+"We shall probably hear from Arnold in a day or two," said Sir Patrick,
+locking the letter up in the drawer. "He shall have it as soon as I know
+where to send it to him."
+
+The next morning brought news of the bride and bridegroom.
+
+They reported themselves to be too supremely happy to care where they
+lived, so long as they lived together. Every question but the question
+of Love was left in the competent hands of their courier. This sensible
+and trust-worthy man had decided that Paris was not to be thought of as
+a place of residence by any sane human being in the month of September.
+He had arranged that they were to leave for Baden--on their way to
+Switzerland--on the tenth. Letters were accordingly to be addressed to
+that place, until further notice. If the courier liked Baden, they would
+probably stay there for some time. If the courier took a fancy for the
+mountains, they would in that case go on to Switzerland. In the mean
+while nothing mattered to Arnold but Blanche--and nothing mattered to
+Blanche but Arnold.
+
+Sir Patrick re-directed Anne Silvester's letter to Arnold, at the
+Poste Restante, Baden. A second letter, which had arrived that morning
+(addressed to Arnold in a legal handwriting, and bearing the post-mark
+of Edinburgh), was forwarded in the same way, and at the same time.
+
+Two days later Ham Farm was deserted by the guests. Lady Lundie had
+gone back to Windygates. The rest had separated in their different
+directions. Sir Patrick, who also contemplated returning to Scotland,
+remained behind for a week--a solitary prisoner in his own country
+house. Accumulated arrears of business, with which it was impossible for
+his steward to deal single-handed, obliged him to remain at his estates
+in Kent for that time. To a man without a taste for partridge-shooting
+the ordeal was a trying one. Sir Patrick got through the day with the
+help of his business and his books. In the evening the rector of a
+neighboring parish drove over to dinner, and engaged his host at the
+noble but obsolete game of Piquet. They arranged to meet at each other's
+houses on alternate days. The rector was an admirable player; and Sir
+Patrick, though a born Presbyterian, blessed the Church of England from
+the bottom of his heart.
+
+Three more days passed. Business at Ham Farm began to draw to an end.
+The time for Sir Patrick's journey to Scotland came nearer. The two
+partners at Piquet agreed to meet for a final game, on the next night,
+at the rector's house. But (let us take comfort in remembering it)
+our superiors in Church and State are as completely at the mercy of
+circumstances as the humblest and the poorest of us. That last game of
+Piquet between the baronet and the parson was never to be played.
+
+On the afternoon of the fourth day Sir Patrick came in from a drive, and
+found a letter from Arnold waiting for him, which had been delivered by
+the second post.
+
+Judged by externals only, it was a letter of an unusually
+perplexing--possibly also of an unusually interesting--kind. Arnold was
+one of the last persons in the world whom any of his friends would have
+suspected of being a lengthy correspondent. Here, nevertheless, was
+a letter from him, of three times the customary bulk and weight--and,
+apparently, of more than common importance, in the matter of news,
+besides. At the top the envelope was marked "_Immediate._." And at one
+side (also underlined) was the ominous word, "_Private._."
+
+"Nothing wrong, I hope?" thought Sir Patrick.
+
+He opened the envelope.
+
+Two inclosures fell out on the table. He looked at them for a moment.
+They were the two letters which he had forwarded to Baden. The third
+letter remaining in his hand and occupying a double sheet, was from
+Arnold himself. Sir Patrick read Arnold's letter first. It was dated
+"Baden," and it began as follows:
+
+"My Dear Sir Patrick,--Don't be alarmed, if you can possibly help it. I
+am in a terrible mess."
+
+Sir Patrick looked up for a moment from the letter. Given a young man
+who dates from "Baden," and declares himself to be in "a terrible
+mess," as representing the circumstances of the case--what is the
+interpretation to be placed on them? Sir Patrick drew the inevitable
+conclusion. Arnold had been gambling.
+
+He shook his head, and went on with the letter.
+
+"I must say, dreadful as it is, that I am not to blame--nor she either,
+poor thing."
+
+Sir Patrick paused again. "She?" Blanche had apparently been gambling
+too? Nothing was wanting to complete the picture but an announcement in
+the next sentence, presenting the courier as carried away, in his turn,
+by the insatiate passion for play. Sir Patrick resumed:
+
+"You can not, I am sure, expect _me_ to have known the law. And as for
+poor Miss Silvester--"
+
+"Miss Silvester?" What had Miss Silvester to do with it? And what could
+be the meaning of the reference to "the law?"
+
+Sir Patrick had re ad the letter, thus far, standing up. A vague
+distrust stole over him at the appearance of Miss Silvester's name
+in connection with the lines which had preceded it. He felt nothing
+approaching to a clear prevision of what was to come. Some indescribable
+influence was at work in him, which shook his nerves, and made him
+feel the infirmities of his age (as it seemed) on a sudden. It went no
+further than that. He was obliged to sit down: he was obliged to wait a
+moment before he went on.
+
+The letter proceeded, in these words:
+
+"And, as for poor Miss Silvester, though she felt, as she reminds me,
+some misgivings--still, she never could have foreseen, being no lawyer
+either, how it was to end. I hardly know the best way to break it to
+you. I can't, and won't, believe it myself. But even if it should be
+true, I am quite sure you will find a way out of it for us. I will stick
+at nothing, and Miss Silvester (as you will see by her letter) will
+stick at nothing either, to set things right. Of course, I have not
+said one word to my darling Blanche, who is quite happy, and suspects
+nothing. All this, dear Sir Patrick, is very badly written, I am afraid,
+but it is meant to prepare you, and to put the best side on matters at
+starting. However, the truth must be told--and shame on the Scotch
+law is what _I_ say. This it is, in short: Geoffrey Delamayn is even a
+greater scoundrel than you think him; and I bitterly repent (as things
+have turned out) having held my tongue that night when you and I had
+our private talk at Ham Farm. You will think I am mixing two things up
+together. But I am not. Please to keep this about Geoffrey in your mind,
+and piece it together with what I have next to say. The worst is still
+to come. Miss Silvester's letter (inclosed) tells me this terrible
+thing. You must know that I went to her privately, as Geoffrey's
+messenger, on the day of the lawn-party at Windygates. Well--how it
+could have happened, Heaven only knows--but there is reason to fear that
+I married her, without being aware of it myself, in August last, at the
+Craig Fernie inn."
+
+The letter dropped from Sir Patrick's hand. He sank back in the chair,
+stunned for the moment, under the shock that had fallen on him.
+
+He rallied, and rose bewildered to his feet. He took a turn in the room.
+He stopped, and summoned his will, and steadied himself by main force.
+He picked up the letter, and read the last sentence again. His face
+flushed. He was on the point of yielding himself to a useless out burst
+of anger against Arnold, when his better sense checked him at the last
+moment. "One fool in the family is, enough," he said. "_My_ business in
+this dreadful emergency is to keep my head clear for Blanche's sake."
+
+He waited once more, to make sure of his own composure--and turned again
+to the letter, to see what the writer had to say for himself, in the way
+of explanation and excuse.
+
+Arnold had plenty to say--with the drawback of not knowing how to
+say it. It was hard to decide which quality in his letter was most
+marked--the total absence of arrangement, or the total absence of
+reserve. Without beginning, middle, or end, he told the story of his
+fatal connection with the troubles of Anne Silvester, from the memorable
+day when Geoffrey Delamayn sent him to Craig Fernie, to the equally
+memorable night when Sir Patrick had tried vainly to make him open his
+lips at Ham Farm.
+
+"I own I have behaved like a fool," the letter concluded, "in keeping
+Geoffrey Delamayn's secret for him--as things have turned out. But how
+could I tell upon him without compromising Miss Silvester? Read her
+letter, and you will see what she says, and how generously she releases
+me. It's no use saying I am sorry I wasn't more cautious. The mischief
+is done. I'll stick at nothing--as I have said before--to undo it. Only
+tell me what is the first step I am to take; and, as long as it don't
+part me from Blanche, rely on my taking it. Waiting to hear from you, I
+remain, dear Sir Patrick, yours in great perplexity, Arnold Brinkworth."
+
+Sir Patrick folded the letter, and looked at the two inclosures lying on
+the table. His eye was hard, his brow was frowning, as he put his hand
+to take up Anne's letter. The letter from Arnold's agent in Edinburgh
+lay nearer to him. As it happened, he took that first.
+
+It was short enough, and clearly enough written, to invite a reading
+before he put it down again. The lawyer reported that he had made the
+necessary inquiries at Glasgow, with this result. Anne had been traced
+to The Sheep's Head Hotel. She had lain there utterly helpless, from
+illness, until the beginning of September. She had been advertised,
+without result, in the Glasgow newspapers. On the 5th of September she
+had sufficiently recovered to be able to leave the hotel. She had been
+seen at the railway station on the same day--but from that point all
+trace of her had been lost once more. The lawyer had accordingly stopped
+the proceedings, and now waited further instructions from his client.
+
+This letter was not without its effect in encouraging Sir Patrick to
+suspend the harsh and hasty judgment of Anne, which any man, placed
+in his present situation, must have been inclined to form. Her illness
+claimed its small share of sympathy. Her friendless position--so plainly
+and so sadly revealed by the advertising in the newspapers--pleaded
+for merciful construction of faults committed, if faults there were.
+Gravely, but not angrily, Sir Patrick opened her letter--the letter that
+cast a doubt on his niece's marriage.
+
+Thus Anne Silvester wrote:
+
+
+
+"GLASGOW, _September_ 5.
+
+"DEAR MR. BRINKWORTH,--Nearly three weeks since I attempted to write to
+you from this place. I was seized by sudden illness while I was engaged
+over my letter; and from that time to this I have laid helpless in
+bed--very near, as they tell me, to death. I was strong enough to be
+dressed, and to sit up for a little while yesterday and the day before.
+To-day, I have made a better advance toward recovery. I can hold my pen
+and control my thoughts. The first use to which I put this improvement
+is to write these lines.
+
+"I am going (so far as I know) to surprise--possibly to alarm--you.
+There is no escaping from it, for you or for me; it must be done.
+
+"Thinking of how best to introduce what I am now obliged to say, I can
+find no better way than this. I must ask you to take your memory back to
+a day which we have both bitter reason to regret--the day when Geoffrey
+Delamayn sent you to see me at the inn at Craig Fernie.
+
+"You may possibly not remember--it unhappily produced no impression
+on you at the time--that I felt, and expressed, more than once on that
+occasion, a very great dislike to your passing me off on the people of
+the inn as your wife. It was necessary to my being permitted to remain
+at Craig Fernie that you should do so. I knew this; but still I shrank
+from it. It was impossible for me to contradict you, without involving
+you in the painful consequences, and running the risk of making a
+scandal which might find its way to Blanche's ears. I knew this also;
+but still my conscience reproached me. It was a vague feeling. I was
+quite unaware of the actual danger in which you were placing yourself,
+or I would have spoken out, no matter what came of it. I had what is
+called a presentiment that you were not acting discreetly--nothing
+more. As I love and honor my mother's memory--as I trust in the mercy of
+God--this is the truth.
+
+"You left the inn the next morning, and we have not met since.
+
+"A few days after you went away my anxieties grew more than I could bear
+alone. I went secretly to Windygates, and had an interview with Blanche.
+
+"She was absent for a few minutes from the room in which we had met.
+In that interval I saw Geoffrey Delamayn for the first time since I
+had left him at Lady Lundie's lawn-party. He treated me as if I was a
+stranger. He told me that he had found out all that had passed between
+us at the inn. He said he had taken a lawyer's opinion. Oh, Mr.
+Brinkworth! how can I break it to you? how can I write the words which
+repeat what he said to me next? It must be done. Cruel as it is, it
+must be done. He refused to my face to marr y me. He said I was married
+already. He said I was your wife.
+
+"Now you know why I have referred you to what I felt (and confessed
+to feeling) when we were together at Craig Fernie. If you think hard
+thoughts, and say hard words of me, I can claim no right to blame you. I
+am innocent--and yet it is my fault.
+
+"My head swims, and the foolish tears are rising in spite of me. I must
+leave off, and rest a little.
+
+"I have been sitting at the window, and watching the people in the
+street as they go by. They are all strangers. But, somehow, the sight
+of them seems to rest my mind. The hum of the great city gives me heart,
+and helps me to go on.
+
+"I can not trust myself to write of the man who has betrayed us both.
+Disgraced and broken as I am, there is something still left in me which
+lifts me above _him._ If he came repentant, at this moment, and offered
+me all that rank and wealth and worldly consideration can give, I would
+rather be what I am now than be his wife.
+
+"Let me speak of you; and (for Blanche's sake) let me speak of myself.
+
+"I ought, no doubt, to have waited to see you at Windygates, and to have
+told you at once of what had happened. But I was weak and ill and the
+shock of hearing what I heard fell so heavily on me that I fainted.
+After I came to myself I was so horrified, when I thought of you and
+Blanche that a sort of madness possessed me. I had but one idea--the
+idea of running away and hiding myself.
+
+"My mind got clearer and quieter on the way to this place; and, arrived
+here, I did what I hope and believe was the best thing I could do. I
+consulted two lawyers. They differed in opinion as to whether we were
+married or not--according to the law which decides on such things in
+Scotland. The first said Yes. The second said No--but advised me to
+write immediately and tell you the position in which you stood. I
+attempted to write the same day, and fell ill as you know.
+
+"Thank God, the delay that has happened is of no consequence. I asked
+Blanche, at Windygates, when you were to be married--and she told me not
+until the end of the autumn. It is only the fifth of September now. You
+have plenty of time before you. For all our sakes, make good use of it.
+
+"What are you to do?
+
+"Go at once to Sir Patrick Lundie, and show him this letter. Follow
+his advice--no matter how it may affect _me._ I should ill requite your
+kindness, I should be false indeed to the love I bear to Blanche, if
+I hesitated to brave any exposure that may now be necessary in your
+interests and in hers. You have been all that is generous, all that is
+delicate, all that is kind in this matter. You have kept my disgraceful
+secret--I am quite sure of it--with the fidelity of an honorable man who
+has had a woman's reputation placed in his charge. I release you, with
+my whole heart, dear Mr. Brinkworth, from your pledge. I entreat you, on
+my knees, to consider yourself free to reveal the truth. I will make any
+acknowledgment, on my side, that is needful under the circumstances--no
+matter how public it may be. Release yourself at any price; and then,
+and not till then, give back your regard to the miserable woman who has
+laden you with the burden of her sorrow, and darkened your life for a
+moment with the shadow of her shame.
+
+"Pray don't think there is any painful sacrifice involved in this. The
+quieting of my own mind is involved in it--and that is all.
+
+"What has life left for _me?_ Nothing but the barren necessity of
+living. When I think of the future now, my mind passes over the years
+that may be left to me in this world. Sometimes I dare to hope that the
+Divine Mercy of Christ--which once pleaded on earth for a woman like
+me--may plead, when death has taken me, for my spirit in Heaven.
+Sometimes I dare to hope that I may see my mother, and Blanche's mother,
+in the better world. Their hearts were bound together as the hearts of
+sisters while they were here; and they left to their children the legacy
+of their love. Oh, help me to say, if we meet again, that not in vain
+I promised to be a sister to Blanche! The debt I owe to her is the
+hereditary debt of my mother's gratitude. And what am I now? An obstacle
+in the way of the happiness of her life. Sacrifice me to that happiness,
+for God's sake! It is the one thing I have left to live for. Again
+and again I say it--I care nothing for myself. I have no right to be
+considered; I have no wish to be considered. Tell the whole truth about
+me, and call me to bear witness to it as publicly as you please!
+
+"I have waited a little, once more, trying to think, before I close my
+letter, what there may be still left to write.
+
+"I can not think of any thing left but the duty of informing you how you
+may find me if you wish to write--or if it is thought necessary that we
+should meet again.
+
+"One word before I tell you this.
+
+"It is impossible for me to guess what you will do, or what you will be
+advised to do by others, when you get my letter. I don't even know that
+you may not already have heard of what your position is from Geoffrey
+Delamayn himself. In this event, or in the event of your thinking it
+desirable to take Blanche into your confidence, I venture to suggest
+that you should appoint some person whom you can trust to see me on
+your behalf--or, if you can not do this that you should see me in the
+presence of a third person. The man who has not hesitated to betray us
+both, will not hesitate to misrepresent us in the vilest way, if he can
+do it in the future. For your own sake, let us be careful to give lying
+tongues no opportunity of assailing your place in Blanche's estimation.
+Don't act so as to risk putting yourself in a false position _again!_
+Don't let it be possible that a feeling unworthy of her should be roused
+in the loving and generous nature of your future wife!
+
+"This written, I may now tell you how to communicate with me after I
+have left this place.
+
+"You will find on the slip of paper inclosed the name and address of the
+second of the two lawyers whom I consulted in Glasgow. It is arranged
+between us that I am to inform him, by letter, of the next place to
+which I remove, and that he is to communicate the information either to
+you or to Sir Patrick Lundie, on your applying for it personally or by
+writing. I don't yet know myself where I may find refuge. Nothing is
+certain but that I can not, in my present state of weakness, travel far.
+
+"If you wonder why I move at all until I am stronger, I can only give a
+reason which may appear fanciful and overstrained.
+
+"I have been informed that I was advertised in the Glasgow newspapers
+during the time when I lay at this hotel, a stranger at the point of
+death. Trouble has perhaps made me morbidly suspicious. I am afraid of
+what may happen if I stay here, after my place of residence has been
+made publicly known. So, as soon as I can move, I go away in secret. It
+will be enough for me, if I can find rest and peace in some quiet place,
+in the country round Glasgow. You need feel no anxiety about my means
+of living. I have money enough for all that I need--and, if I get well
+again, I know how to earn my bread.
+
+"I send no message to Blanche--I dare not till this is over. Wait till
+she is your happy wife; and then give her a kiss, and say it comes from
+Anne.
+
+"Try and forgive me, dear Mr. Brinkworth. I have said all. Yours
+gratefully,
+
+"ANNE SILVESTER."
+
+
+
+Sir Patrick put the letter down with unfeigned respect for the woman who
+had written it.
+
+Something of the personal influence which Anne exercised more or less
+over all the men with whom she came in contact seemed to communicate
+itself to the old lawyer through the medium of her letter. His thoughts
+perversely wandered away from the serious and pressing question of his
+niece's position into a region of purely speculative inquiry relating to
+Anne. What infatuation (he asked himself) had placed that noble creature
+at the mercy of such a man as Geoffrey Delamayn?
+
+We have all, at one time or another in our lives, been perplexed as Sir
+Patrick was perplexed now.
+
+If we know any thing by experience, we know that women cast themselves
+away impulsively on unworthy men, and that men ruin themselves headlong
+for unworthy w omen. We have the institution of Divorce actually among
+us, existing mainly because the two sexes are perpetually placing
+themselves in these anomalous relations toward each other. And yet,
+at every fresh instance which comes before us, we persist in being
+astonished to find that the man and the woman have not chosen each other
+on rational and producible grounds! We expect human passion to act on
+logical principles; and human fallibility--with love for its guide--to
+be above all danger of making a mistake! Ask the wisest among Anne
+Silvester's sex what they saw to rationally justify them in choosing the
+men to whom they have given their hearts and their lives, and you will
+be putting a question to those wise women which they never once
+thought of putting to themselves. Nay, more still. Look into your own
+experience, and say frankly, Could you justify your own excellent
+choice at the time when you irrevocably made it? Could you have put your
+reasons on paper when you first owned to yourself that you loved him?
+And would the reasons have borne critical inspection if you had?
+
+Sir Patrick gave it up in despair. The interests of his niece were at
+stake. He wisely determined to rouse his mind by occupying himself with
+the practical necessities of the moment. It was essential to send an
+apology to the rector, in the first place, so as to leave the evening
+at his disposal for considering what preliminary course of conduct he
+should advise Arnold to pursue.
+
+After writing a few lines of apology to his partner at Piquet--assigning
+family business as the excuse for breaking his engagement--Sir Patrick
+rang the bell. The faithful Duncan appeared, and saw at once in his
+master s face that something had happened.
+
+"Send a man with this to the Rectory," said Sir Patrick. "I can't dine
+out to-day. I must have a chop at home."
+
+"I am afraid, Sir Patrick--if I may be excused for remarking it--you
+have had some bad news?"
+
+"The worst possible news, Duncan. I can't tell you about it now. Wait
+within hearing of the bell. In the mean time let nobody interrupt me. If
+the steward himself comes I can't see him."
+
+After thinking it over carefully, Sir Patrick decided that there was no
+alternative but to send a message to Arnold and Blanche, summoning them
+back to England in the first place. The necessity of questioning Arnold,
+in the minutest detail, as to every thing that had happened between
+Anne Silvester and himself at the Craig Fernie inn, was the first and
+foremost necessity of the case.
+
+At the same time it appeared to be desirable, for Blanche's sake, to
+keep her in ignorance, for the present at least, of what had happened.
+Sir Patrick met this difficulty with characteristic ingenuity and
+readiness of resource.
+
+He wrote a telegram to Arnold, expressed in the following terms:
+
+"Your letter and inclosures received. Return to Ham Farm as soon as you
+conveniently can. Keep the thing still a secret from Blanche. Tell her,
+as the reason for coming back, that the lost trace of Anne Silvester
+has been recovered, and that there may be reasons for her returning to
+England before any thing further can be done."
+
+Duncan having been dispatched to the station with this message, Duncan's
+master proceeded to calculate the question of time.
+
+Arnold would in all probability receive the telegram at Baden, on the
+next day, September the seventeenth. In three days more he and Blanche
+might be expected to reach Ham Farm. During the interval thus placed
+at his disposal Sir Patrick would have ample time in which to recover
+himself, and to see his way to acting for the best in the alarming
+emergency that now confronted him.
+
+
+
+On the nineteenth Sir Patrick received a telegram informing him that
+he might expect to see the young couple late in the evening on the
+twentieth.
+
+Late in the evening the sound of carriage-wheels was audible on the
+drive; and Sir Patrick, opening the door of his room, heard the familiar
+voices in the hall.
+
+"Well!" cried Blanche, catching sight of him at the door, "is Anne
+found?"
+
+"Not just yet, my dear."
+
+"Is there news of her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Am I in time to be of use?"
+
+"In excellent time. You shall hear all about it to-morrow. Go and take
+off your traveling-things, and come down again to supper as soon as you
+can."
+
+Blanche kissed him, and went on up stairs. She had, as her uncle thought
+in the glimpse he had caught of her, been improved by her marriage. It
+had quieted and steadied her. There were graces in her look and manner
+which Sir Patrick had not noticed before. Arnold, on his side, appeared
+to less advantage. He was restless and anxious; his position with Miss
+Silvester seemed to be preying on his mind. As soon as his young wife's
+back was turned, he appealed to Sir Patrick in an eager whisper.
+
+"I hardly dare ask you what I have got it on my mind to say," he began.
+"I must bear it if you are angry with me, Sir Patrick. But--only tell me
+one thing. Is there a way out of it for us? Have you thought of that?"
+
+"I can not trust myself to speak of it clearly and composedly to-night,"
+said Sir Patrick. "Be satisfied if I tell you that I have thought it all
+out--and wait for the rest till to-morrow."
+
+Other persons concerned in the coming drama had had past difficulties
+to think out, and future movements to consider, during the interval
+occupied by Arnold and Blanche on their return journey to England.
+Between the seventeenth and the twentieth of September Geoffrey Delamayn
+had left Swanhaven, on the way to his new training quarters in the
+neighborhood in which the Foot-Race at Fulham was to be run. Between
+the same dates, also, Captain Newenden had taken the opportunity, while
+passing through London on his way south, to consult his solicitors. The
+object of the conference was to find means of discovering an anonymous
+letter-writer in Scotland, who had presumed to cause serious annoyance
+to Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Thus, by ones and twos, converging from widely distant quarters, they
+were now beginning to draw together, in the near neighborhood of the
+great city which was soon destined to assemble them all, for the first
+and the last time in this world, face to face.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.
+
+THE WAY OUT.
+
+BREAKFAST was just over. Blanche, seeing a pleasantly-idle morning
+before her, proposed to Arnold to take a stroll in the grounds.
+
+The garden was blight with sunshine, and the bride was bright with
+good-humor. She caught her uncle's eye, looking at her admiringly, and
+paid him a little compliment in return. "You have no idea," she said,
+"how nice it is to be back at Ham Farm!"
+
+"I am to understand then," rejoined Sir Patrick, "that I am forgiven for
+interrupting the honey-moon?"
+
+"You are more than forgiven for interrupting it," said Blanche--"you are
+thanked. As a married woman," she proceeded, with the air of a matron of
+at least twenty years' standing, "I have been thinking the subject over;
+and I have arrived at the conclusion that a honey-moon which takes the
+form of a tour on the Continent, is one of our national abuses which
+stands in need of reform. When you are in love with each other (consider
+a marriage without love to be no marriage at all), what do you want with
+the excitement of seeing strange places? Isn't it excitement enough, and
+isn't it strange enough, to a newly-married woman to see such a total
+novelty as a husband? What is the most interesting object on the face
+of creation to a man in Arnold's position? The Alps? Certainly not! The
+most interesting object is the wife. And the proper time for a bridal
+tour is the time--say ten or a dozen years later--when you are beginning
+(not to get tired of each other, that's out of the question) but to
+get a little too well used to each other. Then take your tour to
+Switzerland--and you give the Alps a chance. A succession of honey-moon
+trips, in the autumn of married life--there is my proposal for an
+improvement on the present state of things! Come into the garden,
+Arnold; and let us calculate how long it will be before we get weary of
+each other, and want the beauties of nature to keep us company."
+
+Arnold looked appealingly to Sir Patrick. Not a word had passed between
+them, as yet, on the serious subject of Anne Silvester's letter. Sir
+Patrick undertook the responsibility of making the necessary excuses to
+Blanche.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "if I ask leave to interfere with your monopoly
+of Arnold for a little while. I have something to say to him about
+his property in Scotland. Will you leave him with me, if I promise to
+release him as soon as possible?"
+
+Blanche smiled graciously. "You shall have him as long as you like,
+uncle. There's your hat," she added, tossing it to her husband, gayly.
+"I brought it in for you when I got my own. You will find me on the
+lawn."
+
+She nodded, and went out.
+
+"Let me hear the worst at once, Sir Patrick," Arnold began. "Is it
+serious? Do you think I am to blame?"
+
+"I will answer your last question first," said Sir Patrick. "Do I think
+you are to blame? Yes--in this way. You committed an act of unpardonable
+rashness when you consented to go, as Geoffrey Delamayn's messenger,
+to Miss Silvester at the inn. Having once placed yourself in that false
+position, you could hardly have acted, afterward, otherwise than you
+did. You could not be expected to know the Scotch law. And, as an
+honorable man, you were bound to keep a secret confided to you, in which
+the reputation of a woman was concerned. Your first and last error
+in this matter, was the fatal error of involving yourself in
+responsibilities which belonged exclusively to another man."
+
+"The man had saved my life." pleaded Arnold--"and I believed I was
+giving service for service to my dearest friend."
+
+"As to your other question," proceeded Sir Patrick. "Do I consider your
+position to be a serious one? Most assuredly, I do! So long as we are
+not absolutely certain that Blanche is your lawful wife, the position is
+more than serious: it is unendurable. I maintain the opinion, mind,
+out of which (thanks to your honorable silence) that scoundrel Delamayn
+contrived to cheat me. I told him, what I now tell you--that your
+sayings and doings at Craig Fernie, do _not_ constitute a marriage,
+according to Scottish law. But," pursued Sir Patrick, holding up a
+warning forefinger at Arnold, "you have read it in Miss Silvester's
+letter, and you may now take it also as a result of my experience, that
+no individual opinion, in a matter of this kind, is to be relied on.
+Of two lawyers, consulted by Miss Silvester at Glasgow, one draws a
+directly opposite conclusion to mine, and decides that you and she are
+married. I believe him to be wrong, but in our situation, we have no
+other choice than to boldly encounter the view of the case which he
+represents. In plain English, we must begin by looking the worst in the
+face."
+
+Arnold twisted the traveling hat which Blanche had thrown to him,
+nervously, in both hands. "Supposing the worst comes to the worst," he
+asked, "what will happen?"
+
+Sir Patrick shook his head.
+
+"It is not easy to tell you," he said, "without entering into the legal
+aspect of the case. I shall only puzzle you if I do that. Suppose we
+look at the matter in its social bearings--I mean, as it may possibly
+affect you and Blanche, and your unborn children?"
+
+Arnold gave the hat a tighter twist than ever. "I never thought of the
+children," he said, with a look of consternation.
+
+"The children may present themselves," returned Sir Patrick, dryly, "for
+all that. Now listen. It may have occurred to your mind that the
+plain way out of our present dilemma is for you and Miss Silvester,
+respectively, to affirm what we know to be the truth--namely, that you
+never had the slightest intention of marrying each other. Beware of
+founding any hopes on any such remedy as that! If you reckon on it, you
+reckon without Geoffrey Delamayn. He is interested, remember, in proving
+you and Miss Silvester to be man and wife. Circumstances may arise--I
+won't waste time in guessing at what they may be--which will enable a
+third person to produce the landlady and the waiter at Craig Fernie
+in evidence against you--and to assert that your declaration and Miss
+Silvester's declaration are the result of collusion between you two.
+Don't start! Such things have happened before now. Miss Silvester is
+poor; and Blanche is rich. You may be made to stand in the awkward
+position of a man who is denying his marriage with a poor woman,
+in order to establish his marriage with an heiress: Miss Silvester
+presumably aiding the fraud, with two strong interests of her own as
+inducements--the interest of asserting the claim to be the wife of a man
+of rank, and the interest of earning her reward in money for resigning
+you to Blanche. There is a case which a scoundrel might set up--and with
+some appearance of truth too--in a court of justice!"
+
+"Surely, the law wouldn't allow him to do that?"
+
+"The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for
+the use of its brains and its time. Let that view of the matter alone
+now. Delamayn can set the case going, if he likes, without applying to
+any lawyer to help him. He has only to cause a report to reach Blanche's
+ears which publicly asserts that she is not your lawful wife. With her
+temper, do you suppose she would leave us a minute's peace till the
+matter was cleared up? Or take it the other way. Comfort yourself, if
+you will, with the idea that this affair will trouble nobody in the
+present. How are we to know it may not turn up in the future under
+circumstances which may place the legitimacy of your children in doubt?
+We have a man to deal with who sticks at nothing. We have a state of
+the law which can only be described as one scandalous uncertainty from
+beginning to end. And we have two people (Bishopriggs and Mrs. Inchbare)
+who can, and will, speak to what took place between you and Anne
+Silvester at the inn. For Blanche's sake, and for the sake of your
+unborn children, we must face this matter on the spot--and settle it at
+once and forever. The question before us now is this. Shall we open the
+proceedings by communicating with Miss Silvester or not?"
+
+
+
+At that important point in the conversation they were interrupted by the
+reappearance of Blanche. Had she, by any accident, heard what they had
+been saying?
+
+No; it was the old story of most interruptions. Idleness that considers
+nothing, had come to look at Industry that bears every thing. It is
+a law of nature, apparently, that the people in this world who have
+nothing to do can not support the sight of an uninterrupted occupation
+in the hands of their neighbors. Blanche produced a new specimen from
+Arnold's collection of hats. "I have been thinking about it in the
+garden," she said, quite seriously. "Here is the brown one with the high
+crown. You look better in this than in the white one with the low crown.
+I have come to change them, that's all." She changed the hats with
+Arnold, and went on, without the faintest suspicion that she was in the
+way. "Wear the brown one when you come out--and come soon, dear. I won't
+stay an instant longer, uncle--I wouldn't interrupt you for the world."
+She kissed her hand to Sir Patrick, and smiled at her husband, and went
+out.
+
+
+
+"What were we saying?" asked Arnold. "It's awkward to be interrupted in
+this way, isn't it?"
+
+"If I know any thing of female human nature," returned Sir Patrick,
+composedly, "your wife will be in and out of the room, in that way, the
+whole morning. I give her ten minutes, Arnold, before she changes her
+mind again on the serious and weighty subject of the white hat and the
+brown. These little interruptions--otherwise quite charming--raised
+a doubt in my mind. Wouldn't it be wise (I ask myself), if we made a
+virtue of necessity, and took Blanche into the conversation? What do you
+say to calling her back and telling her the truth?"
+
+Arnold started, and changed color.
+
+"There are difficulties in the way," he said.
+
+"My good fellow! at every step of this business there are difficulties
+in the way. Sooner or later, your wife must know what has happened. The
+time for telling her is, no doubt, a matter for your decision, not mine.
+All I say is this. Consider whether the disclosure won't come from you
+with a better grace, if you make it before you are fairly driven to the
+wall, and obliged to open your lips."
+
+Arnold rose to his fee t--took a turn in the room--sat down again--and
+looked at Sir Patrick, with the expression of a thoroughly bewildered
+and thoroughly helpless man.
+
+"I don't know what to do," he said. "It beats me altogether. The truth
+is, Sir Patrick, I was fairly forced, at Craig Fernie, into deceiving
+Blanche--in what might seem to her a very unfeeling, and a very
+unpardonable way."
+
+"That sounds awkward! What do you mean?"
+
+"I'll try and tell you. You remember when you went to the inn to see
+Miss Silvester? Well, being there privately at the time, of course I was
+obliged to keep out of your way."
+
+"I see! And, when Blanche came afterward, you were obliged to hide from
+Blanche, exactly as you had hidden from me?"
+
+"Worse even than that! A day or two later, Blanche took me into her
+confidence. She spoke to me of her visit to the inn, as if I was a
+perfect stranger to the circumstances. She told me to my face, Sir
+Patrick, of the invisible man who had kept so strangely out of her
+way--without the faintest suspicion that I was the man. And I never
+opened my lips to set her right! I was obliged to be silent, or I must
+have betrayed Miss Silvester. What will Blanche think of me, if I tell
+her now? That's the question!"
+
+Blanche's name had barely passed her husband's lips before Blanche
+herself verified Sir Patrick's prediction, by reappearing at the open
+French window, with the superseded white hat in her hand.
+
+"Haven't you done yet!" she exclaimed. "I am shocked, uncle, to
+interrupt you again--but these horrid hats of Arnold's are beginning to
+weigh upon my mind. On reconsideration, I think the white hat with the
+low crown is the most becoming of the two. Change again, dear. Yes! the
+brown hat is hideous. There's a beggar at the gate. Before I go quite
+distracted, I shall give him the brown hat, and have done with the
+difficulty in that manner. Am I very much in the way of business? I'm
+afraid I must appear restless? Indeed, I _am_ restless. I can't imagine
+what is the matter with me this morning."
+
+"I can tell you," said Sir Patrick, in his gravest and dryest manner.
+"You are suffering, Blanche, from a malady which is exceedingly
+common among the young ladies of England. As a disease it is quite
+incurable--and the name of it is Nothing-to-Do."
+
+Blanche dropped her uncle a smart little courtesy. "You might have told
+me I was in the way in fewer words than that." She whisked round, kicked
+the disgraced brown hat out into the veranda before her, and left the
+two gentlemen alone once more.
+
+
+
+"Your position with your wife, Arnold," resumed Sir Patrick, returning
+gravely to the matter in hand, "is certainly a difficult one." He
+paused, thinking of the evening when he and Blanche had illustrated
+the vagueness of Mrs. Inchbare's description of the man at the inn, by
+citing Arnold himself as being one of the hundreds of innocent people
+who answered to it! "Perhaps," he added, "the situation is even more
+difficult than you suppose. It would have been certainly easier for
+_you_--and it would have looked more honorable in _her_ estimation--if
+you had made the inevitable confession before your marriage. I am, in
+some degree, answerable for your not having done this--as well as for
+the far more serious dilemma with Miss Silvester in which you now
+stand. If I had not innocently hastened your marriage with Blanche,
+Miss Silvester's admirable letter would have reached us in ample time to
+prevent mischief. It's useless to dwell on that now. Cheer up, Arnold!
+I am bound to show you the way out of the labyrinth, no matter what the
+difficulties may be--and, please God, I will do it!"
+
+He pointed to a table at the other end of the room, on which writing
+materials were placed. "I hate moving the moment I have had my
+breakfast," he said. "We won't go into the library. Bring me the pen and
+ink here."
+
+"Are you going to write to Miss Silvester?"
+
+"That is the question before us which we have not settled yet. Before
+I decide, I want to be in possession of the facts--down to the smallest
+detail of what took place between you and Miss Silvester at the inn.
+There is only one way of getting at those facts. I am going to examine
+you as if I had you before me in the witness-box in court."
+
+With that preface, and with Arnold's letter from Baden in his hand as a
+brief to speak from, Sir Patrick put his questions in clear and endless
+succession; and Arnold patiently and faithfully answered them all.
+
+The examination proceeded uninterruptedly until it had reached that
+point in the progress of events at which Anne had crushed Geoffrey
+Delamayn's letter in her hand, and had thrown it from her indignantly to
+the other end of the room. There, for the first time, Sir Patrick
+dipped his pen in the ink, apparently intending to take a note. "Be very
+careful here," he said; "I want to know every thing that you can tell me
+about that letter."
+
+"The letter is lost," said Arnold.
+
+"The letter has been stolen by Bishopriggs," returned Sir Patrick, "and
+is in the possession of Bishopriggs at this moment."
+
+"Why, you know more about it than I do!" exclaimed Arnold.
+
+"I sincerely hope not. I don't know what was inside the letter. Do you?"
+
+"Yes. Part of it at least."
+
+"Part of it?"
+
+"There were two letters written, on the same sheet of paper," said
+Arnold. "One of them was written by Geoffrey Delamayn--and that is the
+one I know about."
+
+Sir Patrick started. His face brightened; he made a hasty note. "Go on,"
+he said, eagerly. "How came the letters to be written on the same sheet?
+Explain that!"
+
+Arnold explained that Geoffrey, in the absence of any thing else to
+write his excuses on to Anne, had written to her on the fourth or blank
+page of a letter which had been addressed to him by Anne herself.
+
+"Did you read that letter?" asked Sir Patrick.
+
+"I might have read it if I had liked."
+
+"And you didn't read it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Out of delicacy."
+
+Even Sir Patrick's carefully trained temper was not proof against this.
+"That is the most misplaced act of delicacy I ever heard of in my life!"
+cried the old gentleman, warmly. "Never mind! it's useless to regret
+it now. At any rate, you read Delamayn's answer to Miss Silvester's
+letter?"
+
+"Yes--I did."
+
+"Repeat it--as nearly as you can remember at this distance of time."
+
+"It was so short," said Arnold, "that there is hardly any thing to
+repeat. As well as I remember, Geoffrey said he was called away to
+London by his father's illness. He told Miss Silvester to stop where she
+was; and he referred her to me, as messenger. That's all I recollect of
+it now."
+
+"Cudgel your brains, my good fellow! this is very important. Did he make
+no allusion to his engagement to marry Miss Silvester at Craig Fernie?
+Didn't he try to pacify her by an apology of some sort?"
+
+The question roused Arnold's memory to make another effort.
+
+"Yes," he answered. "Geoffrey said something about being true to his
+engagement, or keeping his promise or words to that effect."
+
+"You're sure of what you say now?"
+
+"I am certain of it."
+
+Sir Patrick made another note.
+
+"Was the letter signed?" he asked, when he had done.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And dated?"
+
+"Yes." Arnold's memory made a second effort, after he had given his
+second affirmative answer. "Wait a little," he said. "I remember
+something else about the letter. It was not only dated. The time of day
+at which it was written was put as well."
+
+"How came he to do that?"
+
+"I suggested it. The letter was so short I felt ashamed to deliver it
+as it stood. I told him to put the time--so as to show her that he was
+obliged to write in a hurry. He put the time when the train started; and
+(I think) the time when the letter was written as well."
+
+"And you delivered that letter to Miss Silvester, with your own hand, as
+soon as you saw her at the inn?"
+
+"I did."
+
+Sir Patrick made a third note, and pushed the paper away from him with
+an air of supreme satisfaction.
+
+"I always suspected that lost letter to be an important document," he
+said--"or Bishopriggs would never have stolen it. We must get possession
+of it, Arnold, at any sacrifice. The first thing to be done (exactly
+as I anticipated), is to write to the Glasgow lawyer, and find Miss
+Silvester."
+
+"Wait a little!" cried a voice at the veranda. "Don't forget that I
+have come back from Baden to help you!"
+
+Sir Patrick and Arnold both looked up. This time Blanche had heard the
+last words that had passed between them. She sat down at the table by
+Sir Patrick's side, and laid her hand caressingly on his shoulder.
+
+"You are quite right, uncle," she said. "I _am_ suffering this morning
+from the malady of having nothing to do. Are you going to write to Anne?
+Don't. Let me write instead."
+
+Sir Patrick declined to resign the pen.
+
+"The person who knows Miss Silvester's address," he said, "is a lawyer
+in Glasgow. I am going to write to the lawyer. When he sends us word
+where she is--then, Blanche, will be the time to employ your good
+offices in winning back your friend."
+
+He drew the writing materials once more with in his reach, and,
+suspending the remainder of Arnold's examination for the present, began
+his letter to Mr. Crum.
+
+Blanche pleaded hard for an occupation of some sort. "Can nobody give
+me something to do?" she asked. "Glasgow is such a long way off, and
+waiting is such weary work. Don't sit there staring at me, Arnold! Can't
+you suggest something?"
+
+Arnold, for once, displayed an unexpected readiness of resource.
+
+"If you want to write," he said, "you owe Lady Lundie a letter. It's
+three days since you heard from her--and you haven't answered her yet."
+
+Sir Patrick paused, and looked up quickly from his writing-desk.
+
+"Lady Lundie?" he muttered, inquiringly.
+
+"Yes," said Blanche. "It's quite true; I owe her a letter. And of course
+I ought to tell her we have come back to England. She will be finely
+provoked when she hears why!"
+
+The prospect of provoking Lady Lundie seemed to rouse Blanche s dormant
+energies. She took a sheet of her uncle's note-paper, and began writing
+her answer then and there.
+
+Sir Patrick completed his communication to the lawyer--after a look at
+Blanche, which expressed any thing rather than approval of her present
+employment. Having placed his completed note in the postbag, he silently
+signed to Arnold to follow him into the garden. They went out together,
+leaving Blanche absorbed over her letter to her step-mother.
+
+"Is my wife doing any thing wrong?" asked Arnold, who had noticed the
+look which Sir Patrick had cast on Blanche.
+
+"Your wife is making mischief as fast as her fingers can spread it."
+
+Arnold stared. "She must answer Lady Lundie's letter," he said.
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"And she must tell Lady Lundie we have come back."
+
+"I don't deny it."
+
+"Then what is the objection to her writing?"
+
+Sir Patrick took a pinch of snuff--and pointed with his ivory cane to
+the bees humming busily about the flower-beds in the sunshine of the
+autumn morning.
+
+"I'll show you the objection," he said. "Suppose Blanche told one of
+those inveterately intrusive insects that the honey in the flowers
+happens, through an unexpected accident, to have come to an end--do
+you think he would take the statement for granted? No. He would plunge
+head-foremost into the nearest flower, and investigate it for himself."
+
+"Well?" said Arnold.
+
+"Well--there is Blanche in the breakfast-room telling Lady Lundie that
+the bridal tour happens, through an unexpected accident, to have come
+to an end. Do you think Lady Lundie is the sort of person to take the
+statement for granted? Nothing of the sort! Lady Lundie, like the
+bee, will insist on investigating for herself. How it will end, if she
+discovers the truth--and what new complications she may not introduce
+into a matter which, Heaven knows, is complicated enough already--I
+leave you to imagine. _My_ poor powers of prevision are not equal to
+it."
+
+Before Arnold could answer, Blanche joined them from the breakfast-room.
+
+"I've done it," she said. "It was an awkward letter to write--and it's a
+comfort to have it over."
+
+"You have done it, my dear," remarked Sir Patrick, quietly. "And it may
+be a comfort. But it's not over."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I think, Blanche, we shall hear from your step-mother by return of
+post."
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-EIGHTH.
+
+THE NEWS FROM GLASGOW.
+
+THE letters to Lady Lundie and to Mr. Crum having been dispatched
+on Monday, the return of the post might be looked for on Wednesday
+afternoon at Ham Farm.
+
+Sir Patrick and Arnold held more than one private consultation, during
+the interval, on the delicate and difficult subject of admitting Blanche
+to a knowledge of what had happened. The wise elder advised and the
+inexperienced junior listened. "Think of it," said Sir Patrick; "and do
+it." And Arnold thought of it--and left it undone.
+
+Let those who feel inclined to blame him remember that he had only been
+married a fortnight. It is hard, surely, after but two weeks' possession
+of your wife, to appear before her in the character of an offender on
+trial--and to find that an angel of retribution has been thrown into the
+bargain by the liberal destiny which bestowed on you the woman whom you
+adore!
+
+They were all three at home on the Wednesday afternoon, looking out for
+the postman.
+
+The correspondence delivered included (exactly as Sir Patrick had
+foreseen) a letter from Lady Lundie. Further investigation, on the
+far more interesting subject of the expected news from Glasgow,
+revealed--nothing. The lawyer had not answered Sir Patrick's inquiry by
+return of post.
+
+"Is that a bad sign?" asked Blanche.
+
+"It is a sign that something has happened," answered her uncle. "Mr.
+Crum is possibly expecting to receive some special information, and is
+waiting on the chance of being able to communicate it. We must hope, my
+dear, in to-morrow's post."
+
+"Open Lady Lundie's letter in the mean time," said Blanche. "Are you
+sure it is for you--and not for me?"
+
+There was no doubt about it. Her ladyship's reply was ominously
+addressed to her ladyship's brother-in-law. "I know what that means."
+said Blanche, eying her uncle eagerly while he was reading the letter.
+"If you mention Anne's name you insult my step-mother. I have mentioned
+it freely. Lady Lundie is mortally offended with me."
+
+Rash judgment of youth! A lady who takes a dignified attitude, in
+a family emergency, is never mortally offended--she is only deeply
+grieved. Lady Lundie took a dignified attitude. "I well know," wrote
+this estimable and Christian woman, "that I have been all along regarded
+in the light of an intruder by the family connections of my late beloved
+husband. But I was hardly prepared to find myself entirely shut out
+from all domestic confidence, at a time when some serious domestic
+catastrophe has but too evidently taken place. I have no desire, dear
+Sir Patrick, to intrude. Feeling it, however, to be quite inconsistent
+with a due regard for my own position--after what has happened--to
+correspond with Blanche, I address myself to the head of the family,
+purely in the interests of propriety. Permit me to ask whether--under
+circumstances which appear to be serious enough to require the recall of
+my step-daughter and her husband from their wedding tour--you think it
+DECENT to keep the widow of the late Sir Thomas Lundie entirely in the
+dark? Pray consider this--not at all out of regard for Me!--but out of
+regard for your own position with Society. Curiosity is, as you know,
+foreign to my nature. But when this dreadful scandal (whatever it may
+be) comes out--which, dear Sir Patrick, it can not fail to do--what will
+the world think, when it asks for Lady Lundie's, opinion, and hears that
+Lady Lundie knew nothing about it? Whichever way you may decide I shall
+take no offense. I may possibly be wounded--but that won't matter. My
+little round of duties will find me still earnest, still cheerful.
+And even if you shut me out, my best wishes will find their way,
+nevertheless, to Ham Farm. May I add--without encountering a sneer--that
+the prayers of a lonely woman are offered for the welfare of all?"
+
+"Well?" said Blanche.
+
+Sir Patrick folded up the letter, and put it in his pocket.
+
+"You have your step-mother's best wishes, my dear." Having answered in
+those terms, he bowed to his niece with his best grace, and walked out
+of the room.
+
+"Do I think it decent," he repeated to himself, as he closed the door,
+"to leave the widow of the late Sir Thomas Lundie in the dark? When a
+lady's temper is a little ruffled, I think it more than decent, I think
+it absolutely desirable, to let that lady have the last word." He went
+into the library, and dropped his sister-in-law's remonstrance into a
+box, labeled "Unanswered Letters." Having got rid of it in that way, he
+hummed his favorite little Scotch air--and put on his hat, and went out
+to sun himself in the garden.
+
+Meanwhile, Blanche was not quite satisfied with Sir Patrick's reply. She
+appealed to her husband. "There is something wrong," she said--"and my
+uncle is hiding it from me."
+
+Arnold could have desired no better opportunity than she had offered to
+him, in those words, for making the long-deferred disclosure to her of
+the truth. He lifted his eyes to Blanche's face. By an unhappy fatality
+she was looking charmingly that morning. How would she look if he told
+her the story of the hiding at the inn? Arnold was still in love with
+her--and Arnold said nothing.
+
+
+
+The next day's post brought not only the anticipated letter from Mr.
+Crum, but an unexpected Glasgow newspaper as well.
+
+This time Blanche had no reason to complain that her uncle kept his
+correspondence a secret from her. After reading the lawyer's letter,
+with an interest and agitation which showed that the contents had taken
+him by surprise, he handed it to Arnold and his niece. "Bad news there,"
+he said. "We must share it together."
+
+After acknowledging the receipt of Sir Patrick's letter of inquiry,
+Mr. Crum began by stating all that he knew of Miss Silvester's
+movements--dating from the time when she had left the Sheep's Head
+Hotel. About a fortnight since he had received a letter from her
+informing him that she had found a suitable place of residence in a
+village near Glasgow. Feeling a strong interest in Miss Silvester, Mr.
+Crum had visited her some few days afterward. He had satisfied himself
+that she was lodging with respectable people, and was as comfortably
+situated as circumstances would permit. For a week more he had heard
+nothing from the lady. At the expiration of that time he had received
+a letter from her, telling him that she had read something in a Glasgow
+newspaper, of that day's date, which seriously concerned herself, and
+which would oblige her to travel northward immediately as fast as her
+strength would permit. At a later period, when she would be more certain
+of her own movements, she engaged to write again, and let Mr. Crum know
+where he might communicate with her if necessary. In the mean time, she
+could only thank him for his kindness, and beg him to take care of any
+letters or messages which might be left for her. Since the receipt of
+this communication the lawyer had heard nothing further. He had waited
+for the morning's post in the hope of being able to report that he had
+received some further intelligence. The hope had not been realized. He
+had now stated all that he knew himself thus far--and he had forwarded
+a copy of the newspaper alluded to by Miss Silvester, on the chance
+that an examination of it by Sir Patrick might possibly lead to further
+discoveries. In conclusion, he pledged himself to write again the moment
+he had any information to send.
+
+Blanche snatched up the newspaper, and opened it. "Let me look!" she
+said. "I can find what Anne saw here if any body can!"
+
+She ran her eye eagerly over column after column and page after
+page--and dropped the newspaper on her lap with a gesture of despair.
+
+"Nothing!" she exclaimed. "Nothing any where, that I can see, to
+interest Anne. Nothing to interest any body--except Lady Lundie," she
+went on, brushing the newspaper off her lap. "It turns out to be all
+true, Arnold, at Swanhaven. Geoffrey Delamayn is going to marry Mrs.
+Glenarm."
+
+"What!" cried Arnold; the idea instantly flashing on him that this was
+the news which Anne had seen.
+
+Sir Patrick gave him a warning look, and picked up the newspaper from
+the floor.
+
+"I may as well run through it, Blanche, and make quite sure that you
+have missed nothing," he said.
+
+The report to which Blanche had referred was among the paragraphs
+arranged under the heading of "Fashionable News." "A matrimonial
+alliance" (the Glasgow journal announced) "was in prospect between the
+Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn and the lovely and accomplished relict of
+the late Mathew Glenarm, Esq., formerly Miss Newenden." The marriage
+would, in all probability, "be solemnized in Scotland, before the end of
+the present autumn;" and the wedding breakfast, it was whispered, "would
+collect a large and fashionable party at Swanhaven Lodge."
+
+Sir Patrick handed the newspaper silently to Arnold. It was plain to any
+one who knew Anne Silvester's story that those were the words which had
+found their fatal way to her in her place of rest. The inference that
+followed seemed to be hardly less clear. But one intelligible object,
+in the opinion of Sir Patrick, could be at the end of her journey to
+the north. The deserted woman had rallied the last relics of her old
+energy--and had devoted herself to the desperate purpose of stopping the
+marriage of Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Blanche was the first to break the silence.
+
+"It seems like a fatality," she said. "Perpetual failure! Perpetual
+disappointment! Are Anne and I doomed never to meet again?"
+
+She looked at her uncle. Sir Patrick showed none of his customary
+cheerfulness in the face of disaster.
+
+"She has promised to write to Mr. Crum," he said. "And Mr. Crum has
+promised to let us know when he hears from her. That is the only
+prospect before us. We must accept it as resignedly as we can."
+
+Blanche wandered out listlessly among the flowers in the conservatory.
+Sir Patrick made no secret of the impression produced upon him by Mr.
+Crum's letter, when he and Arnold were left alone.
+
+"There is no denying," he said, "that matters have taken a very serious
+turn. My plans and calculations are all thrown out. It is impossible to
+foresee what new mischief may not come of it, if those two women meet;
+or what desperate act Delamayn may not commit, if he finds himself
+driven to the wall. As things are, I own frankly I don't know what to
+do next. A great light of the Presbyterian Church," he added, with
+a momentary outbreak of his whimsical humor, "once declared, in my
+hearing, that the invention of printing was nothing more or less than a
+proof of the intellectual activity of the Devil. Upon my honor, I feel
+for the first time in my life inclined to agree with him."
+
+He mechanically took up the Glasgow journal, which Arnold had laid
+aside, while he spoke.
+
+"What's this!" he exclaimed, as a name caught his eye in the first line
+of the newspaper at which he happened to look. "Mrs. Glenarm again! Are
+they turning the iron-master's widow into a public character?"
+
+There the name of the widow was, unquestionably; figuring for the
+second time in type, in a letter of the gossiping sort, supplied by an
+"Occasional Correspondent," and distinguished by the title of "Sayings
+and Doings in the North." After tattling pleasantly of the prospects
+of the shooting season, of the fashions from Paris, of an accident to a
+tourist, and of a scandal in the Scottish Kirk, the writer proceeded
+to the narrative of a case of interest, relating to a marriage in the
+sphere known (in the language of footmen) as the sphere of "high life."
+
+Considerable sensation (the correspondent announced) had been caused in
+Perth and its neighborhood, by the exposure of an anonymous attempt
+at extortion, of which a lady of distinction had lately been made
+the object. As her name had already been publicly mentioned in an
+application to the magistrates, there could be no impropriety in stating
+that the lady in question was Mrs. Glenarm--whose approaching union with
+the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn was alluded to in another column of the
+journal.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm had, it appeared, received an anonymous letter, on the
+first day of her arrival as guest at the house of a friend, residing
+in the neighborhood of Perth. The letter warned her that there was an
+obstacle, of which she was herself probably not aware, in the way of
+her projected marriage with Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn. That gentleman had
+seriously compromised himself with another lady; and the lady would
+oppose his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm, with proof in writing to produce in
+support of her claim. The proof was contained in two letters exchanged
+between the parties, and signed by their names; and the correspondence
+was placed at Mrs. Glenarm's disposal, on two conditions, as follows:
+
+First, that she should offer a sufficiently liberal price to induce the
+present possessor of the letters to part with them. Secondly, that she
+should consent to adopt such a method of paying the money as should
+satisfy the person that he was in no danger of finding himself brought
+within reach of the law. The answer to these two proposals was
+directed to be made through the medium of an advertisement in the local
+newspaper--distinguished by this address, "To a Friend in the Dark."
+
+Certain turns of expression, and one or two mistakes in spelling,
+pointed to this insolent letter as being, in all probability, the
+production of a Scotchman, in the lower ranks of life. Mrs. Glenarm had
+at once shown it to her nearest relative, Captain Newenden. The captain
+had sought legal advice in Perth. It had been decided, after due
+consideration, to insert the advertisement demanded, and to
+take measures to entrap the writer of the letter into revealing
+himself--without, it is needless to add, allowing the fellow really to
+profit by his attempted act of extortion.
+
+The cunning of the "Friend in the Dark" (whoever he might be) had, on
+trying the proposed experiment, proved to be more than a match for the
+lawyers. He had successfully eluded not only the snare first set for
+him, but others subsequently laid. A second, and a third, anonymous
+letter, one more impudent than the other had been received by Mrs.
+Glenarm, assuring that lady and the friends who were acting for her that
+they were only wasting time and raising the price which would be asked
+for the correspondence, by the course they were taking. Captain Newenden
+had thereupon, in default of knowing what other course to pursue,
+appealed publicly to the city magistrates, and a reward had been
+offered, under the sanction of the municipal authorities, for the
+discovery of the man. This proceeding also having proved quite
+fruitless, it was understood that the captain had arranged, with the
+concurrence of his English solicitors, to place the matter in the hands
+of an experienced officer of the London police.
+
+Here, so far as the newspaper correspondent was aware, the affair rested
+for the present.
+
+It was only necessary to add, that Mrs. Glenarm had left the
+neighborhood of Perth, in order to escape further annoyance; and had
+placed herself under the protection of friends in another part of the
+county. Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn, whose fair fame had been assailed (it
+was needless, the correspondent added in parenthesis, to say how
+groundlessly), was understood to have expressed, not only the
+indignation natural under the circumstances but also his extreme regret
+at not finding himself in a position to aid Captain Newenden's efforts
+to bring the anonymous slanderer to justice. The honorable gentleman
+was, as the sporting public were well aware, then in course of strict
+training for his forthcoming appearance at the Fulham Foot-Race. So
+important was it considered that his mind should not be harassed by
+annoyances, in his present responsible position, that his trainer and
+his principal backers had thought it desirable to hasten his removal to
+the neighborhood of Fulham--where the exercises which were to prepare
+him for the race were now being continued on the spot.
+
+
+
+"The mystery seems to thicken," said Arnold.
+
+"Quite the contrary," returned Sir Patrick, briskly. "The mystery is
+clearing fast--thanks to the Glasgow newspaper. I shall be spared
+the trouble of dealing with Bishopriggs for the stolen letter. Miss
+Silvester has gone to Perth, to recover her correspondence with Geoffrey
+Delamayn."
+
+"Do you think she would recognize it," said Arnold, pointing to the
+newspaper, "in the account given of it here?"
+
+"Certainly! And she could hardly fail, in my opinion, to get a step
+farther than that. Unless I am entirely mistaken, the authorship of the
+anonymous letters has not mystified _her._"
+
+"How could she guess at that?"
+
+"In this way, as I think. Whatever she may have previously thought, she
+must suspect, by this time, that the missing correspondence has been
+stolen, and not lost. Now, there are only two persons whom she can think
+of, as probably guilty of the theft--Mrs. Inchbare or Bishopriggs. The
+newspaper description of the style of the anonymous letters declares
+it to be the style of a Scotchman in the lower ranks of life--in other
+words, points plainly to Bishopriggs. You see that? Very well. Now
+suppose she recovers the stolen property. What is likely to happen then?
+She will be more or less than woman if she doesn't make her way next,
+provided with her proofs in writing, to Mrs. Glenarm. She may innocently
+help, or she may innocently frustrate, the end we have in view--either
+way, our course is clear before us again. Our interest in communicating
+with Miss Silvester remains precisely the same interest that it was
+before we received the Glasgow newspaper. I propose to wait till Sunday,
+on the chance that Mr. Crum may write again. If we don't hear from him,
+I shall start for Scotland on Monday morning, and take my chance of
+finding my way to Miss Silvester, through Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+"Leaving me behind?"
+
+"Leaving you behind. Somebody must stay with Blanche. After having only
+been a fortnight married, must I remind you of that?"
+
+"Don't you think Mr. Crum will write before Monday?"
+
+"It will be such a fortunate circumstance for us, if he does write, that
+I don't venture to anticipate it."
+
+"You are down on our luck, Sir."
+
+"I detest slang, Arnold. But slang, I own, expresses my state of mind,
+in this instance, with an accuracy which almost reconciles me to the use
+of it--for once in a way."
+
+"Every body's luck turns sooner or later," persisted Arnold. "I can't
+help thinking our luck is on the turn at last. Would you mind taking a
+bet, Sir Patrick?"
+
+"Apply at the stables. I leave betting, as I leave cleaning the horses,
+to my groom."
+
+With that crabbed answer he closed the conversation for the day.
+
+The hours passed, and time brought the post again in due course--and the
+post decided in Arnold's favor! Sir Patrick's want of confidence in the
+favoring patronage of Fortune was practically rebuked by the arrival of
+a second letter from the Glasgow lawyer on the next day.
+
+"I have the pleasure of announcing" (Mr. Crum wrote) "that I have heard
+from Miss Silvester, by the next postal delivery ensuing, after I had
+dispatched my letter to Ham Farm. She writes, very briefly, to inform
+me that she has decided on establishing her next place of residence in
+London. The reason assigned for taking this step--which she certainly
+did not contemplate when I last saw her--is that she finds herself
+approaching the end of her pecuniary resources. Having already decided
+on adopting, as a means of living, the calling of a concert-singer, she
+has arranged to place her interests in the hands of an old friend of
+her late mother (who appears to have belonged also to the musical
+profession): a dramatic and musical agent long established in the
+metropolis, and well known to her as a trustworthy and respectable man.
+She sends me the name and address of this person--a copy of which you
+will find on the inclosed slip of paper--in the event of my having
+occasion to write to her, before she is settled in London. This is the
+whole substance of her letter. I have only to add, that it does not
+contain the slightest allusion to the nature of the errand on which she
+left Glasgow."
+
+
+
+Sir Patrick happened to be alone when he opened Mr. Crum's letter.
+
+His first proceeding, after reading it, was to consult the railway
+time-table hanging in the hall. Having done this, he returned to
+the library--wrote a short note of inquiry, addressed to the musical
+agent--and rang the bell.
+
+"Miss Silvester is expected in London, Duncan. I want a discreet person
+to communicate with her. You are the person."
+
+Duncan bowed. Sir Pa trick handed him the note.
+
+"If you start at once you will be in time to catch the train. Go to that
+address, and inquire for Miss Silvester. If she has arrived, give her
+my compliments, and say I will have the honor of calling on her (on
+Mr. Brinkworth's behalf) at the earliest date which she may find it
+convenient to appoint. Be quick about it--and you will have time to get
+back before the last train. Have Mr. and Mrs. Brinkworth returned from
+their drive?"
+
+"No, Sir Patrick."
+
+Pending the return of Arnold and Blanche, Sir Patrick looked at Mr.
+Crum's letter for the second time.
+
+He was not quite satisfied that the pecuniary motive was really
+the motive at the bottom of Anne's journey south. Remembering that
+Geoffrey's trainers had removed him to the neighborhood of London, he
+was inclined to doubt whether some serious quarrel had not taken
+place between Anne and Mrs. Glenarm--and whether some direct appeal to
+Geoffrey himself might not be in contemplation as the result. In that
+event, Sir Patrick's advice and assistance would be placed, without
+scruple, at Miss Silvester's disposal. By asserting her claim, in
+opposition to the claim of Mrs. Glenarm, she was also asserting herself
+to be an unmarried woman, and was thus serving Blanche's interests as
+well as her own. "I owe it to Blanche to help her," thought Sir Patrick.
+"And I owe it to myself to bring Geoffrey Delamayn to a day of reckoning
+if I can."
+
+The barking of the dogs in the yard announced the return of the
+carriage. Sir Patrick went out to meet Arnold and Blanche at the gate,
+and tell them the news.
+
+
+
+Punctual to the time at which he was expected, the discreet Duncan
+reappeared with a note from the musical agent.
+
+Miss Silvester had not yet reached London; but she was expected to
+arrive not later than Tuesday in the ensuing week. The agent had already
+been favored with her instructions to pay the strictest attention to any
+commands received from Sir Patrick Lundie. He would take care that
+Sir Patrick's message should be given to Miss Silvester as soon as she
+arrived.
+
+At last, then, there was news to be relied on! At last there was a
+prospect of seeing her! Blanche was radiant with happiness, Arnold was
+in high spirits for the first time since his return from Baden.
+
+Sir Patrick tried hard to catch the infection of gayety from his young
+friends; but, to his own surprise, not less than to theirs, the effort
+proved fruitless. With the tide of events turning decidedly in his
+favor--relieved of the necessity of taking a doubtful journey to
+Scotland; assured of obtaining his interview with Anne in a few days'
+time--he was out of spirits all through the evening.
+
+"Still down on our luck!" exclaimed Arnold, as he and his host finished
+their last game of billiards, and parted for the night. "Surely, we
+couldn't wish for a more promising prospect than _our_ prospect next
+week?"
+
+Sir Patrick laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder.
+
+"Let us look indulgently together," he said, in his whimsically grave
+way, "at the humiliating spectacle of an old man's folly. I feel, at
+this moment, Arnold, as if I would give every thing that I possess in
+the world to have passed over next week, and to be landed safely in the
+time beyond it."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"There is the folly! I can't tell why. With every reason to be in
+better spirits than usual, I am unaccountably, irrationally, invincibly
+depressed. What are we to conclude from that? Am I the object of a
+supernatural warning of misfortune to come? Or am I the object of
+a temporary derangement of the functions of the liver? There is the
+question. Who is to decide it? How contemptible is humanity, Arnold,
+rightly understood! Give me my candle, and let's hope it's the liver."
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH SCENE--THE PANTRY.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH.
+
+ANNE WINS A VICTORY.
+
+ON a certain evening in the month of September (at that period of the
+month when Arnold and Blanche were traveling back from Baden to Ham
+Farm) an ancient man--with one eye filmy and blind, and one eye moist
+and merry--sat alone in the pantry of the Harp of Scotland Inn, Perth,
+pounding the sugar softly in a glass of whisky-punch. He has hitherto
+been personally distinguished in these pages as the self-appointed
+father of Anne Silvester and the humble servant of Blanche at the dance
+at Swanhaven Lodge. He now dawns on the view in amicable relations with
+a third lady--and assumes the mystic character of Mrs. Glenarm's "Friend
+in the Dark."
+
+Arriving in Perth the day after the festivities at Swanhaven,
+Bishopriggs proceeded to the Harp of Scotland--at which establishment
+for the reception of travelers he possessed the advantage of being known
+to the landlord as Mrs. Inchbare's right-hand man, and of standing high
+on the head-waiter's list of old and intimate friends.
+
+Inquiring for the waiter first by the name of Thomas (otherwise Tammy)
+Pennyquick, Bishopriggs found his friend in sore distress of body and
+mind. Contending vainly against the disabling advances of rheumatism,
+Thomas Pennyquick ruefully contemplated the prospect of being laid up
+at home by a long illness--with a wife and children to support, and with
+the emoluments attached to his position passing into the pockets of the
+first stranger who could be found to occupy his place at the inn.
+
+Hearing this doleful story, Bishopriggs cunningly saw his way to serving
+his own private interests by performing the part of Thomas Pennyquick's
+generous and devoted friend.
+
+He forthwith offered to fill the place, without taking the emoluments,
+of the invalided headwaiter--on the understanding, as a matter of
+course, that the landlord consented to board and lodge him free of
+expense at the inn. The landlord having readily accepted this condition,
+Thomas Pennyquick retired to the bosom of his family. And there was
+Bishopriggs, doubly secured behind a respectable position and a virtuous
+action against all likelihood of suspicion falling on him as a stranger
+in Perth--in the event of his correspondence with Mrs. Glenarm being
+made the object of legal investigation on the part of her friends!
+
+Having opened the campaign in this masterly manner, the same sagacious
+foresight had distinguished the operations of Bishopriggs throughout.
+
+His correspondence with Mrs. Glenarm was invariably written with the
+left hand--the writing thus produced defying detection, in all cases,
+as bearing no resemblance of character whatever to writing produced by
+persons who habitually use the other hand. A no less far-sighted cunning
+distinguished his proceedings in answering the advertisements which the
+lawyers duly inserted in the newspaper. He appointed hours at which he
+was employed on business-errands for the inn, and places which lay
+on the way to those errands, for his meetings with Mrs. Glenarm's
+representatives: a pass-word being determined on, as usual in such
+cases, by exchanging which the persons concerned could discover each
+other. However carefully the lawyers might set the snare--whether they
+had their necessary "witness" disguised as an artist sketching in the
+neighborhood, or as an old woman selling fruit, or what not--the wary
+eye of Bishopriggs detected it. He left the pass-word unspoken; he
+went his way on his errand; he was followed on suspicion; and he was
+discovered to be only "a respectable person," charged with a message by
+the landlord of the Harp of Scotland Inn!
+
+To a man intrenched behind such precautions as these, the chance of
+being detected might well be reckoned among the last of all the chances
+that could possibly happen.
+
+Discovery was, nevertheless, advancing on Bishopriggs from a quarter
+which had not been included in his calculations. Anne Silvester was in
+Perth; forewarned by the newspaper (as Sir Patrick had guessed) that the
+letters offered to Mrs. Glenarm were the letters between Geoffrey and
+herself, which she had lost at Craig Fernie, and bent on clearing up the
+suspicion which pointed to Bishopriggs as the person who was trying to
+turn the correspondence to pecuniary account. The inquiries made for
+him, at Anne's request, as soon as she arrived in the town, openly
+described his name, and his former position as headwaiter at Craig
+Fernie--and thu s led easily to the discovery of him, in his publicly
+avowed character of Thomas Pennyquick's devoted friend. Toward
+evening, on the day after she reached Perth, the news came to Anne that
+Bishopriggs was in service at the inn known as the Harp of Scotland.
+The landlord of the hotel at which she was staying inquired whether he
+should send a message for her. She answered, "No, I will take my message
+myself. All I want is a person to show me the way to the inn."
+
+
+
+Secluded in the solitude of the head-waiter's pantry, Bishopriggs sat
+peacefully melting the sugar in his whisky-punch.
+
+It was the hour of the evening at which a period of tranquillity
+generally occurred before what was called "the night-business" of the
+house began. Bishopriggs was accustomed to drink and meditate daily in
+this interval of repose. He tasted the punch, and smiled contentedly as
+he set down his glass. The prospect before him looked fairly enough. He
+had outwitted the lawyers in the preliminary negotiations thus far. All
+that was needful now was to wait till the terror of a public scandal
+(sustained by occasional letters from her "Friend in the Dark") had
+its due effect on Mrs. Glenarm, and hurried her into paying the
+purchase-money for the correspondence with her own hand. "Let it breed
+in the brain," he thought, "and the siller will soon come out o' the
+purse."
+
+His reflections were interrupted by the appearance of a slovenly
+maid-servant, with a cotton handkerchief tied round her head, and an
+uncleaned sauce-pan in her hand.
+
+"Eh, Maister Bishopriggs," cried the girl, "here's a braw young leddy
+speerin' for ye by yer ain name at the door."
+
+"A leddy?" repeated Bishopriggs, with a look of virtuous disgust. "Ye
+donnert ne'er-do-weel, do you come to a decent, 'sponsible man like me,
+wi' sic a Cyprian overture as that? What d'ye tak' me for? Mark Antony
+that lost the world for love (the mair fule he!)? or Don Jovanny that
+counted his concubines by hundreds, like the blessed Solomon himself?
+Awa' wi' ye to yer pots and pans; and bid the wandering Venus that sent
+ye go spin!"
+
+Before the girl could answer she was gently pulled aside from the
+doorway, and Bishopriggs, thunder-struck, saw Anne Silvester standing in
+her place.
+
+"You had better tell the servant I am no stranger to you," said Anne,
+looking toward the kitchen-maid, who stood in the passage staring at her
+in stolid amazement.
+
+"My ain sister's child!" cried Bishopriggs, lying with his customary
+readiness. "Go yer ways, Maggie. The bonny lassie's my ain kith and kin.
+The tongue o' scandal, I trow, has naething to say against that.--Lord
+save us and guide us!" he added In another tone, as the girl closed the
+door on them, "what brings ye here?"
+
+"I have something to say to you. I am not very well; I must wait a
+little first. Give me a chair."
+
+Bishopriggs obeyed in silence. His one available eye rested on Anne,
+as he produced the chair, with an uneasy and suspicious attention. "I'm
+wanting to know one thing," he said. "By what meeraiculous means, young
+madam, do ye happen to ha' fund yer way to this inn?"
+
+Anne told him how her inquiries had been made and what the result had
+been, plainly and frankly. The clouded face of Bishopriggs began to
+clear again.
+
+"Hech! hech!" he exclaimed, recovering all his native impudence, "I hae
+had occasion to remark already, to anither leddy than yersel', that it's
+seemply mairvelous hoo a man's ain gude deeds find him oot in this lower
+warld o' ours. I hae dune a gude deed by pure Tammy Pennyquick, and
+here's a' Pairth ringing wi the report o' it; and Sawmuel Bishopriggs
+sae weel known that ony stranger has only to ask, and find him.
+Understand, I beseech ye, that it's no hand o' mine that pets this new
+feather in my cap. As a gude Calvinist, my saul's clear o' the smallest
+figment o' belief in Warks. When I look at my ain celeebrity I joost
+ask, as the Psawmist asked before me, 'Why do the heathen rage, and the
+people imagine a vain thing?' It seems ye've something to say to me," he
+added, suddenly reverting to the object of Anne's visit. "Is it humanly
+possible that ye can ha' come a' the way to Pairth for naething but
+that?"
+
+The expression of suspicion began to show itself again in his face.
+Concealing as she best might the disgust that he inspired in her, Anne
+stated her errand in the most direct manner, and in the fewest possible
+words.
+
+"I have come here to ask you for something," she said.
+
+"Ay? ay? What may it be ye're wanting of me?"
+
+"I want the letter I lost at Craig Fernie."
+
+Even the solidly-founded self-possession of Bishopriggs himself was
+shaken by the startling directness of that attack on it. His glib tongue
+was paralyzed for the moment. "I dinna ken what ye're drivin' at," he
+said, after an interval, with a sullen consciousness that he had been
+all but tricked into betraying himself.
+
+The change in his manner convinced Anne that she had found in
+Bishopriggs the person of whom she was in search.
+
+"You have got my letter," she said, sternly insisting on the truth. "And
+you are trying to turn it to a disgraceful use. I won't allow you to
+make a market of my private affairs. You have offered a letter of mine
+for sale to a stranger. I insist on your restoring it to me before I
+leave this room!"
+
+Bishopriggs hesitated again. His first suspicion that Anne had been
+privately instructed by Mrs. Glenarm's lawyers returned to his mind as
+a suspicion confirmed. He felt the vast importance of making a cautious
+reply.
+
+"I'll no' waste precious time," he said, after a moment's consideration
+with himself, "in brushing awa' the fawse breath o' scandal, when it
+passes my way. It blaws to nae purpose, my young leddy, when it blaws on
+an honest man like me. Fie for shame on ye for saying what ye've joost
+said--to me that was a fether to ye at Craig Fernie! Wha' set ye on to
+it? Will it be man or woman that's misca'ed me behind my back?"
+
+Anne took the Glasgow newspaper from the pocket of her traveling cloak,
+and placed it before him, open at the paragraph which described the act
+of extortion attempted on Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+"I have found there," she said, "all that I want to know."
+
+"May a' the tribe o' editors, preenters, paper-makers, news-vendors,
+and the like, bleeze together in the pit o' Tophet!" With this devout
+aspiration--internally felt, not openly uttered--Bishopriggs put on his
+spectacles, and read the passage pointed out to him. "I see naething
+here touching the name o' Sawmuel Bishopriggs, or the matter o' ony loss
+ye may or may not ha' had at Craig Fernie," he said, when he had done;
+still defending his position, with a resolution worthy of a better
+cause.
+
+Anne's pride recoiled at the prospect of prolonging the discussion with
+him. She rose to her feet, and said her last words.
+
+"I have learned enough by this time," she answered, "to know that the
+one argument that prevails with you is the argument of money. If money
+will spare me the hateful necessity of disputing with you--poor as I
+am, money you shall have. Be silent, if you please. You are personally
+interested in what I have to say next."
+
+She opened her purse, and took a five-pound note from it.
+
+"If you choose to own the truth, and produce the letter," she resumed,
+"I will give you this, as your reward for finding, and restoring to me,
+something that I had lost. If you persist in your present prevarication,
+I can, and will, make that sheet of note-paper you have stolen from me
+nothing but waste paper in your hands. You have threatened Mrs. Glenarm
+with my interference. Suppose I go to Mrs. Glenarm? Suppose I interfere
+before the week is out? Suppose I have other letters of Mr. Delamayn's
+in my possession, and produce them to speak for me? What has Mrs.
+Glenarm to purchase of you _then?_ Answer me that!"
+
+The color rose on her pale face. Her eyes, dim and weary when
+she entered the room, looked him brightly through and through in
+immeasurable contempt. "Answer me that!" she repeated, with a burst
+of her old energy which revealed the fire and passion of the woman's
+nature, not quenched even yet!
+
+If Bishopriggs had a merit, it was a rare merit, as men go, of
+knowing when he was beaten. If he had an accomplishment, it was the
+accomplishment of retiring defeated, with all the honors of war.
+
+"Mercy presairve us!" he exclaimed, in the most innocent manner. "Is it
+even You Yersel' that writ the letter to the man ca'ed Jaffray Delamayn,
+and got the wee bit answer in pencil on the blank page? Hoo, in Heeven's
+name, was I to know _that_ was the letter ye were after when ye cam' in
+here? Did ye ever tell me ye were Anne Silvester, at the hottle? Never
+ance! Was the puir feckless husband-creature ye had wi' ye at the inn,
+Jaffray Delamayn? Jaffray wad mak' twa o' him, as my ain eyes ha' seen.
+Gi' ye back yer letter? My certie! noo I know it is yer letter, I'll gi'
+it back wi' a' the pleasure in life!"
+
+He opened his pocket-book, and took it out, with an alacrity worthy of
+the honestest man in Christendom--and (more wonderful still) he looked
+with a perfectly assumed expression of indifference at the five-pound
+note in Anne's hand.
+
+"Hoot! toot!" he said, "I'm no' that clear in my mind that I'm free to
+tak' yer money. Eh, weel! weel! I'll een receive it, if ye like, as a
+bit Memento o' the time when I was o' some sma' sairvice to ye at the
+hottle. Ye'll no' mind," he added, suddenly returning to business,
+"writin' me joost a line--in the way o' receipt, ye ken--to clear me o'
+ony future suspicion in the matter o' the letter?"
+
+Anne threw down the bank-note on the table near which they were
+standing, and snatched the letter from him.
+
+"You need no receipt," she answered. "There shall be no letter to bear
+witness against you!"
+
+She lifted her other hand to tear it in pieces. Bishopriggs caught her
+by both wrists, at the same moment, and held her fast.
+
+"Bide a wee!" he said. "Ye don't get the letter, young madam, without
+the receipt. It may be a' the same to _you,_ now ye've married the other
+man, whether Jaffray Delamayn ance promised ye fair in the by-gone time,
+or no. But, my certie! it's a matter o' some moment to _me,_ that ye've
+chairged wi' stealin' the letter, and making a market o't, and Lord
+knows what besides, that I suld hae yer ain acknowledgment for it in
+black and white. Gi' me my bit receipt--and een do as ye will with yer
+letter after that!"
+
+Anne's hold of the letter relaxed. She let Bishopriggs repossess himself
+of it as it dropped on the floor between them, without making an effort
+to prevent him.
+
+"It may be a' the same to _you,_ now ye've married the other man,
+whether Jaffray Delamayn ance promised ye fair in the by-gone time,
+or no." Those words presented Anne's position before her in a light in
+which she had not seen it yet. She had truly expressed the loathing that
+Geoffrey now inspired in her, when she had declared, in her letter to
+Arnold, that, even if he offered her marriage, in atonement for the
+past, she would rather be what she was than be his wife. It had never
+occurred to her, until this moment, that others would misinterpret the
+sensitive pride which had prompted the abandonment of her claim on the
+man who had ruined her. It had never been brought home to her until now,
+that if she left him contemptuously to go his own way, and sell himself
+to the first woman who had money enough to buy him, her conduct would
+sanction the false conclusion that she was powerless to interfere,
+because she was married already to another man. The color that had risen
+in her face vanished, and left it deadly pale again. She began to see
+that the purpose of her journey to the north was not completed yet.
+
+"I will give you your receipt," she said. "Tell me what to write, and it
+shall be written."
+
+Bishopriggs dictated the receipt. She wrote and signed it. He put it in
+his pocket-book with the five-pound note, and handed her the letter in
+exchange.
+
+"Tear it if ye will," he said. "It matters naething to _me._"
+
+For a moment she hesitated. A sudden shuddering shook her from head to
+foot--the forewarning, it might be, of the influence which that letter,
+saved from destruction by a hair's-breadth, was destined to exercise on
+her life to come. She recovered herself, and folded her cloak closer to
+her, as if she had felt a passing chill.
+
+"No," she said; "I will keep the letter."
+
+She folded it and put it in the pocket of her dress. Then turned to
+go--and stopped at the door.
+
+"One thing more," she added. "Do you know Mrs. Glenarm's present
+address?"
+
+"Ye're no' reely going to Mistress Glenarm?"
+
+"That is no concern of yours. You can answer my question or not, as you
+please."
+
+"Eh, my leddy! yer temper's no' what it used to be in the auld times at
+the hottle. Aweel! aweel! ye ha' gi'en me yer money, and I'll een gi'
+ye back gude measure for it, on my side. Mistress Glenarm's awa' in
+private--incog, as they say--to Jaffray Delamayn's brither at Swanhaven
+Lodge. Ye may rely on the information, and it's no' that easy to come
+at either. They've keepit it a secret as they think from a' the warld.
+Hech! hech! Tammy Pennyquick's youngest but twa is page-boy at the hoose
+where the leddy's been veesitin', on the outskirts o' Pairth. Keep a
+secret if ye can frae the pawky ears o' yer domestics in the servants'
+hall!--Eh! she's aff, without a word at parting!" he exclaimed, as Anne
+left him without ceremony in the middle of his dissertation on secrets
+and servants' halls. "I trow I ha' gaen out for wool, and come back
+shorn," he added, reflecting grimly on the disastrous overthrow of the
+promising speculation on which he had embarked. "My certie! there was
+naething left for't, when madam's fingers had grippit me, but to slip
+through them as cannily as I could. What's Jaffray's marrying, or no'
+marrying, to do wi' _her?_" he wondered, reverting to the question which
+Anne had put to him at parting. "And whar's the sense o' her errand, if
+she's reely bent on finding her way to Mistress Glenarm?"
+
+Whatever the sense of her errand might be, Anne's next proceeding proved
+that she was really bent on it. After resting two days, she left Perth
+by the first train in the morning, for Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH SCENE.--THE MUSIC-ROOM.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.
+
+JULIUS MAKES MISCHIEF.
+
+JULIUS DELAMAYN was alone, idly sauntering to and fro, with his violin
+in his hand, on the terrace at Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+The first mellow light of evening was in the sky. It was the close of
+the day on which Anne Silvester had left Perth.
+
+Some hours earlier, Julius had sacrificed himself to the duties of his
+political position--as made for him by his father. He had submitted to
+the dire necessity of delivering an oration to the electors, at a public
+meeting in the neighboring town of Kirkandrew. A detestable atmosphere
+to breathe; a disorderly audience to address; insolent opposition to
+conciliate; imbecile inquiries to answer; brutish interruptions to
+endure; greedy petitioners to pacify; and dirty hands to shake: these
+are the stages by which the aspiring English gentleman is compelled
+to travel on the journey which leads him from the modest obscurity of
+private life to the glorious publicity of the House of Commons. Julius
+paid the preliminary penalties of a political first appearance, as
+exacted by free institutions, with the necessary patience; and returned
+to the welcome shelter of home, more indifferent, if possible, to the
+attractions of Parliamentary distinction than when he set out. The
+discord of the roaring "people" (still echoing in his ears) had
+sharpened his customary sensibility to the poetry of sound, as composed
+by Mozart, and as interpreted by piano and violin. Possessing himself of
+his beloved instrument, he had gone out on the terrace to cool himself
+in the evening air, pending the arrival of the servant whom he had
+summoned by the music-room bell. The man appeared at the glass door
+which led into the room; and reported, in answer to his master's
+inquiry, that Mrs. Julius Delamayn was out paying visits, and was not
+expected to return for another hour at least.
+
+Julius groaned in spirit. The finest music which Mozart has written for
+the violin associates that instrument with the piano. Without the wife
+to help him, the husband was mute. After an instant's consideration,
+Julius hit on an idea which promised, in some degree, to remedy the
+disaster of Mrs. Delamayn's absence from home.
+
+"Has Mrs. Glenarm gone out, too?" he asked.
+
+"No, Sir."
+
+"My compliments. If Mrs. Glenarm has nothing else to do, will she be so
+kind as to come to me in the music-room?"
+
+The servant went away with his message. Julius seated himself on one of
+the terrace-benches, and began to tune his violin.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm--rightly reported by Bishopriggs as having privately
+taken refuge from her anonymous correspondent at Swanhaven Lodge--was,
+musically speaking, far from being an efficient substitute for Mrs.
+Delamayn. Julius possessed, in his wife, one of the few players on
+the piano-forte under whose subtle touch that shallow and soulless
+instrument becomes inspired with expression not its own, and produces
+music instead of noise. The fine organization which can work this
+miracle had not been bestowed on Mrs. Glenarm. She had been carefully
+taught; and she was to be trusted to play correctly--and that was all.
+Julius, hungry for music, and reigned to circumstances, asked for no
+more.
+
+The servant returned with his answer. Mrs. Glenarm would join Mr.
+Delamayn in the music-room in ten minutes' time.
+
+Julius rose, relieved, and resumed his sauntering walk; now playing
+little snatches of music, now stopping to look at the flowers on the
+terrace, with an eye that enjoyed their beauty, and a hand that fondled
+them with caressing touch. If Imperial Parliament had seen him at that
+moment, Imperial Parliament must have given notice of a question to
+his illustrious father: Is it possible, my lord, that _you_ can have
+begotten such a Member as this?
+
+After stopping for a moment to tighten one of the strings of his violin,
+Julius, raising his head from the instrument, was surprised to see
+a lady approaching him on the terrace. Advancing to meet her, and
+perceiving that she was a total stranger to him, he assumed that she
+was, in all probability, a visitor to his wife.
+
+"Have I the honor of speaking to a friend of Mrs. Delamayn's?" he asked.
+"My wife is not at home, I am sorry to say."
+
+"I am a stranger to Mrs. Delamayn," the lady answered. "The servant
+informed me that she had gone out; and that I should find Mr. Delamayn
+here."
+
+Julius bowed--and waited to hear more.
+
+"I must beg you to forgive my intrusion," the stranger went on. "My
+object is to ask permission to see a lady who is, I have been informed,
+a guest in your house."
+
+The extraordinary formality of the request rather puzzled Julius.
+
+"Do you mean Mrs. Glenarm?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Pray don't think any permission necessary. A friend of Mrs. Glenarm's
+may take her welcome for granted in this house."
+
+"I am not a friend of Mrs. Glenarm. I am a total stranger to her."
+
+This made the ceremonious request preferred by the lady a little more
+intelligible--but it left the lady's object in wishing to speak to Mrs.
+Glenarm still in the dark. Julius politely waited, until it pleased her
+to proceed further, and explain herself The explanation did not appear
+to be an easy one to give. Her eyes dropped to the ground. She hesitated
+painfully.
+
+"My name--if I mention it," she resumed, without looking up, "may
+possibly inform you--" She paused. Her color came and went. She
+hesitated again; struggled with her agitation, and controlled it. "I am
+Anne Silvester," she said, suddenly raising her pale face, and suddenly
+steadying her trembling voice.
+
+Julius started, and looked at her in silent surprise.
+
+The name was doubly known to him. Not long since, he had heard it from
+his father's lips, at his father's bedside. Lord Holchester had charged
+him, had earnestly charged him, to bear that name in mind, and to help
+the woman who bore it, if the woman ever applied to him in time to come.
+Again, he had heard the name, more lately, associated scandalously with
+the name of his brother. On the receipt of the first of the anonymous
+letters sent to her, Mrs. Glenarm had not only summoned Geoffrey himself
+to refute the aspersion cast upon him, but had forwarded a private copy
+of the letter to his relatives at Swanhaven. Geoffrey's defense had not
+entirely satisfied Julius that his brother was free from blame. As
+he now looked at Anne Silvester, the doubt returned upon him
+strengthened--almost confirmed. Was this woman--so modest, so gentle, so
+simply and unaffectedly refined--the shameless adventuress denounced
+by Geoffrey, as claiming him on the strength of a foolish flirtation;
+knowing herself, at the time, to be privately married to another man?
+Was this woman--with the voice of a lady, the look of a lady, the manner
+of a lady--in league (as Geoffrey had declared) with the illiterate
+vagabond who was attempting to extort money anonymously from Mrs.
+Glenarm? Impossible! Making every allowance for the proverbial
+deceitfulness of appearances, impossible!
+
+"Your name has been mentioned to me," said Julius, answering her after
+a momentary pause. His instincts, as a gentleman, made him shrink from
+referring to the association of her name with the name of his brother.
+"My father mentioned you," he added, considerately explaining his
+knowledge of her in _that_ way, "when I last saw him in London."
+
+"Your father!" She came a step nearer, with a look of distrust as
+well as a look of astonishment in her face. "Your father is Lord
+Holchester--is he not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What made him speak of _me?_"
+
+"He was ill at the time," Julius answered. "And he had been thinking of
+events in his past life with which I am entirely unacquainted. He said
+he had known your father and mother. He desired me, if you were ever in
+want of any assistance, to place my services at your disposal. When he
+expressed that wish, he spoke very earnestly--he gave me the impression
+that there was a feeling of regret associated with the recollections on
+which he had been dwelling."
+
+Slowly, and in silence, Anne drew back to the low wall of the terrace
+close by. She rested one hand on it to support herself. Julius had said
+words of terrible import without a suspicion of what he had done. Never
+until now had Anne Silvester known that the man who had betrayed her was
+the son of that other man whose discovery of the flaw in the marriage
+had ended in the betrayal of her mother before her. She felt the shock
+of the revelation with a chill of superstitious dread. Was the chain of
+a fatality wound invisibly round her? Turn which way she might was she
+still going darkly on, in the track of her dead mother, to an appointed
+and hereditary doom? Present things passed from her view as the awful
+doubt cast its shadow over her mind. She lived again for a moment in
+the time when she was a child. She saw the face of her mother once more,
+with the wan despair on it of the bygone days when the title of wife was
+denied her, and the social prospect was closed forever.
+
+Julius approached, and roused her.
+
+"Can I get you any thing?" he asked. "You are looking very ill. I hope I
+have said nothing to distress you?"
+
+The question failed to attract her attention. She put a question herself
+instead of answering it.
+
+"Did you say you were quite ignorant of what your father was thinking of
+when he spoke to you about me?"
+
+"Quite ignorant."
+
+"Is your brother likely to know more about it than you do?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+She paused, absorbed once more in her own thoughts. Startled, on the
+memorable day when they had first met, by Geoffrey's family name, she
+had put the question to him whether there had not been some acquaintance
+between their parents in the past time. Deceiving her in all else,
+he had not deceived in this. He had spoken in good faith, when he had
+declared that he had never heard her father or her mother mentioned at
+home.
+
+The curiosity of Julius was aroused. He attempted to lead her on into
+saying more.
+
+"You appear to know what my father was thinking of when he spoke to me,"
+he resumed. "May I ask--"
+
+She interrupted him with a gesture of entreaty.
+
+"Pray don't ask! It's past and over--it can have no interest for you--it
+has nothing to do with my errand here. I must return," she went on,
+hurriedly, "to my object in trespassing on your kindness. Have you heard
+me mentioned, Mr. Delamayn, by another member of your family besides
+your father?"
+
+Julius had not anticipated that sh e would approach, of her own accord,
+the painful subject on which he had himself forborne to touch. He was a
+little disappointed. He had expected more delicacy of feeling from her
+than she had shown.
+
+"Is it necessary," he asked, coldly, "to enter on that?"
+
+The blood rose again in Anne's cheeks.
+
+"If it had not been necessary," she answered, "do you think I could have
+forced myself to mention it to _you?_ Let me remind you that I am here
+on sufferance. If I don't speak plainly (no matter at what sacrifice
+to my own feelings), I make my situation more embarrassing than it is
+already. I have something to tell Mrs. Glenarm relating to the anonymous
+letters which she has lately received. And I have a word to say to her,
+next, about her contemplated marriage. Before you allow me to do this,
+you ought to know who I am. (I have owned it.) You ought to have heard
+the worst that can be said of my conduct. (Your face tells me you have
+heard the worst.) After the forbearance you have shown to me, as a
+perfect stranger, I will not commit the meanness of taking you by
+surprise. Perhaps, Mr. Delamayn, you understand, _now,_ why I felt
+myself obliged to refer to your brother. Will you trust me with
+permission to speak to Mrs. Glenarm?"
+
+It was simply and modestly said--with an unaffected and touching
+resignation of look and manner. Julius gave her back the respect and the
+sympathy which, for a moment, he had unjustly withheld from her.
+
+"You have placed a confidence in me," he said "which most persons in
+your situation would have withheld. I feel bound, in return to place
+confidence in you. I will take it for granted that your motive in
+this matter is one which it is my duty to respect. It will be for Mrs.
+Glenarm to say whether she wishes the interview to take place or not.
+All that I can do is to leave you free to propose it to her. You _are_
+free."
+
+As he spoke the sound of the piano reached them from the music-room.
+Julius pointed to the glass door which opened on to the terrace.
+
+"You have only to go in by that door," he said, "and you will find Mrs.
+Glenarm alone."
+
+Anne bowed, and left him. Arrived at the short flight of steps which led
+up to the door, she paused to collect her thoughts before she went in.
+
+
+
+A sudden reluctance to go on and enter the room took possession of
+her, as she waited with her foot on the lower step. The report of Mrs.
+Glenarm's contemplated marriage had produced no such effect on her as
+Sir Patrick had supposed: it had found no love for Geoffrey left to
+wound, no latent jealousy only waiting to be inflamed. Her object in
+taking the journey to Perth was completed when her correspondence with
+Geoffrey was in her own hands again. The change of purpose which
+had brought her to Swanhaven was due entirely to the new view of her
+position toward Mrs. Glenarm which the coarse commonsense of Bishopriggs
+had first suggested to her. If she failed to protest against Mrs.
+Glenarm's marriage, in the interests of the reparation which Geoffrey
+owed to her, her conduct would only confirm Geoffrey's audacious
+assertion that she was a married woman already. For her own sake
+she might still have hesitated to move in the matter. But Blanche's
+interests were concerned as well as her own; and, for Blanche's sake,
+she had resolved on making the journey to Swanhaven Lodge.
+
+At the same time, feeling toward Geoffrey as she felt now--conscious as
+she was of not really desiring the reparation on which she was about
+to insist--it was essential to the preservation of her own self-respect
+that she should have some purpose in view which could justify her to her
+own conscience in assuming the character of Mrs. Glenarm's rival.
+
+She had only to call to mind the critical situation of Blanche--and to
+see her purpose before her plainly. Assuming that she could open the
+coming interview by peaceably proving that her claim on Geoffrey was
+beyond dispute, she might then, without fear of misconception, take the
+tone of a friend instead of an enemy, and might, with the best grace,
+assure Mrs. Glenarm that she had no rivalry to dread, on the one easy
+condition that she engaged to make Geoffrey repair the evil that he had
+done. "Marry him without a word against it to dread from _me_--so long
+as he unsays the words and undoes the deeds which have thrown a doubt
+on the marriage of Arnold and Blanche." If she could but bring the
+interview to this end--there was the way found of extricating Arnold, by
+her own exertions, from the false position in which she had innocently
+placed him toward his wife! Such was the object before her, as she now
+stood on the brink of her interview with Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Up to this moment, she had firmly believed in her capacity to realize
+her own visionary project. It was only when she had her foot on the step
+that a doubt of the success of the coming experiment crossed her mind.
+For the first time, she saw the weak point in her own reasoning. For
+the first time, she felt how much she had blindly taken for granted, in
+assuming that Mrs. Glenarm would have sufficient sense of justice and
+sufficient command of temper to hear her patiently. All her hopes of
+success rested on her own favorable estimate of a woman who was a total
+stranger to her! What if the first words exchanged between them proved
+the estimate to be wrong?
+
+It was too late to pause and reconsider the position. Julius Delamayn
+had noticed her hesitation, and was advancing toward her from the end
+of the terrace. There was no help for it but to master her own
+irresolution, and to run the risk boldly. "Come what may, I have gone
+too far to stop _here._" With that desperate resolution to animate her,
+she opened the glass door at the top of the steps, and went into the
+room.
+
+
+
+Mrs. Glenarm rose from the piano. The two women--one so richly, the
+other so plainly dressed; one with her beauty in its full bloom, the
+other worn and blighted; one with society at her feet, the other an
+outcast living under the bleak shadow of reproach--the two women stood
+face to face, and exchanged the cold courtesies of salute between
+strangers, in silence.
+
+The first to meet the trivial necessities of the situation was Mrs.
+Glenarm. She good-humoredly put an end to the embarrassment--which the
+shy visitor appeared to feel acutely--by speaking first.
+
+"I am afraid the servants have not told you?" she said. "Mrs. Delamayn
+has gone out."
+
+"I beg your pardon--I have not called to see Mrs. Delamayn."
+
+Mrs. Glenarm looked a little surprised. She went on, however, as amiably
+as before.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn, perhaps?" she suggested. "I expect him here every
+moment."
+
+Anne explained again. "I have just parted from Mr. Delamayn." Mrs.
+Glenarm opened her eyes in astonishment. Anne proceeded. "I have come
+here, if you will excuse the intrusion--"
+
+She hesitated--at a loss how to end the sentence. Mrs. Glenarm,
+beginning by this time to feel a strong curiosity as to what might be
+coming next, advanced to the rescue once more.
+
+"Pray don't apologize," she said. "I think I understand that you are
+so good as to have come to see _me._ You look tired. Won't you take a
+chair?"
+
+Anne could stand no longer. She took the offered chair. Mrs. Glenarm
+resumed her place on the music-stool, and ran her fingers idly over the
+keys of the piano. "Where did you see Mr. Delamayn?" she went on. "The
+most irresponsible of men, except when he has got his fiddle in his
+hand! Is he coming in soon? Are we going to have any music? Have you
+come to play with us? Mr. Delamayn is a perfect fanatic in music, isn't
+he? Why isn't he here to introduce us? I suppose you like the classical
+style, too? Did you know that I was in the music-room? Might I ask your
+name?"
+
+Frivolous as they were, Mrs. Glenarm's questions were not without their
+use. They gave Anne time to summon her resolution, and to feel the
+necessity of explaining herself.
+
+"I am speaking, I believe, to Mrs. Glenarm?" she began.
+
+The good-humored widow smiled and bowed graciously.
+
+"I have come here, Mrs. Glenarm--by Mr. Delamayn's permission--to ask
+leave to speak to you on a matter in which you are interested."
+
+Mrs. Glenarm's many-ringed fingers paused over the keys of the piano.
+Mrs. Gle narm's plump face turned on the stranger with a dawning
+expression of surprise.
+
+"Indeed? I am interested in so many matters. May I ask what _this_
+matter is?"
+
+The flippant tone of the speaker jarred on Anne. If Mrs. Glenarm's
+nature was as shallow as it appeared to be on the surface, there was
+little hope of any sympathy establishing itself between them.
+
+"I wished to speak to you," she answered, "about something that happened
+while you were paying a visit in the neighborhood of Perth."
+
+The dawning surprise in Mrs. Glenarm's face became intensified into
+an expression of distrust. Her hearty manner vanished under a veil
+of conventional civility, drawn over it suddenly. She looked at Anne.
+"Never at the best of times a beauty," she thought. "Wretchedly out of
+health now. Dressed like a servant, and looking like a lady. What _does_
+it mean?"
+
+The last doubt was not to be borne in silence by a person of Mrs.
+Glenarm's temperament. She addressed herself to the solution of it with
+the most unblushing directness--dextrously excused by the most winning
+frankness of manner.
+
+"Pardon me," she said. "My memory for faces is a bad one; and I don't
+think you heard me just now, when I asked for your name. Have we ever
+met before?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And yet--if I understand what you are referring to--you wish to speak
+to me about something which is only interesting to myself and my most
+intimate friends."
+
+"You understand me quite correctly," said Anne. "I wish to speak to you
+about some anonymous letters--"
+
+"For the third time, will you permit me to ask for your name?"
+
+"You shall hear it directly--if you will first allow me to finish what
+I wanted to say. I wish--if I can--to persuade you that I come here as a
+friend, before I mention my name. You will, I am sure, not be very sorry
+to hear that you need dread no further annoyance--"
+
+"Pardon me once more," said Mrs. Glenarm, interposing for the second
+time. "I am at a loss to know to what I am to attribute this kind
+interest in my affairs on the part of a total stranger."
+
+This time, her tone was more than politely cold--it was politely
+impertinent. Mrs. Glenarm had lived all her life in good society, and
+was a perfect mistress of the subtleties of refined insolence in her
+intercourse with those who incurred her displeasure.
+
+Anne's sensitive nature felt the wound--but Anne's patient courage
+submitted. She put away from her the insolence which had tried to sting,
+and went on, gently and firmly, as if nothing had happened.
+
+"The person who wrote to you anonymously," she said, "alluded to a
+correspondence. He is no longer in possession of it. The correspondence
+has passed into hands which may be trusted to respect it. It will be put
+to no base use in the future--I answer for that."
+
+"You answer for that?" repeated Mrs. Glenarm. She suddenly leaned
+forward over the piano, and fixed her eyes in unconcealed scrutiny on
+Anne's face. The violent temper, so often found in combination with the
+weak nature, began to show itself in her rising color, and her lowering
+brow. "How do _you_ know what the person wrote?" she asked. "How do
+_you_ know that the correspondence has passed into other hands? Who are
+you?" Before Anne could answer her, she sprang to her feet, electrified
+by a new idea. "The man who wrote to me spoke of something else besides
+a correspondence. He spoke of a woman. I have found you out!" she
+exclaimed, with a burst of jealous fury. "_You_ are the woman!"
+
+Anne rose on her side, still in firm possession of her self-control.
+
+"Mrs. Glenarm," she said, calmly, "I warn--no, I entreat you--not to
+take that tone with me. Compose yourself; and I promise to satisfy you
+that you are more interested than you are willing to believe in what I
+have still to say. Pray bear with me for a little longer. I admit that
+you have guessed right. I own that I am the miserable woman who has been
+ruined and deserted by Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+"It's false!" cried Mrs. Glenarm. "You wretch! Do you come to _me_ with
+your trumped-up story? What does Julius Delamayn mean by exposing me
+to this?" Her indignation at finding herself in the same room with Anne
+broke its way through, not the restraints only, but the common decencies
+of politeness. "I'll ring for the servants!" she said. "I'll have you
+turned out of the house."
+
+She tried to cross the fire-place to ring the bell. Anne, who was
+standing nearest to it, stepped forward at the same moment. Without
+saying a word, she motioned with her hand to the other woman to stand
+back. There was a pause. The two waited, with their eyes steadily fixed
+on one another--each with her resolution laid bare to the other's view.
+In a moment more, the finer nature prevailed. Mrs. Glenarm drew back a
+step in silence.
+
+"Listen to me," said Anne.
+
+"Listen to you?" repeated Mrs. Glenarm. "You have no right to be in this
+house. You have no right to force yourself in here. Leave the room!"
+
+Anne's patience--so firmly and admirably preserved thus far--began to
+fail her at last.
+
+"Take care, Mrs. Glenarm!" she said, still struggling with herself.
+"I am not naturally a patient woman. Trouble has done much to tame my
+temper--but endurance has its limits. You have reached the limits of
+mine. I have a claim to be heard--and after what you have said to me, I
+_will_ be heard!"
+
+"You have no claim! You shameless woman, you are married already. I know
+the man's name. Arnold Brinkworth."
+
+"Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?"
+
+"I decline to answer a woman who speaks of Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn in that
+familiar way."
+
+Anne advanced a step nearer.
+
+"Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?" she repeated.
+
+There was a light in her eyes, there was a ring in her voice, which
+showed that she was roused at last. Mrs. Glenarm answered her, this
+time.
+
+"He did tell me."
+
+"He lied!"
+
+"He did _not!_ He knew. I believe _him._ I don't believe _you._"
+
+"If he told you that I was any thing but a single woman--if he told
+you that Arnold Brinkworth was married to any body but Miss Lundie of
+Windygates--I say again he lied!"
+
+"I say again--I believe _him,_ and not you."
+
+"You believe I am Arnold Brinkworth's wife?"
+
+"I am certain of it."
+
+"You tell me that to my face?"
+
+"I tell you to your face--you may have been Geoffrey Delamayn's
+mistress; you are Arnold Brinkworth's wife."
+
+At those words the long restrained anger leaped up in Anne--all the more
+hotly for having been hitherto so steadily controlled. In one breathless
+moment the whirlwind of her indignation swept away, not only all
+remembrance of the purpose which had brought her to Swanhaven, but
+all sense even of the unpardonable wrong which she had suffered at
+Geoffrey's hands. If he had been there, at that moment, and had offered
+to redeem his pledge, she would have consented to marry him, while Mrs.
+Glenarm s eye was on her--no matter whether she destroyed herself in her
+first cool moment afterward or not. The small sting had planted itself
+at last in the great nature. The noblest woman is only a woman, after
+all!
+
+"I forbid your marriage to Geoffrey Delamayn! I insist on his performing
+the promise he gave me, to make me his wife! I have got it here in his
+own words, in his own writing. On his soul, he swears it to me--he will
+redeem his pledge. His mistress, did you say? His wife, Mrs. Glenarm,
+before the week is out!"
+
+In those wild words she cast back the taunt--with the letter held in
+triumph in her hand.
+
+Daunted for the moment by the doubt now literally forced on her, that
+Anne might really have the claim on Geoffrey which she advanced, Mrs.
+Glenarm answered nevertheless with the obstinacy of a woman brought to
+bay--with a resolution not to be convinced by conviction itself.
+
+"I won't give him up!" she cried. "Your letter is a forgery. You have
+no proof. I won't, I won't, I won't give him up!" she repeated, with the
+impotent iteration of an angry child.
+
+Anne pointed disdainfully to the letter that she held. "Here is his
+pledged and written word," she said. "While I live, you will never be
+his wife."
+
+"I shall be his wife the day after the race. I am going to him in
+London--to warn him against You!"
+
+"You will find me in London, before you--with this in my hand. Do you
+know his writing?"
+
+She held up the letter, open. Mrs. Glenarm's hand flew out with the
+stealthy rapidity of a cat's paw, to seize and destroy it. Quick as she
+was, her rival was quicker still. For an instant they faced each other
+breathless--one with the letter held behind her; one with her hand still
+stretched out.
+
+At the same moment--before a word more had passed between them--the
+glass door opened; and Julius Delamayn appeared in the room.
+
+He addressed himself to Anne.
+
+"We decided, on the terrace," he said, quietly, "that you should speak
+to Mrs. Glenarm, if Mrs. Glenarm wished it. Do you think it desirable
+that the interview should be continued any longer?"
+
+Anne's head drooped on her breast. The fiery anger in her was quenched
+in an instant.
+
+"I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn," she answered. "But I have
+no right to plead that." She looked up at him for a moment. The hot
+tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks.
+She bent her head again, and hid them from him. "The only atonement I
+can make," she said, "is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house."
+
+In silence, she turned away to the door. In silence, Julius Delamayn
+paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her. She went out.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm's indignation--suspended for the moment--transferred itself
+to Julius.
+
+"If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval,"
+she said, haughtily, "I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her
+example, and to leave your house."
+
+"I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm. If she has
+presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I
+beg you to accept my apologies. At the same time, I may venture to add,
+in defense of my conduct, that I thought her--and think her still--a
+woman to be pitied more than to be blamed."
+
+"To be pitied did you say?" asked Mrs. Glenarm, doubtful whether her
+ears had not deceived her.
+
+"To be pitied," repeated Julius.
+
+"_You_ may find it convenient, Mr. Delamayn, to forget what your brother
+has told us about that person. _I_ happen to remember it."
+
+"So do I, Mrs. Glenarm. But, with my experience of Geoffrey--" He
+hesitated, and ran his fingers nervously over the strings of his violin.
+
+"You don't believe him?" said Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Julius declined to admit that he doubted his brother's word, to the lady
+who was about to become his brother's wife.
+
+"I don't quite go that length," he said. "I find it difficult to
+reconcile what Geoffrey has told us, with Miss Silvester's manner and
+appearance--"
+
+"Her appearance!" cried Mrs. Glenarm, in a transport of astonishment and
+disgust. "_Her_ appearance! Oh, the men! I beg your pardon--I ought to
+have remembered that there is no accounting for tastes. Go on--pray go
+on!"
+
+"Shall we compose ourselves with a little music?" suggested Julius.
+
+"I particularly request you will go on," answered Mrs. Glenarm,
+emphatically. "You find it 'impossible to reconcile'--"
+
+"I said 'difficult.'"
+
+"Oh, very well. Difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey told us, with Miss
+Silvester's manner and appearance. What next? You had something else to
+say, when I was so rude as to interrupt you. What was it?"
+
+"Only this," said Julius. "I don't find it easy to understand Sir
+Patrick Lundie's conduct in permitting Mr. Brinkworth to commit bigamy
+with his niece."
+
+"Wait a minute! The marriage of that horrible woman to Mr. Brinkworth
+was a private marriage. Of course, Sir Patrick knew nothing about it!"
+
+Julius owned that this might be possible, and made a second attempt to
+lead the angry lady back to the piano. Useless, once more! Though she
+shrank from confessing it to herself, Mrs. Glenarm's belief in the
+genuineness of her lover's defense had been shaken. The tone taken by
+Julius--moderate as it was--revived the first startling suspicion of the
+credibility of Geoffrey's statement which Anne's language and conduct
+had forced on Mrs. Glenarm. She dropped into the nearest chair, and
+put her handkerchief to her eyes. "You always hated poor Geoffrey," she
+said, with a burst of tears. "And now you're defaming him to me!"
+
+Julius managed her admirably. On the point of answering her seriously,
+he checked himself. "I always hated poor Geoffrey," he repeated, with
+a smile. "You ought to be the last person to say that, Mrs. Glenarm!
+I brought him all the way from London expressly to introduce him to
+_you._"
+
+"Then I wish you had left him in London!" retorted Mrs. Glenarm,
+shifting suddenly from tears to temper. "I was a happy woman before I
+met your brother. I can't give him up!" she burst out, shifting back
+again from temper to tears. "I don't care if he _has_ deceived me.
+I won't let another woman have him! I _will_ be his wife!" She threw
+herself theatrically on her knees before Julius. "Oh, _do_ help me to
+find out the truth!" she said. "Oh, Julius, pity me! I am so fond of
+him!"
+
+There was genuine distress in her face, there was true feeling in her
+voice. Who would have believed that there were reserves of merciless
+insolence and heartless cruelty in this woman--and that they had been
+lavishly poured out on a fallen sister not five minutes since?
+
+"I will do all I can," said Julius, raising her. "Let us talk of it when
+you are more composed. Try a little music," he repeated, "just to quiet
+your nerves."
+
+"Would _you_ like me to play?" asked Mrs. Glenarm, becoming a model of
+feminine docility at a moment's notice.
+
+Julius opened the Sonatas of Mozart, and shouldered his violin.
+
+"Let's try the Fifteenth," he said, placing Mrs. Glenarm at the piano.
+"We will begin with the Adagio. If ever there was divine music written
+by mortal man, there it is!"
+
+They began. At the third bar Mrs. Glenarm dropped a note--and the bow of
+Julius paused shuddering on the strings.
+
+"I can't play!" she said. "I am so agitated; I am so anxious. How _am_ I
+to find out whether that wretch is really married or not? Who can I ask?
+I can't go to Geoffrey in London--the trainers won't let me see him. I
+can't appeal to Mr. Brinkworth himself--I am not even acquainted with
+him. Who else is there? Do think, and tell me!"
+
+There was but one chance of making her return to the Adagio--the chance
+of hitting on a suggestion which would satisfy and quiet her. Julius
+laid his violin on the piano, and considered the question before him
+carefully.
+
+"There are the witnesses," he said. "If Geoffrey's story is to be
+depended on, the landlady and the waiter at the inn can speak to the
+facts."
+
+"Low people!" objected Mrs. Glenarm. "People I don't know. People who
+might take advantage of my situation, and be insolent to me."
+
+Julius considered once more; and made another suggestion. With the fatal
+ingenuity of innocence, he hit on the idea of referring Mrs. Glenarm to
+no less a person than Lady Lundie herself!
+
+"There is our good friend at Windygates," he said. "Some whisper of the
+matter may have reached Lady Lundie's ears. It may be a little awkward
+to call on her (if she _has_ heard any thing) at the time of a serious
+family disaster. You are the best judge of that, however. All I can do
+is to throw out the notion. Windygates isn't very far off--and something
+might come of it. What do you think?"
+
+Something might come of it! Let it be remembered that Lady Lundie had
+been left entirely in the dark--that she had written to Sir Patrick in
+a tone which plainly showed that her self-esteem was wounded and her
+suspicion roused--and that her first intimation of the serious dilemma
+in which Arnold Brinkworth stood was now likely, thanks to Julius
+Delamayn, to reach her from the lips of a mere acquaintance. Let this
+be remembered; and then let the estimate be formed of what might come of
+it--not at Windygates only, but also at Ham Farm!
+
+"What do you think?" asked Julius.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm was enchanted. "The very person to go to!" she said. "If I
+am not let in I can easily write--and explain my object as an apology.
+Lady Lundie is so right-minded, so sympathetic. If she sees no one
+else--I have only to confide my anxieties to her, and I am sure she will
+see me. You will lend me a carriage, won't you? I'll go to Windygates
+to-morrow."
+
+Julius took his violin off the pi ano.
+
+"Don't think me very troublesome," he said coaxingly. "Between this and
+to-morrow we have nothing to do. And it is _such_ music, if you once get
+into the swing of it! Would you mind trying again?"
+
+Mrs. Glenarm was willing to do any thing to prove her gratitude, after
+the invaluable hint which she had just received. At the second trial the
+fair pianist's eye and hand were in perfect harmony. The lovely melody
+which the Adagio of Mozart's Fifteenth Sonata has given to violin and
+piano flowed smoothly at last--and Julius Delamayn soared to the seventh
+heaven of musical delight.
+
+
+The next day Mrs. Glenarm and Mrs. Delamayn went together to Windygates
+House.
+
+
+
+
+TENTH SCENE--THE BEDROOM.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.
+
+LADY LUNDIE DOES HER DUTY.
+
+THE scene opens on a bedroom--and discloses, in broad daylight, a lady
+in bed.
+
+Persons with an irritable sense of propriety, whose self-appointed duty
+it is to be always crying out, are warned to pause before they cry out
+on this occasion. The lady now presented to view being no less a person
+than Lady Lundie herself, it follows, as a matter of course, that the
+utmost demands of propriety are, by the mere assertion of that fact,
+abundantly and indisputably satisfied. To say that any thing short of
+direct moral advantage could, by any possibility, accrue to any living
+creature by the presentation of her ladyship in a horizontal, instead
+of a perpendicular position, is to assert that Virtue is a question of
+posture, and that Respectability ceases to assert itself when it ceases
+to appear in morning or evening dress. Will any body be bold enough to
+say that? Let nobody cry out, then, on the present occasion.
+
+
+
+Lady Lundie was in bed.
+
+Her ladyship had received Blanche's written announcement of the
+sudden stoppage of the bridal tour; and had penned the answer to Sir
+Patrick--the receipt of which at Ham Farm has been already described.
+This done, Lady Lundie felt it due to herself to take a becoming
+position in her own house, pending the possible arrival of Sir Patrick's
+reply. What does a right-minded woman do, when she has reason to believe
+that she is cruelly distrusted by the members of her own family? A
+right-minded woman feels it so acutely that she falls ill. Lady Lundie
+fell ill accordingly.
+
+The case being a serious one, a medical practitioner of the highest
+grade in the profession was required to treat it. A physician from the
+neighboring town of Kirkandrew was called in.
+
+The physician came in a carriage and pair, with the necessary bald head,
+and the indispensable white cravat. He felt her ladyship's pulse, and
+put a few gentle questions. He turned his back solemnly, as only a great
+doctor can, on his own positive internal conviction that his patient had
+nothing whatever the matter with her. He said, with every appearance of
+believing in himself, "Nerves, Lady Lundie. Repose in bed is essentially
+necessary. I will write a prescription." He prescribed, with perfect
+gravity: Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia--16 drops. Spirits of Red
+Lavender--10 drops. Syrup of Orange Peel--2 drams. Camphor Julep--1
+ounce. When he had written, Misce fiat Hanstus (instead of Mix a
+Draught)--when he had added, Ter die Sumendus (instead of To be taken
+Three times a day)--and when he had certified to his own Latin, by
+putting his initials at the end, he had only to make his bow; to slip
+two guineas into his pocket; and to go his way, with an approving
+professional conscience, in the character of a physician who had done
+his duty.
+
+Lady Lundie was in bed. The visible part of her ladyship was perfectly
+attired, with a view to the occasion. A fillet of superb white lace
+encircled her head. She wore an adorable invalid jacket of white
+cambric, trimmed with lace and pink ribbons. The rest was--bed-clothes.
+On a table at her side stood the Red Lavender Draught--in color soothing
+to the eye; in flavor not unpleasant to the taste. A book of devotional
+character was near it. The domestic ledgers, and the kitchen report
+for the day, were ranged modestly behind the devout book. (Not even
+her ladyship's nerves, observe, were permitted to interfere with her
+ladyship's duty.) A fan, a smelling-bottle, and a handkerchief lay
+within reach on the counterpane. The spacious room was partially
+darkened. One of the lower windows was open, affording her ladyship the
+necessary cubic supply of air. The late Sir Thomas looked at his widow,
+in effigy, from the wall opposite the end of the bed. Not a chair was
+out of its place; not a vestige of wearing apparel dared to show itself
+outside the sacred limits of the wardrobe and the drawers. The sparkling
+treasures of the toilet-table glittered in the dim distance, The jugs
+and basins were of a rare and creamy white; spotless and beautiful to
+see. Look where you might, you saw a perfect room. Then look at the
+bed--and you saw a perfect woman, and completed the picture.
+
+
+
+It was the day after Anne's appearance at Swanhaven--toward the end of
+the afternoon.
+
+Lady Lundie's own maid opened the door noiselessly, and stole on tip-toe
+to the bedside. Her ladyship's eyes were closed. Her ladyship suddenly
+opened them.
+
+"Not asleep, Hopkins. Suffering. What is it?"
+
+Hopkins laid two cards on the counterpane. "Mrs. Delamayn, my lady--and
+Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+"They were told I was ill, of course?"
+
+"Yes, my lady. Mrs. Glenarm sent for me. She went into the library,
+and wrote this note." Hopkins produced the note, neatly folded in
+three-cornered form.
+
+"Have they gone?"
+
+"No, my lady. Mrs. Glenarm told me Yes or No would do for answer, if you
+could only have the goodness to read this."
+
+"Thoughtless of Mrs. Glenarm--at a time when the doctor insists on
+perfect repose," said Lady Lundie. "It doesn't matter. One sacrifice
+more or less is of very little consequence."
+
+She fortified herself by an application of the smelling-bottle, and
+opened the note. It ran thus:
+
+"So grieved, dear Lady Lundie, to hear that you are a prisoner in your
+room! I had taken the opportunity of calling with Mrs. Delamayn, in the
+hope that I might be able to ask you a question. Will your inexhaustible
+kindness forgive me if I ask it in writing? Have you had any unexpected
+news of Mr. Arnold Brinkworth lately? I mean, have you heard any thing
+about him, which has taken you very much by surprise? I have a serious
+reason for asking this. I will tell you what it is, the moment you are
+able to see me. Until then, one word of answer is all I expect. Send
+word down--Yes, or No. A thousand apologies--and pray get better soon!"
+
+The singular question contained in this note suggested one of two
+inferences to Lady Lundie's mind. Either Mrs. Glenarm had heard a report
+of the unexpected return of the married couple to England--or she was in
+the far more interesting and important position of possessing a clew
+to the secret of what was going on under the surface at Ham Farm. The
+phrase used in the note, "I have a serious reason for asking this,"
+appeared to favor the latter of the two interpretations. Impossible as
+it seemed to be that Mrs. Glenarm could know something about Arnold of
+which Lady Lundie was in absolute ignorance, her ladyship's curiosity
+(already powerfully excited by Blanche's mysterious letter) was only
+to be quieted by obtaining the necessary explanation forthwith, at a
+personal interview.
+
+"Hopkins," she said, "I must see Mrs. Glenarm."
+
+Hopkins respectfully held up her hands in horror. Company in the bedroom
+in the present state of her ladyship's health!
+
+"A matter of duty is involved in this, Hopkins. Give me the glass."
+
+Hopkins produced an elegant little hand-mirror. Lady Lundie carefully
+surveyed herself in it down to the margin of the bedclothes. Above
+criticism in every respect? Yes--even when the critic was a woman.
+
+"Show Mrs. Glenarm up here."
+
+In a minute or two more the iron-master's widow fluttered into
+the room--a little over-dressed as usual; and a little profuse in
+expressions of gratitude for her ladyship's kindness, and of anxiety
+about her ladyship's health. Lady Lundie endured it as long as she
+could--then stopped it with a gesture of polite remonstrance, and came
+to the point.
+
+"Now, my dear--about this question in your note? Is it possible you have
+heard already that Arnold Brinkworth and his wife have come back from
+Baden?" Mrs. Glenarm opened her eyes in astonishment. Lady Lundie put it
+more plainly. "They were to have gone on to Switzerland, you know, for
+their wedding tour, and they suddenly altered their minds, and came back
+to England on Sunday last."
+
+"Dear Lady Lundie, it's not that! Have you heard nothing about Mr.
+Brinkworth except what you have just told me?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+There was a pause. Mrs. Glenarm toyed hesitatingly with her parasol.
+Lady Lundie leaned forward in the bed, and looked at her attentively.
+
+"What have _you_ heard about him?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm was embarrassed. "It's so difficult to say," she began.
+
+"I can bear any thing but suspense," said Lady Lundie. "Tell me the
+worst."
+
+Mrs. Glenarm decided to risk it. "Have you never heard," she asked,
+"that Mr. Brinkworth might possibly have committed himself with another
+lady before he married Miss Lundie?"
+
+Her ladyship first closed her eyes in horror and then searched blindly
+on the counterpane for the smelling-bottle. Mrs. Glenarm gave it to her,
+and waited to see how the invalid bore it before she said any more.
+
+"There are things one _must_ hear," remarked Lady Lundie. "I see an act
+of duty involved in this. No words can describe how you astonish me. Who
+told you?"
+
+"Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn told me."
+
+Her ladyship applied for the second time to the smelling-bottle. "Arnold
+Brinkworth's most intimate friend!" she exclaimed. "He ought to know if
+any body does. This is dreadful. Why should Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn tell
+_you?_"
+
+"I am going to marry him," answered Mrs. Glenarm. "That is my excuse,
+dear Lady Lundie, for troubling you in this matter."
+
+Lady Lundie partially opened her eyes in a state of faint bewilderment.
+"I don't understand," she said. "For Heaven's sake explain yourself!"
+
+"Haven't you heard about the anonymous letters?" asked Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+Yes. Lady Lundie had heard about the letters. But only what the public
+in general had heard. The name of the lady in the background not
+mentioned; and Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn assumed to be as innocent as the
+babe unborn. Any mistake in that assumption? "Give me your hand, my poor
+dear, and confide it all to _me!_"
+
+"He is not quite innocent," said Mrs. Glenarm. "He owned to a foolish
+flirtation--all _her_ doing, no doubt. Of course, I insisted on a
+distinct explanation. Had she really any claim on him? Not the shadow of
+a claim. I felt that I only had his word for that--and I told him so.
+He said he could prove it--he said he knew her to be privately married
+already. Her husband had disowned and deserted her; she was at the
+end of her resources; she was desperate enough to attempt any thing. I
+thought it all very suspicious--until Geoffrey mentioned the man's name.
+_That_ certainly proved that he had cast off his wife; for I myself knew
+that he had lately married another person."
+
+Lady Lundie suddenly started up from her pillow--honestly agitated;
+genuinely alarmed by this time.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn told you the man's name?" she said, breathlessly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do I know it?"
+
+"Don't ask me!"
+
+Lady Lundie fell back on the pillow.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm rose to ring for help. Before she could touch the bell, her
+ladyship had rallied again.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "I can confirm it! It's true, Mrs. Glenarm! it's
+true! Open the silver box on the toilet-table--you will find the key in
+it. Bring me the top letter. Here! Look at it. I got this from Blanche.
+Why have they suddenly given up their bridal tour? Why have they gone
+back to Sir Patrick at Ham Farm? Why have they put me off with an
+infamous subterfuge to account for it? I felt sure something dreadful
+had happened. Now I know what it is!" She sank back again, with closed
+eyes, and repeated the words, in a fierce whisper, to herself. "Now I
+know what it is!"
+
+Mrs. Glenarm read the letter. The reason given for the suspiciously
+sudden return of the bride and bridegroom was palpably a
+subterfuge--and, more remarkable still, the name of Anne Silvester was
+connected with it. Mrs. Glenarm became strongly agitated on her side.
+
+"This _is_ a confirmation," she said. "Mr. Brinkworth has been found
+out--the woman _is_ married to him--Geoffrey is free. Oh, my dear
+friend, what a load of anxiety you have taken off my mind! That vile
+wretch--"
+
+Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes.
+
+"Do you mean," she asked, "the woman who is at the bottom of all the
+mischief?"
+
+"Yes. I saw her yesterday. She forced herself in at Swanhaven. She
+called him Geoffrey Delamayn. She declared herself a single woman. She
+claimed him before my face in the most audacious manner. She shook my
+faith, Lady Lundie--she shook my faith in Geoffrey!"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Who?" echoed Mrs. Glenarm. "Don't you even know that? Why her name is
+repeated half a dozen times in this letter!"
+
+Lady Lundie uttered a scream that rang through the room. Mrs. Glenarm
+started to her feet. The maid appeared at the door in terror. Her
+ladyship motioned to the woman to withdraw again instantly, and then
+pointed to Mrs. Glenarm's chair.
+
+"Sit down," she said. "Let me have a minute or two of quiet. I want
+nothing more."
+
+The silence in the room was unbroken until Lady Lundie spoke again.
+She asked for Blanche's letter. After reading it carefully, she laid it
+aside, and fell for a while into deep thought.
+
+"I have done Blanche an injustice!" she exclaimed. "My poor Blanche!"
+
+"You think she knows nothing about it?"
+
+"I am certain of it! You forget, Mrs. Glenarm, that this horrible
+discovery casts a doubt on my step-daughter's marriage. Do you think, if
+she knew the truth, she would write of a wretch who has mortally injured
+her as she writes here? They have put her off with the excuse that
+she innocently sends to _me._ I see it as plainly as I see you! Mr.
+Brinkworth and Sir Patrick are in league to keep us both in the dark.
+Dear child! I owe her an atonement. If nobody else opens her eyes, I
+will do it. Sir Patrick shall find that Blanche has a friend in Me!"
+
+A smile--the dangerous smile of an inveterately vindictive woman
+thoroughly roused--showed itself with a furtive suddenness on her face.
+Mrs. Glenarm was a little startled. Lady Lundie below the surface--as
+distinguished from Lady Lundie _on_ the surface--was not a pleasant
+object to contemplate.
+
+"Pray try to compose yourself," said Mrs. Glenarm. "Dear Lady Lundie,
+you frighten me!"
+
+The bland surface of her ladyship appeared smoothly once more; drawn
+back, as it were, over the hidden inner self, which it had left for the
+moment exposed to view.
+
+"Forgive me for feeling it!" she said, with the patient sweetness which
+so eminently distinguished her in times of trial. "It falls a little
+heavily on a poor sick woman--innocent of all suspicion, and insulted by
+the most heartless neglect. Don't let me distress you. I shall rally, my
+dear; I shall rally! In this dreadful calamity--this abyss of crime and
+misery and deceit--I have no one to depend on but myself. For Blanche's
+sake, the whole thing must be cleared up--probed, my dear, probed to the
+depths. Blanche must take a position that is worthy of her. Blanche must
+insist on her rights, under My protection. Never mind what I suffer, or
+what I sacrifice. There is a work of justice for poor weak Me to do.
+It shall be done!" said her ladyship, fanning herself with an aspect of
+illimitable resolution. "It shall be done!"
+
+"But, Lady Lundie what can you do? They are all away in the south. And
+as for that abominable woman--"
+
+Lady Lundie touched Mrs. Glenarm on the shoulder with her fan.
+
+"I have my surprise in store, dear friend, as well as you. That
+abominable woman was employed as Blanche's governess in this house.
+Wait! that is not all. She left us suddenly--ran away--on the pretense
+of being privately married. I know where she went. I can trace what
+she did. I can find out who was with her. I can follow Mr. Brinkworth's
+proceedings, behind Mr. Brinkworth's back. I can search out the truth,
+without depending on people compromised in this black business, whose
+interest it is to deceive me. And I will do it to-day!" She closed the
+fan with a sharp snap of triumph, and settled herself on the pillow in
+placid enjoyment of her dear friend's surprise.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm drew confidentially closer to the bedside. "How can you
+manage it?" she asked, eagerly. "Don't think me curious. I have my
+interest, too, in getting at the truth. Don't leave me out of it, pray!"
+
+"Can you come back to-morrow, at this time?"
+
+"Yes! yes!"
+
+"Come, then--and you shall know."
+
+"Can I be of any use?"
+
+"Not at present."
+
+"Can my uncle be of any use?"
+
+"Do you know where to communicate with Captain Newenden?"
+
+"Yes--he is staying with some friends in Sussex."
+
+"We may possibly want his assistance. I can't tell yet. Don't keep Mrs.
+Delamayn waiting any longer, my dear. I shall expect you to-morrow."
+
+They exchanged an affectionate embrace. Lady Lundie was left alone.
+
+Her ladyship resigned herself to meditation, with frowning brow and
+close-shut lips. She looked her full age, and a year or two more, as she
+lay thinking, with her head on her hand, and her elbow on the pillow.
+After committing herself to the physician (and to the red lavender
+draught) the commonest regard for consistency made it necessary that
+she should keep her bed for that day. And yet it was essential that the
+proposed inquiries should be instantly set on foot. On the one hand, the
+problem was not an easy one to solve; on the other, her ladyship was
+not an easy one to beat. How to send for the landlady at Craig Fernie,
+without exciting any special suspicion or remark--was the question
+before her. In less than five minutes she had looked back into her
+memory of current events at Windygates--and had solved it.
+
+Her first proceeding was to ring the bell for her maid.
+
+"I am afraid I frightened you, Hopkins. The state of my nerves. Mrs.
+Glenarm was a little sudden with some news that surprised me. I am
+better now--and able to attend to the household matters. There is a
+mistake in the butcher's account. Send the cook here."
+
+She took up the domestic ledger and the kitchen report; corrected the
+butcher; cautioned the cook; and disposed of all arrears of domestic
+business before Hopkins was summoned again. Having, in this way,
+dextrously prevented the woman from connecting any thing that her
+mistress said or did, after Mrs. Glenarm's departure, with any thing
+that might have passed during Mrs. Glenarm's visit, Lady Lundie felt
+herself at liberty to pave the way for the investigation on which she
+was determined to enter before she slept that night.
+
+"So much for the indoor arrangements," she said. "You must be my prime
+minister, Hopkins, while I lie helpless here. Is there any thing wanted
+by the people out of doors? The coachman? The gardener?"
+
+"I have just seen the gardener, my lady. He came with last week's
+accounts. I told him he couldn't see your ladyship to-day."
+
+"Quite right. Had he any report to make?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+"Surely, there was something I wanted to say to him--or to somebody
+else? My memorandum-book, Hopkins. In the basket, on that chair. Why
+wasn't the basket placed by my bedside?"
+
+Hopkins brought the memorandum-book. Lady Lundie consulted it (without
+the slightest necessity), with the same masterly gravity exhibited
+by the doctor when he wrote her prescription (without the slightest
+necessity also).
+
+"Here it is," she said, recovering the lost remembrance. "Not the
+gardener, but the gardener's wife. A memorandum to speak to her about
+Mrs. Inchbare. Observe, Hopkins, the association of ideas. Mrs. Inchbare
+is associated with the poultry; the poultry are associated with
+the gardener's wife; the gardener's wife is associated with the
+gardener--and so the gardener gets into my head. Do you see it? I am
+always trying to improve your mind. You do see it? Very well. Now about
+Mrs. Inchbare? Has she been here again?"
+
+"No, my lady."
+
+"I am not at all sure, Hopkins, that I was right in declining to
+consider the message Mrs. Inchbare sent to me about the poultry. Why
+shouldn't she offer to take any fowls that I can spare off my hands? She
+is a respectable woman; and it is important to me to live on good terms
+with al my neighbors, great and small. Has she got a poultry-yard of her
+own at Craig Fernie?"
+
+"Yes, my lady. And beautifully kept, I am told."
+
+"I really don't see--on reflection, Hopkins--why I should hesitate to
+deal with Mrs. Inchbare. (I don't think it beneath me to sell the game
+killed on my estate to the poulterer.) What was it she wanted to buy?
+Some of my black Spanish fowls?"
+
+"Yes, my lady. Your ladyship's black Spaniards are famous all round the
+neighborhood. Nobody has got the breed. And Mrs. Inchbare--"
+
+"Wants to share the distinction of having the breed with me," said Lady
+Lundie. "I won't appear ungracious. I will see her myself, as soon as I
+am a little better, and tell her that I have changed my mind. Send
+one of the men to Craig Fernie with a message. I can't keep a trifling
+matter of this sort in my memory--send him at once, or I may forget it.
+He is to say I am willing to see Mrs. Inchbare, about the fowls, the
+first time she finds it convenient to come this way."
+
+"I am afraid, my lady--Mrs. Inchbare's heart is so set on the black
+Spaniards--she will find it convenient to come this way at once as fast
+as her feet can carry her."
+
+"In that case, you must take her to the gardener's wife. Say she is to
+have some eggs--on condition, of course, of paying the price for them.
+If she does come, mind I hear of it."
+
+Hopkins withdrew. Hopkins's mistress reclined on her comfortable pillows
+and fanned herself gently. The vindictive smile reappeared on her face.
+"I fancy I shall be well enough to see Mrs. Inchbare," she thought to
+herself. "And it is just possible that the conversation may get beyond
+the relative merits of her poultry-yard and mine."
+
+
+
+A lapse of little more than two hours proved Hopkins's estimate of the
+latent enthusiasm in Mrs. Inchbare's character to have been correctly
+formed. The eager landlady appeared at Windygates on the heels of the
+returning servant. Among the long list of human weaknesses, a passion
+for poultry seems to have its practical advantages (in the shape
+of eggs) as compared with the more occult frenzies for collecting
+snuff-boxes and fiddles, and amassing autographs and old postage-stamps.
+When the mistress of Craig Fernie was duly announced to the mistress of
+Windygates, Lady Lundie developed a sense of humor for the first time
+in her life. Her ladyship was feebly merry (the result, no doubt, of the
+exhilarating properties of the red lavender draught) on the subject of
+Mrs. Inchbare and the Spanish fowls.
+
+"Most ridiculous, Hopkins! This poor woman must be suffering from
+a determination of poultry to the brain. Ill as I am, I should have
+thought that nothing could amuse me. But, really, this good creature
+starting up, and rushing here, as you say, as fast as her feet can carry
+her--it's impossible to resist it! I positively think I must see
+Mrs. Inchbare. With my active habits, this imprisonment to my room is
+dreadful. I can neither sleep nor read. Any thing, Hopkins, to divert my
+mind from myself: It's easy to get rid of her if she is too much for me.
+Send her up."
+
+Mrs. Inchbare made her appearance, courtesying deferentially; amazed at
+the condescension which admitted her within the hallowed precincts of
+Lady Lundie's room.
+
+"Take a chair," said her ladyship, graciously. "I am suffering from
+illness, as you perceive."
+
+"My certie! sick or well, yer leddyship's a braw sight to see!" returned
+Mrs. Inchbare profoundly impressed by the elegant costume which illness
+assumes when illness appears in the regions of high life.
+
+"I am far from being in a fit state to receive any body," proceeded Lady
+Lundie. "But I had a motive for wishing to speak to you when you next
+came to my house. I failed to treat a proposal you made to me, a short
+time since, in a friendly and neighborly way. I beg you to understand
+that I regret having forgotten the consideration due from a person in
+my position to a person in yours. I am obliged to say this under very
+unusual circumstances," added her ladyship, with a glance round her
+magnificent bedroom, "through your unexpected promptitude in favoring me
+with a call. You have lost no time, Mrs. Inchbare, in profiting by the
+message which I had the pleasure of sending to you."
+
+"Eh, my leddy, I wasna' that sure (yer leddyship having ance changed yer
+mind) but that ye might e'en change again if I failed to strike, as they
+say, while the iron's het. I crave yer pardon, I'm sure, if I ha'
+been ower hasty. The pride o' my hairt's in my powltry--and the black
+Spaniards' (as they ca' them) are a sair temptation to me to break the
+tenth commandment, sae lang as they're a' in yer leddyship's possession,
+and nane o' them in mine."
+
+"I am shocked to hear that I have been the innocent cause of your
+falling into temptation, Mrs. Inchbare! Make your proposal--and I shall
+be happy to meet it, if I can."
+
+"I must e'en be content wi' what yer leddyship will condescend on. A
+haitch o' eggs if I can come by naething else."
+
+"There is something else you would prefer to a hatch of eggs?"
+
+"I wad prefer," said Mrs. Inchbare, modestly, "a cock and twa pullets."
+
+"Open the case on the table behind you," said Lady Lundie, "and you will
+find some writing paper inside. Give me a sheet of it--and the pencil
+out of the tray."
+
+Eagerly watched by Mrs. Inchbare, she wrote an order to the
+poultry-woman, and held it out with a gracious smile.
+
+"Take that to the gardener's wife. If you agree with her about the
+price, you can have the cock and the two pullets."
+
+Mrs. Inchbare opened her lips--no doubt to express the utmost extremity
+of human gratitude. Before she had said three words, Lady Lundie's
+impatience to reach the end which she had kept in view from the
+time when Mrs. Glenarm had left the house burst the bounds which had
+successfully restrained it thus far. Stopping the landlady without
+ceremony, she fairly forced the conversation to the subject of Anne
+Silvester's proceedings at the Craig Fernie inn.
+
+"How are you getting on at the hotel, Mrs. Inchbare? Plenty of tourists,
+I suppose, at this time of year?"
+
+"Full, my leddy (praise Providence), frae the basement to the ceiling."
+
+"You had a visitor, I think, some time since of whom I know something? A
+person--" She paused, and put a strong constraint on herself. There was
+no alternative but to yield to the hard necessity of making her inquiry
+intelligible. "A lady," she added, "who came to you about the middle of
+last month."
+
+"Could yer leddyship condescend on her name?"
+
+Lady Lundie put a still stronger constraint on herself. "Silvester," she
+said, sharply.
+
+"Presairve us a'!" cried Mrs. Inchbare. "It will never be the same that
+cam' driftin' in by hersel'--wi' a bit bag in her hand, and a husband
+left daidling an hour or mair on the road behind her?"
+
+"I have no doubt it is the same."
+
+"Will she be a freend o' yer leddyship's?" asked Mrs. Inchbare, feeling
+her ground cautiously.
+
+"Certainly not!" said Lady Lundie. "I felt a passing curiosity about
+her--nothing more."
+
+Mrs. Inchbare looked relieved. "To tell ye truth, my leddy, there was
+nae love lost between us. She had a maisterfu' temper o' her ain--and I
+was weel pleased when I'd seen the last of her."
+
+"I can quite understand that, Mrs. Inchbare--I know something of her
+temper myself. Did I understand you to say that she came to your hotel
+alone, and that her husband joined her shortly afterward?"
+
+"E'en sae, yer leddyship. I was no' free to gi' her house-room in the
+hottle till her husband daidled in at her heels and answered for her."
+
+"I fancy I must have seen her husband," said Lady Lundie. "What sort of
+a man was he?"
+
+Mrs. Inchbare replied in much the same words which she had used in
+answering the similar question put by Sir Patrick.
+
+"Eh! he was ower young for the like o' _her._ A pratty man, my
+leddy--betwixt tall and short; wi' bonny brown eyes and cheeks, and fine
+coal-blaik hair. A nice douce-spoken lad. I hae naething to say against
+him--except that he cam' late one day, and took leg-bail betimes the
+next morning, and left madam behind, a load on my hands."
+
+The answer produced precisely the same effect on Lady Lundie which it
+had produced on Sir Patrick. She, also, felt that it was too vaguely
+like too many young men of no uncommon humor and complexion to be
+relied on. But her ladyship possessed one immense advantage over her
+brother-in-law in attempting to arrive at the truth. _She_ suspected
+Arnold--and it was possible, in her case, to assist Mrs. Inchbare's
+memory by hints contributed from her own superior resources of
+experience and observation.
+
+"Had he any thing about him of the look and way of a sailor?" she asked.
+"And did you notice, when you spoke to him, that he had a habit of
+playing with a locket on his watch-chain?"
+
+"There he is, het aff to a T!" cried Mrs. Inchbare. "Yer leddyship's weel
+acquented wi' him--there's nae doot o' that."
+
+"I thought I had seen him," said Lady Lundie. "A modest, well-behaved
+young man, Mrs. Inchbare, as you say. Don't let me keep you any longer
+from the poultry-yard. I am transgressing the doctor's orders in seeing
+any body. We quite understand each other now, don't we? Very glad to
+have seen you. Good-evening."
+
+So she dismissed Mrs. Inchbare, when Mrs. Inchbare had served her
+purpose.
+
+Most women, in her position, would have been content with the
+information which she had now obtained. But Lady Lundie--having a man
+like Sir Patrick to deal with--determined to be doubly sure of her facts
+before she ventured on interfering at Ham Farm. She had learned from
+Mrs. Inchbare that the so-called husband of Anne Silvester had joined
+her at Craig Fernie on the day when she arrived at the inn, and had left
+her again the next morning. Anne had made her escape from Windygates
+on the occasion of the lawn-party--that is to say, on the fourteenth of
+August. On the same day Arnold Brinkworth had taken his departure for
+the purpose of visiting the Scotch property left to him by his aunt. If
+Mrs. Inchbare was to be depended on, he must have gone to Craig Fernie
+instead of going to his appointed destination--and must, therefore, have
+arrived to visit his house and lands one day later than the day which he
+had originally set apart for that purpose. If this fact could be proved,
+on the testimony of a disinterested witness, the case against Arnold
+would be strengthened tenfold; and Lady Lundie might act on her
+discovery with something like a certainty that her information was to be
+relied on.
+
+After a little consideration she decided on sending a messenger with a
+note of inquiry addressed to Arnold's steward. The apology she invented
+to excuse and account for the strangeness of the proposed question,
+referred it to a little family discussion as to the exact date of
+Arnold's arrival at his estate, and to a friendly wager in which the
+difference of opinion had ended. If the steward could state whether his
+employer had arrived on the fourteenth or on the fifteenth of August,
+that was all that would be wanted to decide the question in dispute.
+
+Having written in those terms, Lady Lundie gave the necessary directions
+for having the note delivered at the earliest possible hour on the next
+morning; the messenger being ordered to make his way back to Windygates
+by the first return train on the same day.
+
+This arranged, her ladyship was free to refresh herself with another
+dose of the red lavender draught, and to sleep the sleep of the just who
+close their eyes with the composing conviction that they have done their
+duty.
+
+
+
+The events of the next day at Windygates succeeded each other in due
+course, as follows:
+
+The post arrived, and brought no reply from Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie
+entered that incident on her mental register of debts owed by her
+brother-in-law--to be paid, with interest, when the day of reckoning
+came.
+
+Next in order occurred the return of the messenger with the steward's
+answer.
+
+He had referred to his Diary; and he had discovered that Mr. Brinkworth
+had written beforehand to announce his arrival at his estate for the
+fourteenth of August--but that he had not actually appeared until the
+fifteenth. The one discovery needed to substantiate Mrs. Inchbare's
+evidence being now in Lady Lundie's possession, she decided to allow
+another day to pass--on the chance that Sir Patrick might al ter his
+mind, and write to her. If no letter arrived, and if nothing more was
+received from Blanche, she resolved to leave Windygates by the next
+morning's train, and to try the bold experiment of personal interference
+at Ham Farm.
+
+The third in the succession of events was the appearance of the doctor
+to pay his professional visit.
+
+A severe shock awaited him. He found his patient cured by the draught!
+It was contrary to all rule and precedent; it savored of quackery--the
+red lavender had no business to do what the red lavender had done--but
+there she was, nevertheless, up and dressed, and contemplating a journey
+to London on the next day but one. "An act of duty, doctor, is involved
+in this--whatever the sacrifice, I must go!" No other explanation could
+be obtained. The patient was plainly determined--nothing remained for
+the physician but to retreat with unimpaired dignity and a paid fee.
+He did it. "Our art," he explained to Lady Lundie in confidence, "is
+nothing, after all, but a choice between alternatives. For instance. I
+see you--not cured, as you think--but sustained by abnormal excitement.
+I have to ask which is the least of the two evils--to risk letting
+you travel, or to irritate you by keeping you at home. With your
+constitution, we must risk the journey. Be careful to keep the window of
+the carriage up on the side on which the wind blows. Let the extremities
+be moderately warm, and the mind easy--and pray don't omit to provide
+yourself with a second bottle of the Mixture before you start." He
+made his bow, as before--he slipped two guineas into his pocket, as
+before--and he went his way, as before, with an approving conscience,
+in the character of a physician who had done his duty. (What an enviable
+profession is Medicine! And why don't we all belong to it?)
+
+The last of the events was the arrival of Mrs. Glenarm.
+
+"Well?" she began, eagerly, "what news?"
+
+The narrative of her ladyship's discoveries--recited at full length;
+and the announcement of her ladyship's resolution--declared in the most
+uncompromising terms--raised Mrs. Glenarm's excitement to the highest
+pitch.
+
+"You go to town on Saturday?" she said. "I will go with you. Ever since
+that woman declared she should be in London before me, I have been dying
+to hasten my journey--and it is such an opportunity to go with you! I
+can easily manage it. My uncle and I were to have met in London, early
+next week, for the foot-race. I have only to write and tell him of my
+change of plans.--By-the-by, talking of my uncle, I have heard, since I
+saw you, from the lawyers at Perth."
+
+"More anonymous letters?"
+
+"One more--received by the lawyers this time. My unknown correspondent
+has written to them to withdraw his proposal, and to announce that
+he has left Perth. The lawyers recommended me to stop my uncle from
+spending money uselessly in employing the London police. I have
+forwarded their letter to the captain; and he will probably be in town
+to see his solicitors as soon as I get there with you. So much for
+what _I_ have done in this matter. Dear Lady Lundie--when we are at our
+journey's end, what do _you_ mean to do?"
+
+"My course is plain," answered her ladyship, calmly. "Sir Patrick will
+hear from me, on Sunday morning next, at Ham Farm."
+
+"Telling him what you have found out?"
+
+"Certainly not! Telling him that I find myself called to London by
+business, and that I propose paying him a short visit on Monday next."
+
+"Of course, he must receive you?"
+
+"I think there is no doubt of that. Even _his_ hatred of his
+brother's widow can hardly go to the length--after leaving my letter
+unanswered--of closing his doors against me next."
+
+"How will you manage it when you get there?"
+
+"When I get there, my dear, I shall be breathing an atmosphere of
+treachery and deceit; and, for my poor child's sake (abhorrent as all
+dissimulation is to me), I must be careful what I do. Not a word will
+escape my lips until I have first seen Blanche in private. However
+painful it may be, I shall not shrink from my duty, if my duty compels
+me to open her eyes to the truth. Sir Patrick and Mr. Brinkworth will
+have somebody else besides an inexperienced young creature to deal with
+on Monday next. I shall be there."
+
+With that formidable announcement, Lady Lundie closed the conversation;
+and Mrs. Glenarm rose to take her leave.
+
+"We meet at the Junction, dear Lady Lundie?"
+
+"At the Junction, on Saturday."
+
+
+
+
+ELEVENTH SCENE.--SIR PATRICK'S HOUSE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND.
+
+THE SMOKING-ROOM WINDOW.
+
+"I CAN'T believe it! I won't believe it! You're trying to part me from
+my husband--you're trying to set me against my dearest friend. It's
+infamous. It's horrible. What have I done to you? Oh, my head! my head!
+Are you trying to drive me mad?"
+
+Pale and wild; her hands twisted in her hair; her feet hurrying her
+aimlessly to and fro in the room--so Blanche answered her step-mother,
+when the object of Lady Lundie's pilgrimage had been accomplished, and
+the cruel truth had been plainly told.
+
+Her ladyship sat, superbly composed, looking out through the window at
+the placid landscape of woods and fields which surrounded Ham Farm.
+
+"I was prepared for this outbreak," she said, sadly. "These wild words
+relieve your over-burdened heart, my poor child. I can wait, Blanche--I
+can wait!"
+
+Blanche stopped, and confronted Lady Lundie.
+
+"You and I never liked each other," she said. "I wrote you a pert letter
+from this place. I have always taken Anne's part against you. I have
+shown you plainly--rudely, I dare say--that I was glad to be married and
+get away from you. This is not your revenge, is it?"
+
+"Oh, Blanche, Blanche, what thoughts to think! what words to say! I can
+only pray for you."
+
+"I am mad, Lady Lundie. You bear with mad people. Bear with me. I
+have been hardly more than a fortnight married. I love _him_--I love
+_her_--with all my heart. Remember what you have told me about them.
+Remember! remember! remember!"
+
+She reiterated the words with a low cry of pain. Her hands went up to
+her head again; and she returned restlessly to pacing this way and that
+in the room.
+
+Lady Lundie tried the effect of a gentle remonstrance. "For your own
+sake," she said, "don't persist in estranging yourself from me. In this
+dreadful trial, I am the only friend you have."
+
+Blanche came back to her step-mother's chair; and looked at her
+steadily, in silence. Lady Lundie submitted to inspection--and bore it
+perfectly.
+
+"Look into my heart," she said. "Blanche! it bleeds for you!"
+
+Blanche heard, without heeding. Her mind was painfully intent on its
+own thoughts. "You are a religious woman," she said, abruptly. "Will you
+swear on your Bible, that what you told me is true?"
+
+"_My_ Bible!" repeated Lady Lundie with sorrowful emphasis. "Oh, my
+child! have _you_ no part in that precious inheritance? Is it not _your_
+Bible, too?"
+
+A momentary triumph showed itself in Blanche's face. "You daren't swear
+it!" she said. "That's enough for me!"
+
+She turned away scornfully. Lady Lundie caught her by the hand, and drew
+her sharply back. The suffering saint disappeared, and the woman who was
+no longer to be trifled with took her place.
+
+"There must be an end to this," she said. "You don't believe what I have
+told you. Have you courage enough to put it to the test?"
+
+Blanche started, and released her hand. She trembled a little. There
+was a horrible certainty of conviction expressed in Lady Lundie's sudden
+change of manner.
+
+"How?" she asked.
+
+"You shall see. Tell me the truth, on your side, first. Where is Sir
+Patrick? Is he really out, as his servant told me?"
+
+"Yes. He is out with the farm bailiff. You have taken us all by
+surprise. You wrote that we were to expect you by the next train."
+
+"When does the next train arrive? It is eleven o'clock now."
+
+"Between one and two."
+
+"Sir Patrick will not be back till then?"
+
+"Not till then."
+
+"Where is Mr. Brinkworth?"
+
+"My husband?"
+
+"Your husband--if you like. Is he out, too?"
+
+"He is in the smoking-room."
+
+"Do you mean the long room, built out from the back of the house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come down stairs at once with me."
+
+Blanche advanced a step--and drew back. "What do you want of me?" she
+asked, inspired by a sudden distrust.
+
+Lady Lundie turned round, and looked at her impatiently.
+
+"Can't you see yet," she said, sharply, "that your interest and my
+interest in this matter are one? What have I told you?"
+
+"Don't repeat it!"
+
+"I must repeat it! I have told you that Arnold Brinkworth was privately
+at Craig Fernie, with Miss Silvester, in the acknowledged character of
+her husband--when we supposed him to be visiting the estate left him
+by his aunt. You refuse to believe it--and I am about to put it to
+the proof. Is it your interest or is it not, to know whether this man
+deserves the blind belief that you place in him?"
+
+Blanche trembled from head to foot, and made no reply.
+
+"I am going into the garden, to speak to Mr. Brinkworth through the
+smoking-room window," pursued her ladyship. "Have you the courage to
+come with me; to wait behind out of sight; and to hear what he says with
+his own lips? I am not afraid of putting it to that test. Are you?"
+
+The tone in which she asked the question roused Blanche's spirit.
+
+"If I believed him to be guilty," she said, resolutely, "I should _not_
+have the courage. I believe him to be innocent. Lead the way, Lady
+Lundie, as soon as you please."
+
+They left the room--Blanche's own room at Ham Farm--and descended to the
+hall. Lady Lundie stopped, and consulted the railway time-table hanging
+near the house-door.
+
+"There is a train to London at a quarter to twelve," she said. "How long
+does it take to walk to the station?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"You will soon know. Answer my question."
+
+"It's a walk of twenty minutes to the station."
+
+Lady Lundie referred to her watch. "There will be just time," she said.
+
+"Time for what?"
+
+"Come into the garden."
+
+With that answer, she led the way out
+
+The smoking-room projected at right angles from the wall of the house,
+in an oblong form--with a bow-window at the farther end, looking into
+the garden. Before she turned the corner, and showed herself within the
+range of view from the window Lady Lundie looked back, and signed to
+Blanche to wait behind the angle of the wall. Blanche waited.
+
+The next instant she heard the voices in conversation through the open
+window. Arnold's voice was the first that spoke.
+
+"Lady Lundie! Why, we didn't expect you till luncheon time!"
+
+Lady Lundie was ready with her answer.
+
+"I was able to leave town earlier than I had anticipated. Don't put out
+your cigar; and don't move. I am not coming in."
+
+The quick interchange of question and answer went on; every word being
+audible in the perfect stillness of the place. Arnold was the next to
+speak.
+
+"Have you seen Blanche?"
+
+"Blanche is getting ready to go out with me. We mean to have a walk
+together. I have many things to say to her. Before we go, I have
+something to say to _you._"
+
+"Is it any thing very serious?"
+
+"It is most serious."
+
+"About me?"
+
+"About you. I know where you went on the evening of my lawn-party at
+Windygates--you went to Craig Fernie."
+
+"Good Heavens! how did you find out--?"
+
+"I know whom you went to meet--Miss Silvester. I know what is said of
+you and of her--you are man and wife."
+
+"Hush! don't speak so loud. Somebody may hear you!"
+
+"What does it matter if they do? I am the only person whom you have kept
+out of the secret. You all of you know it here."
+
+"Nothing of the sort! Blanche doesn't know it."
+
+"What! Neither you nor Sir Patrick has told Blanche of the situation you
+stand in at this moment?"
+
+"Not yet. Sir Patrick leaves it to me. I haven't been able to bring
+myself to do it. Don't say a word, I entreat you. I don't know how
+Blanche may interpret it. Her friend is expected in London to-morrow. I
+want to wait till Sir Patrick can bring them together. Her friend will
+break it to her better than I can. It's _my_ notion. Sir Patrick thinks
+it a good one. Stop! you're not going away already?"
+
+"She will be here to look for me if I stay any longer."
+
+"One word! I want to know--"
+
+"You shall know later in the day."
+
+
+
+Her ladyship appeared again round the angle of the wall. The next words
+that passed were words spoken in a whisper.
+
+"Are you satisfied now, Blanche?"
+
+"Have you mercy enough left, Lady Lundie, to take me away from this
+house?"
+
+"My dear child! Why else did I look at the time-table in the hall?"
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-THIRD.
+
+THE EXPLOSION.
+
+ARNOLD'S mind was far from easy when he was left by himself again in the
+smoking-room.
+
+After wasting some time in vainly trying to guess at the source from
+which Lady Lundie had derived her information, he put on his hat, and
+took the direction which led to Blanche's favorite walk at Ham Farm.
+Without absolutely distrusting her ladyship's discretion, the idea
+had occurred to him that he would do well to join his wife and her
+step-mother. By making a third at the interview between them, he might
+prevent the conversation from assuming a perilously confidential turn.
+
+The search for the ladies proved useless. They had not taken the
+direction in which he supposed them to have gone.
+
+He returned to the smoking-room, and composed himself to wait for events
+as patiently as he might. In this passive position--with his
+thoughts still running on Lady Lundie--his memory reverted to a brief
+conversation between Sir Patrick and himself, occasioned, on the
+previous day, by her ladyship's announcement of her proposed visit to
+Ham Farm. Sir Patrick had at once expressed his conviction that his
+sister-in-law's journey south had some acknowledged purpose at the
+bottom of it.
+
+"I am not at all sure, Arnold" (he had said), "that I have done wisely
+in leaving her letter unanswered. And I am strongly disposed to think
+that the safest course will be to take her into the secret when she
+comes to-morrow. We can't help the position in which we are placed.
+It was impossible (without admitting your wife to our confidence) to
+prevent Blanche from writing that unlucky letter to her--and, even if
+we had prevented it, she must have heard in other ways of your return to
+England. I don't doubt my own discretion, so far; and I don't doubt the
+convenience of keeping her in the dark, as a means of keeping her from
+meddling in this business of yours, until I have had time to set it
+right. But she may, by some unlucky accident, discover the truth for
+herself--and, in that case, I strongly distrust the influence which she
+might attempt to exercise on Blanche's mind."
+
+Those were the words--and what had happened on the day after they had
+been spoken? Lady Lundie _had_ discovered the truth; and she was, at
+that moment, alone somewhere with Blanche. Arnold took up his hat once
+more, and set forth on the search for the ladies in another direction.
+
+The second expedition was as fruitless as the first. Nothing was to be
+seen, and nothing was to be heard, of Lady Lundie and Blanche.
+
+Arnold's watch told him that it was not far from the time when Sir
+Patrick might be expected to return. In all probability, while he had
+been looking for them, the ladies had gone back by some other way to the
+house. He entered the rooms on the ground-floor, one after another. They
+were all empty. He went up stairs, and knocked at the door of Blanche's
+room. There was no answer. He opened the door and looked in. The room
+was empty, like the rooms down stairs. But, close to the entrance, there
+was a trifling circumstance to attract notice, in the shape of a note
+lying on the carpet. He picked it up, and saw that it was addressed to
+him in the handwriting of his wife.
+
+He opened it. The note began, without the usual form of address, in
+these words:
+
+"I know the abominable secret that you and my uncle have hidden from
+me. I know _your_ infamy, and _her_ infamy, and the position in which,
+thanks to you and to her, I now stand. Reproaches would be wasted words,
+addressed to such a man as you are. I write these lines to tell you that
+I have placed myself under my step-mother's protection in London. It
+is useless to attempt to follow me. Others will find out whether the
+ceremony of marriage which you went through with me is binding on you or
+not. For myself, I know enough already. I have gone, never to come back,
+and never to let you see me again.--Blanche."
+
+Hurrying headlong down the stairs with but one clear idea in his
+mind--the idea of instantly following his wife--Arnold encountered Sir
+Patrick, standing by a table in the hall, on which cards and notes left
+by visitors were usually placed, with an open letter in his hand. Seeing
+in an instant what had happened, he threw one of his arms round Arnold,
+and stopped him at the house-door.
+
+"You are a man," he said, firmly. "Bear it like a man."
+
+Arnold's head fell on the shoulder of his kind old friend. He burst into
+tears.
+
+Sir Patrick let the irrepressible outbreak of grief have its way. In
+those first moments, silence was mercy. He said nothing. The letter
+which he had been reading (from Lady Lundie, it is needless to say),
+dropped unheeded at his feet.
+
+Arnold lifted his head, and dashed away the tears.
+
+"I am ashamed of myself," he said. "Let me go."
+
+"Wrong, my poor fellow--doubly wrong!" returned Sir Patrick. "There is
+no shame in shedding such tears as those. And there is nothing to be
+done by leaving _me._"
+
+"I must and will see her!"
+
+"Read that," said Sir Patrick, pointing to the letter on the floor. "See
+your wife? Your wife is with the woman who has written those lines. Read
+them."
+
+Arnold read them.
+
+
+
+"DEAR SIR PATRICK,--If you had honored me with your confidence, I should
+have been happy to consult you before I interfered to rescue Blanche
+from the position in which Mr. Brinkworth has placed her. As it is, your
+late brother's child is under my protection at my house in London. If
+_you_ attempt to exercise your authority, it must be by main force--I
+will submit to nothing less. If Mr. Brinkworth attempts to exercise
+_his_ authority, he shall establish his right to do so (if he can) in a
+police-court.
+
+"Very truly yours, JULIA LUNDIE."
+
+
+Arnold's resolution was not to be shaken even by this. "What do I care,"
+he burst out, hotly, "whether I am dragged through the streets by
+the police or not! I _will_ see my wife. I _will_ clear myself of the
+horrible suspicion she has about me. You have shown me your letter. Look
+at mine!"
+
+Sir Patrick's clear sense saw the wild words that Blanche had written in
+their true light.
+
+"Do you hold your wife responsible for that letter?" he asked. "I see
+her step-mother in every line of it. You descend to something unworthy
+of you, if you seriously defend yourself against _this!_ You can't see
+it? You persist in holding to your own view? Write, then. You can't get
+to her--your letter may. No! When you leave this house, you leave it
+with me. I have conceded something on my side, in allowing you to write.
+I insist on your conceding something, on your side, in return. Come into
+the library! I answer for setting things right between you and Blanche,
+if you will place your interests in my hands. Do you trust me or not?"
+
+Arnold yielded. They went into the library together. Sir Patrick pointed
+to the writing-table. "Relieve your mind there," he said. "And let me
+find you a reasonable man again when I come back."
+
+When he returned to the library the letter was written; and Arnold's
+mind was so far relieved--for the time at least.
+
+"I shall take your letter to Blanche myself," said Sir Patrick, "by the
+train that leaves for London in half an hour's time."
+
+"You will let me go with you?"
+
+"Not to-day. I shall be back this evening to dinner. You shall hear all
+that has happened; and you shall accompany me to London to-morrow--if
+I find it necessary to make any lengthened stay there. Between this and
+then, after the shock that you have suffered, you will do well to be
+quiet here. Be satisfied with my assurance that Blanche shall have your
+letter. I will force my authority on her step-mother to that extent (if
+her step-mother resists) without scruple. The respect in which I hold
+the sex only lasts as long as the sex deserves it--and does _not_ extend
+to Lady Lundie. There is no advantage that a man can take of a woman
+which I am not fully prepared to take of my sister-in-law."
+
+With that characteristic farewell, he shook hands with Arnold, and
+departed for the station.
+
+
+
+At seven o'clock the dinner was on the table. At seven o'clock Sir
+Patrick came down stairs to eat it, as perfectly dressed as usual, and
+as composed as if nothing had happened.
+
+"She has got your letter," he whispered, as he took Arnold's arm, and
+led him into the dining-room.
+
+"Did she say any thing?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"How did she look?"
+
+"As she ought to look--sorry for what she has done."
+
+The dinner began. As a matter of necessity, the subject of Sir Patrick's
+expedition was dropped while the servants were in the room--to be
+regularly taken up again by Arnold in the intervals between the courses.
+He began when the soup was taken away.
+
+"I confess I had hoped to see Blanche come back with you!" he said,
+sadly enough.
+
+"In other words," returned Sir Patrick, "you forgot the native obstinacy
+of the sex. Blanche is beginning to feel that she has been wrong. What
+is the necessary consequence? She naturally persists in being wrong.
+Let her alone, and leave your letter to have its effect. The serious
+difficulties in our way don't rest with Blanche. Content yourself with
+knowing that."
+
+The fish came in, and Arnold was silenced--until his next opportunity
+came with the next interval in the course of the dinner.
+
+"What are the difficulties?" he asked
+
+"The difficulties are my difficulties and yours," answered Sir Patrick.
+"My difficulty is, that I can't assert my authority, as guardian, if
+I assume my niece (as I do) to be a married woman. Your difficulty
+is, that you can't assert your authority as her husband, until it is
+distinctly proved that you and Miss Silvester are not man and wife. Lady
+Lundie was perfectly aware that she would place us in that position,
+when she removed Blanche from this house. She has cross-examined Mrs.
+Inchbare; she has written to your steward for the date of your arrival
+at your estate; she has done every thing, calculated every thing, and
+foreseen every thing--except my excellent temper. The one mistake she
+has made, is in thinking she could get the better of _that._ No, my dear
+boy! My trump card is my temper. I keep it in my hand, Arnold--I keep it
+in my hand!"
+
+The next course came in--and there was an end of the subject again.
+Sir Patrick enjoyed his mutton, and entered on a long and interesting
+narrative of the history of some rare white Burgundy on the table
+imported by himself. Arnold resolutely resumed the discussion with the
+departure of the mutton.
+
+"It seems to be a dead lock," he said.
+
+"No slang!" retorted Sir Patrick.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Sir, consider my anxiety, and tell me what you
+propose to do!"
+
+"I propose to take you to London with me to-morrow, on this
+condition--that you promise me, on your word of honor, not to attempt to
+see your wife before Saturday next."
+
+"I shall see her then?"
+
+"If you give me your promise."
+
+"I do! I do!"
+
+The next course came in. Sir Patrick entered on the question of the
+merits of the partridge, viewed as an eatable bird, "By himself,
+Arnold--plainly roasted, and tested on his own merits--an overrated
+bird. Being too fond of shooting him in this country, we become too fond
+of eating him next. Properly understood, he is a vehicle for sauce and
+truffles--nothing more. Or no--that is hardly doing him justice. I am
+bound to add that he is honorably associated with the famous French
+receipt for cooking an olive. Do you know it?"
+
+There was an end of the bird; there was an end of the jelly. Arnold got
+his next chance--and took it.
+
+"What is to be done in London to-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"To-morrow," answered Sir Patrick, "is a memorable day in our calendar.
+To-morrow is Tuesday--the day on which I am to see Miss Silvester."
+
+Arnold set down the glass of wine which he was just raising to his lips.
+
+"After what has happened," he said, "I can hardly bear to hear her name
+mentioned. Miss Silvester has parted me from my wife."
+
+"Miss Silvester may atone for that, Arnold, by uniting you again."
+
+"She has been the ruin of me so far."
+
+"She may be the salvation of you yet."
+
+The cheese came in; and Sir Patrick returned to the Art of Cookery.
+
+"Do you know the receipt for cooking an olive, Arnold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What _does_ the new generation know? It knows how to row, how to shoot,
+how to play at cricket, and how to bat. When it has lost its muscle and
+lost its money--that is to say, when it has grown old--what a generation
+it will be! It doesn't matter: I sha'n't live to see it. Are you
+listening, Arnold?"
+
+"Yes, Sir."
+
+"How to cook an olive! Put an olive into a lark, put a lark into a
+quail; put a quail into a plover; put a plover into a partridge; put a
+partridge into a pheasant; put a pheasant into a turkey. Good. First,
+partially roast, then carefully stew--until all is thoroughly done down
+to the olive. Good again. Next, open the window. Throw out the turkey,
+the pheasant, the partridge, the plover, the quail, and the lark. _Then,
+eat the olive._ The dish is expensive, but (we have it on the highest
+authority) well worth the sacrifice. The quintessence of the flavor of
+six birds, concentrated in one olive. Grand idea! Try another glass of
+the white Burgundy, Arnold."
+
+At last the servants left them--with the wine and dessert on the table.
+
+"I have borne it as long as I can, Sir," said Arnold. "Add to all your
+kindness to me by telling me at once what happened at Lady Lundie's."
+
+It was a chilly evening. A bright wood fire was burning in the room. Sir
+Patrick drew his chair to the fire.
+
+"This is exactly what happened," he said. "I found company at Lady
+Lundie's, to begin with. Two perfect strangers to me. Captain Newenden,
+and his niece, Mrs. Glenarm. Lady Lundie offered to see me in another
+room; the two strangers offered to withdraw. I declined both proposals.
+First check to her ladyship! She has reckoned throughout, Arnold, on our
+being afraid to face public opinion. I showed her at starting that we
+were as ready to face it as she was. 'I always accept what the French
+call accomplished facts,' I said. 'You have brought matters to a crisis,
+Lady Lundie. So let it be. I have a word to say to my niece (in
+your presence, if you like); and I have another word to say to you
+afterward--without presuming to disturb your guests.' The guests sat
+down again (both naturally devoured by curiosity). Could her ladyship
+decently refuse me an interview with my own niece, while two witnesses
+were looking on? Impossible. I saw Blanche (Lady Lundie being present,
+it is needless to say) in the back drawing-room. I gave her your
+letter; I said a good word for you; I saw that she was sorry, though
+she wouldn't own it--and that was enough. We went back into the front
+drawing-room. I had not spoken five words on our side of the question
+before it appeared, to my astonishment and delight, that Captain
+Newenden was in the house on the very question that had brought me into
+the house--the question of you and Miss Silvester. My business, in the
+interests of _my_ niece, was to deny your marriage to the lady. His
+business, in the interests of _his_ niece, was to assert your marriage
+to the lady. To the unutterable disgust of the two women, we joined
+issue, in the most friendly manner, on the spot. 'Charmed to have the
+pleasure of meeting you, Captain Newenden.'--'Delighted to have the
+honor of making your acquaintance, Sir Patrick.'--'I think we can settle
+this in two minutes?'--'My own idea perfectly expressed.'--'State your
+position, Captain.'--'With the greatest pleasure. Here is my niece,
+Mrs. Glenarm, engaged to marry Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn. All very well,
+but there happens to be an obstacle--in the shape of a lady. Do I put
+it plainly?'--'You put it admirably, Captain; but for the loss to the
+British navy, you ought to have been a lawyer. Pray, go on.'--'You are
+too good, Sir Patrick. I resume. Mr. Delamayn asserts that this person
+in the back-ground has no claim on him, and backs his assertion by
+declaring that she is married already to Mr. Arnold Brinkworth. Lady
+Lundie and my niece assure me, on evidence which satisfies _them,_ that
+the assertion is true. The evidence does not satisfy _me._ 'I hope, Sir
+Patrick, I don't strike you as being an excessively obstinate man?'--'My
+dear Sir, you impress me with the highest opinion of your capacity
+for sifting human testimony! May I ask, next, what course you mean to
+take?'--'The very thing I was going to mention, Sir Patrick! This is
+my course. I refuse to sanction my niece's engagement to Mr. Delamayn,
+until Mr. Delamayn has actually proved his statement by appeal to
+witnesses of the lady's marriage. He refers me to two witnesses; but
+declines acting at once in the matter for himself, on the ground that
+he is in training for a foot-race. I admit that that is an obstacle, and
+consent to arrange for bringing the two witnesses to London myself. By
+this post I have written to my lawyers in Perth to look the witnesses
+up; to offer them the necessary terms (at Mr. Delamayn's expense) for
+the use of their time; and to produce them by the end of the week. The
+footrace is on Thursday next. Mr. Delamayn will be able to attend after
+that, and establish his own assertion by his own witnesses. What do you
+say, Sir Patrick, to Saturday next (with Lady Lundie's permission) in
+this room?'--There is the substance of the captain's statement. He is
+as old as I am and is dressed to look like thirty; but a very pleasant
+fellow for all that. I struck my sister-in-law dumb by accepting the
+proposal without a moment's hesitation. Mrs. Glenarm and Lady Lundie
+looked at each other in mute amazement. Here was a difference about
+which two women would have mortally quarreled; and here were two men
+settling it in the friendliest possible manner. I wish you had seen
+Lady Lundie's face, when I declared myself deeply indebted to Captain
+Newenden for rendering any prolonged interview with her ladyship quite
+unnecessary. 'Thanks to the captain,' I said to her, in the most cordial
+manner, 'we have absolutely nothing to discuss. I shall catch the next
+train, and set Arnold Brinkworth's mind quite at ease.' To come back to
+serious things, I have engaged to produce you, in the presence of every
+body--your wife included--on Saturday next. I put a bold face on it
+before the others. But I am bound to tell _you_ that it is by no means
+easy to say--situated as we are now--what the result of Saturday's
+inquiry will be. Every thing depends on the issue of my interview with
+Miss Silvester to-morrow. It is no exaggeration to say, Arnold, that
+your fate is in her hands."
+
+"I wish to heaven I had never set eyes on her!" said Arnold.
+
+"Lay the saddle on the right horse," returned Sir Patrick. "Wish you had
+never set eyes on Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+Arnold hung his head. Sir Patrick's sharp tongue had got the better of
+him once more.
+
+
+
+
+TWELFTH SCENE.--DRURY LANE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-FOURTH.
+
+THE LETTER AND THE LAW.
+
+THE many-toned murmur of the current of London life--flowing through the
+murky channel of Drury Lane--found its muffled way from the front room
+to the back. Piles of old music lumbered the dusty floor. Stage masks
+and weapons, and portraits of singers and dancers, hung round the walls.
+An empty violin case in one corner faced a broken bust of Rossini in
+another. A frameless print, representing the Trial of Queen Caroline,
+was pasted over the fireplace. The chairs were genuine specimens of
+ancient carving in oak. The table was an equally excellent example of
+dirty modern deal. A small morsel of drugget was on the floor; and a
+large deposit of soot was on the ceiling. The scene thus presented,
+revealed itself in the back drawing-room of a house in Drury Lane,
+devoted to the transaction of musical and theatrical business of the
+humbler sort. It was late in the afternoon, on Michaelmas-day. Two
+persons were seated together in the room: they were Anne Silvester and
+Sir Patrick Lundie.
+
+The opening conversation between them--comprising, on one side, the
+narrative of what had happened at Perth and at Swanhaven; and, on the
+other, a statement of the circumstances attending the separation of
+Arnold and Blanche--had come to an end. It rested with Sir Patrick
+to lead the way to the next topic. He looked at his companion, and
+hesitated.
+
+"Do you feel strong enough to go on?" he asked. "If you would prefer to
+rest a little, pray say so."
+
+"Thank you, Sir Patrick. I am more than ready, I am eager to go on. No
+words can say how anxious I feel to be of some use to you, if I can. It
+rests entirely with your experience to show me how."
+
+"I can only do that, Miss Silvester, by asking you without ceremony
+for all the information that I want. Had you any object in traveling to
+London, which you have not mentioned to me yet? I mean, of course, any
+object with which I have a claim (as Arnold Brinkworth's representative)
+to be acquainted?"
+
+"I had an object, Sir Patrick. And I have failed to accomplish it."
+
+"May I ask what it was?"
+
+"It was to see Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+Sir Patrick started. "You have attempted to see _him!_ When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Why, you only arrived in London last night!"
+
+"I only arrived," said Anne, "after waiting many days on the journey. I
+was obliged to rest at Edinburgh, and again at York--and I was afraid
+I had given Mrs. Glenarm time enough to get to Geoffrey Delamayn before
+me."
+
+"Afraid?" repeated Sir Patrick. "I understood that you had no serious
+intention of disputing the scoundrel with Mrs. Glenarm. What motive
+could possibly have taken you _his_ way?"
+
+"The same motive which took me to Swanhaven."
+
+"What! the idea that it rested with Delamayn to set things right? and
+that you might bribe him to do it, by consenting to release him, so far
+as your claims were concerned?"
+
+"Bear with my folly, Sir Patrick, as patiently as you can! I am always
+alone now; and I get into a habit of brooding over things. I have been
+brooding over the position in which my misfortunes have placed Mr.
+Brinkworth. I have been obstinate--unreasonably obstinate--in believing
+that I could prevail with Geoffrey Delamayn, after I had failed with
+Mrs. Glenarm. I am obstinate about it still. If he would only have heard
+me, my madness in going to Fulham might have had its excuse." She sighed
+bitterly, and said no more.
+
+Sir Patrick took her hand.
+
+"It _has_ its excuse," he said, kindly. "Your motive is beyond reproach.
+Let me add--to quiet your mind--that, even if Delamayn had been willing
+to hear you, and had accepted the condition, the result would still
+have been the same. You are quite wrong in supposing that he has only to
+speak, and to set this matter right. It has passed entirely beyond
+his control. The mischief was done when Arnold Brinkworth spent those
+unlucky hours with you at Craig Fernie."
+
+"Oh, Sir Patrick, if I had only known that, before I went to Fulham this
+morning!"
+
+She shuddered as she said the words. Something was plainly associated
+with her visit to Geoffrey, the bare remembrance of which shook her
+nerves. What was it? Sir Patrick resolved to obtain an answer to that
+question, before he ventured on proceeding further with the main object
+of the interview.
+
+"You have told me your reason for going to Fulham," he said. "But I have
+not heard what happened there yet."
+
+Anne hesitated. "Is it necessary for me to trouble you about that?" she
+asked--with evident reluctance to enter on the subject.
+
+"It is absolutely necessary," answered Sir Patrick, "because Delamayn is
+concerned in it."
+
+Anne summoned her resolution, and entered on her narrative in these
+words:
+
+
+
+"The person who carries on the business here discovered the address for
+me," she began. "I had some difficulty, however, in finding the house.
+It is little more than a cottage; and it is quite lost in a great
+garden, surrounded by high walls. I saw a carriage waiting. The coachman
+was walking his horses up and down--and he showed me the door. It was a
+high wooden door in the wall, with a grating in it. I rang the bell. A
+servant-girl opened the grating, and looked at me. She refused to let
+me in. Her mistress had ordered her to close the door on all
+strangers--especially strangers who were women. I contrived to pass some
+money to her through the grating, and asked to speak to her mistress.
+After waiting some time, I saw another face behind the bars--and it
+struck me that I recognized it. I suppose I was nervous. It startled me.
+I said, 'I think we know each other.' There was no answer. The door was
+suddenly opened--and who do you think stood before me?"
+
+"Was it somebody I know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Man? or woman?"
+
+"It was Hester Dethridge."
+
+"Hester Dethridge!"
+
+"Yes. Dressed just as usual, and looking just as usual--with her slate
+hanging at her side."
+
+"Astonishing! Where did I last see her? At the Windygates station, to
+be sure--going to London, after she had left my sister-in-law's service.
+Has she accepted another place--without letting me know first, as I told
+her?"
+
+"She is living at Fulham."
+
+"In service?"
+
+"No. As mistress of her own house."
+
+"What! Hester Dethridge in possession of a house of her own? Well! well!
+why shouldn't she have a rise in the world like other people? Did she
+let you in?"
+
+"She stood for some time looking at me, in that dull strange way that
+she has. The servants at Windygates always said she was not in her right
+mind--and you will say, Sir Patrick, when you hear what happened, that
+the servants were not mistaken. She must be mad. I said, 'Don't you
+remember me?' She lifted her slate, and wrote, 'I remember you, in a
+dead swoon at Windygates House.' I was quite unaware that she had been
+present when I fainted in the library. The discovery startled me--or
+that dreadful, dead-cold look that she has in her eyes startled me--I
+don't know which. I couldn't speak to her just at first. She wrote on
+her slate again--the strangest question--in these words: 'I said, at the
+time, brought to it by a man. Did I say true?' If the question had been
+put in the usual way, by any body else, I should have considered it too
+insolent to be noticed. Can you understand my answering it, Sir Patrick?
+I can't understand it myself, now--and yet I did answer. She forced me
+to it with her stony eyes. I said 'yes.'"
+
+"Did all this take place at the door?"
+
+"At the door."
+
+"When did she let you in?"
+
+"The next thing she did was to let me in. She took me by the arm, in
+a rough way, and drew me inside the door, and shut it. My nerves are
+broken; my courage is gone. I crept with cold when she touched me. She
+dropped my arm. I stood like a child, waiting for what it pleased her to
+say or do next. She rested her two hands on her sides, and took a long
+look at me. She made a horrid dumb sound--not as if she was angry;
+more, if such a thing could be, as if she was satisfied--pleased even,
+I should have said, if it had been any body but Hester Dethridge. Do you
+understand it?"
+
+"Not yet. Let me get nearer to understanding it by asking something
+before you go on. Did she show any attachment to you, when you were both
+at Windygates?"
+
+"Not the least. She appeared to be incapable of attachment to me, or to
+any body."
+
+"Did she write any more questions on her slate?"
+
+"Yes. She wrote another question under what she had written just before.
+Her mind was still running on my fainting fit, and on the 'man' who had
+'brought me to it.' She held up the slate; and the words were these:
+'Tell me how he served you, did he knock you down?' Most people would
+have laughed at the question. _I_ was startled by it. I told her, No.
+She shook her head as if she didn't believe me. She wrote on her slate,
+'We are loth to own it when they up with their fists and beat us--ain't
+we?' I said, 'You are quite wrong.' She went on obstinately with her
+writing. 'Who is the man?'--was her next question. I had control enough
+over myself to decline telling her that. She opened the door, and
+pointed to me to go out. I made a sign entreating her to wait a
+little. She went back, in her impenetrable way, to the writing on the
+slate--still about the 'man.' This time, the question was plainer still.
+She had evidently placed her own interpretation of my appearance at the
+house. She wrote, 'Is it the man who lodges here?' I saw that she would
+close the door on me if I didn't answer. My only chance with her was
+to own that she had guessed right. I said 'Yes. I want to see him.' She
+took me by the arm, as roughly as before--and led me into the house."
+
+"I begin to understand her," said Sir Patrick. "I remember hearing, in
+my brother's time, that she had been brutally ill-used by her husband.
+The association of id eas, even in _her_ confused brain, becomes plain,
+if you bear that in mind. What is her last remembrance of you? It is the
+remembrance of a fainting woman at Windygates."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She makes you acknowledge that she has guessed right, in guessing that
+a man was, in some way, answerable for the condition in which she found
+you. A swoon produced by a shock indicted on the mind, is a swoon that
+she doesn't understand. She looks back into her own experience, and
+associates it with the exercise of actual physical brutality on the part
+of the man. And she sees, in you, a reflection of her own sufferings
+and her own case. It's curious--to a student of human nature. And it
+explains, what is otherwise unintelligible--her overlooking her own
+instructions to the servant, and letting you into the house. What
+happened next?"
+
+"She took me into a room, which I suppose was her own room. She made
+signs, offering me tea. It was done in the strangest way--without the
+least appearance of kindness. After what you have just said to me, I
+think I can in some degree interpret what was going on in her mind.
+I believe she felt a hard-hearted interest in seeing a woman whom she
+supposed to be as unfortunate as she had once been herself. I declined
+taking any tea, and tried to return to the subject of what I wanted in
+the house. She paid no heed to me. She pointed round the room; and then
+took me to a window, and pointed round the garden--and then made a sign
+indicating herself. 'My house; and my garden'--that was what she meant.
+There were four men in the garden--and Geoffrey Delamayn was one of
+them. I made another attempt to tell her that I wanted to speak to him.
+But, no! She had her own idea in her mind. After beckoning to me to
+leave the window, she led the way to the fire-place, and showed me a
+sheet of paper with writing on it, framed and placed under a glass, and
+hung on the wall. She seemed, I thought, to feel some kind of pride in
+her framed manuscript. At any rate, she insisted on my reading it. It
+was an extract from a will."
+
+"The will under which she had inherited the house?"
+
+"Yes. Her brother's will. It said, that he regretted, on his death-bed,
+his estrangement from his only sister, dating from the time when she had
+married in defiance of his wishes and against his advice. As a proof
+of his sincere desire to be reconciled with her, before he died, and as
+some compensation for the sufferings that she had endured at the hands
+of her deceased husband, he left her an income of two hundred pounds a
+year, together with the use of his house and garden, for her lifetime.
+That, as well as I remember, was the substance of what it said."
+
+"Creditable to her brother, and creditable to herself," said Sir
+Patrick. "Taking her odd character into consideration, I understand her
+liking it to be seen. What puzzles me, is her letting lodgings with an
+income of her own to live on."
+
+"That was the very question which I put to her myself. I was obliged
+to be cautious, and to begin by asking about the lodgers first--the men
+being still visible out in the garden, to excuse the inquiry. The rooms
+to let in the house had (as I understood her) been taken by a person
+acting for Geoffrey Delamayn--his trainer, I presume. He had surprised
+Hester Dethridge by barely noticing the house, and showing the most
+extraordinary interest in the garden."
+
+"That is quite intelligible, Miss Silvester. The garden you have
+described would be just the place he wanted for the exercises of his
+employer--plenty of space, and well secured from observation by the high
+walls all round. What next?"
+
+"Next, I got to the question of why she should let her house in lodgings
+at all. When I asked her that, her face turned harder than ever. She
+answered me on her slate in these dismal words: 'I have not got a friend
+in the world. I dare not live alone.' There was her reason! Dreary and
+dreadful, Sir Patrick, was it not?"
+
+"Dreary indeed! How did it end? Did you get into the garden?"
+
+"Yes--at the second attempt. She seemed suddenly to change her mind; she
+opened the door for me herself. Passing the window of the room in which
+I had left her, I looked back. She had taken her place, at a table
+before the window, apparently watching for what might happen. There was
+something about her, as her eyes met mine (I can't say what), which made
+me feel uneasy at the time. Adopting your view, I am almost inclined to
+think now, horrid as the idea is, that she had the expectation of seeing
+me treated as _she_ had been treated in former days. It was actually a
+relief to me--though I knew I was going to run a serious risk--to lose
+sight of her. As I got nearer to the men in the garden, I heard two of
+them talking very earnestly to Geoffrey Delamayn. The fourth person, an
+elderly gentleman, stood apart from the rest at some little distance. I
+kept as far as I could out of sight, waiting till the talk was over.
+It was impossible for me to help hearing it. The two men were trying
+to persuade Geoffrey Delamayn to speak to the elderly gentleman. They
+pointed to him as a famous medical man. They reiterated over and over
+again, that his opinion was well worth having--"
+
+Sir Patrick interrupted her. "Did they mention his name?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. They called him Mr. Speedwell."
+
+"The man himself! This is even more interesting, Miss Silvester, than
+you suppose. I myself heard Mr. Speedwell warn Delamayn that he was in
+broken health, when we were visiting together at Windygates House
+last month. Did he do as the other men wished him? Did he speak to the
+surgeon?"
+
+"No. He sulkily refused--he remembered what you remember. He said, 'See
+the man who told me I was broken down?--not I!' After confirming it
+with an oath, he turned away from the others. Unfortunately, he took the
+direction in which I was standing, and discovered me. The bare sight
+of me seemed to throw him instantly into a state of frenzy. He--it is
+impossible for me to repeat the language that he used: it is bad enough
+to have heard it. I believe, Sir Patrick, but for the two men, who ran
+up and laid hold of him, that Hester Dethridge would have seen what she
+expected to see. The change in him was so frightful--even to me, well as
+I thought I knew him in his fits of passion--I tremble when I think of
+it. One of the men who had restrained him was almost as brutal, in his
+way. He declared, in the foulest language, that if Delamayn had a fit,
+he would lose the race, and that I should be answerable for it. But for
+Mr. Speedwell, I don't know what I should have done. He came forward
+directly. 'This is no place either for you, or for me,' he said--and
+gave me his arm, and led me back to the house. Hester Dethridge met us
+in the passage, and lifted her hand to stop me. Mr. Speedwell asked her
+what she wanted. She looked at me, and then looked toward the garden,
+and made the motion of striking a blow with her clenched fist. For the
+first time in my experience of her--I hope it was my fancy--I thought I
+saw her smile. Mr. Speedwell took me out. 'They are well matched in that
+house,' he said. 'The woman is as complete a savage as the men.' The
+carriage which I had seen waiting at the door was his. He called it up,
+and politely offered me a place in it. I said I would only trespass on
+his kindness as far as to the railway station. While we were talking,
+Hester Dethridge followed us to the door. She made the same motion again
+with her clenched hand, and looked back toward the garden--and then
+looked at me, and nodded her head, as much as to say, 'He will do it
+yet!' No words can describe how glad I was to see the last of her. I
+hope and trust I shall never set eyes on her again!"
+
+"Did you hear how Mr. Speedwell came to be at the house? Had he gone of
+his own accord? or had he been sent for?"
+
+"He had been sent for. I ventured to speak to him about the persons whom
+I had seen in the garden. Mr. Speedwell explained everything which I was
+not able of myself to understand, in the kindest manner. One of the two
+strange men in the garden was the trainer; the other was a doctor, whom
+the trainer was usually in the habit of consulting. It seems that the
+real reason for their bringing Geof frey Delamayn away from Scotland
+when they did, was that the trainer was uneasy, and wanted to be near
+London for medical advice. The doctor, on being consulted, owned that he
+was at a loss to understand the symptoms which he was asked to treat.
+He had himself fetched the great surgeon to Fulham, that morning. Mr.
+Speedwell abstained from mentioning that he had foreseen what would
+happen, at Windygates. All he said was, 'I had met Mr. Delamayn in
+society, and I felt interest enough in the case to pay him a visit--with
+what result, you have seen yourself.'"
+
+"Did he tell you any thing about Delamayn's health?"
+
+"He said that he had questioned the doctor on the way to Fulham, and
+that some of the patient's symptoms indicated serious mischief. What the
+symptoms were I did not hear. Mr. Speedwell only spoke of changes for
+the worse in him which a woman would be likely to understand. At one
+time, he would be so dull and heedless that nothing could rouse him. At
+another, he flew into the most terrible passions without any apparent
+cause. The trainer had found it almost impossible (in Scotland) to keep
+him to the right diet; and the doctor had only sanctioned taking
+the house at Fulham, after being first satisfied, not only of the
+convenience of the garden, but also that Hester Dethridge could be
+thoroughly trusted as a cook. With her help, they had placed him on an
+entirely new diet. But they had found an unexpected difficulty even in
+doing that. When the trainer took him to the new lodgings, it turned
+out that he had seen Hester Dethridge at Windygates, and had taken
+the strongest prejudice against her. On seeing her again at Fulham, he
+appeared to be absolutely terrified."
+
+"Terrified? Why?"
+
+"Nobody knows why. The trainer and the doctor together could only
+prevent his leaving the house, by threatening to throw up the
+responsibility of preparing him for the race, unless he instantly
+controlled himself, and behaved like a man instead of a child. Since
+that time, he has become reconciled, little by little, to his new
+abode--partly through Hester Dethridge's caution in keeping herself
+always out of his way; and partly through his own appreciation of the
+change in his diet, which Hester's skill in cookery has enabled the
+doctor to make. Mr. Speedwell mentioned some things which I have
+forgotten. I can only repeat, Sir Patrick, the result at which he has
+arrived in his own mind. Coming from a man of his authority, the opinion
+seems to me to be startling in the last degree. If Geoffrey Delamayn
+runs in the race on Thursday next, he will do it at the risk of his
+life."
+
+"At the risk of dying on the ground?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Sir Patrick's face became thoughtful. He waited a little before he spoke
+again.
+
+"We have not wasted our time," he said, "in dwelling on what happened
+during your visit to Fulham. The possibility of this man's death
+suggests to my mind serious matter for consideration. It is very
+desirable, in the interests of my niece and her husband, that I should
+be able to foresee, if I can, how a fatal result of the race might
+affect the inquiry which is to be held on Saturday next. I believe you
+may be able to help me in this."
+
+"You have only to tell me how, Sir Patrick."
+
+"I may count on your being present on Saturday?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You thoroughly understand that, in meeting Blanche, you will meet a
+person estranged from you, for the present--a friend and sister who has
+ceased (under Lady Lundie's influence mainly) to feel as a friend and
+sister toward you now?"
+
+"I was not quite unprepared, Sir Patrick, to hear that Blanche had
+misjudged me. When I wrote my letter to Mr. Brinkworth, I warned him
+as delicately as I could, that his wife's jealousy might be very easily
+roused. You may rely on my self-restraint, no matter how hardly it may
+be tried. Nothing that Blanche can say or do will alter my grateful
+remembrance of the past. While I live, I love her. Let that assurance
+quiet any little anxiety that you may have felt as to my conduct--and
+tell me how I can serve those interests which I have at heart as well as
+you."
+
+"You can serve them, Miss Silvester, in this way. You can make me
+acquainted with the position in which you stood toward Delamayn at the
+time when you went to the Craig Fernie inn."
+
+"Put any questions to me that you think right, Sir Patrick."
+
+"You mean that?"
+
+"I mean it."
+
+"I will begin by recalling something which you have already told me.
+Delamayn has promised you marriage--"
+
+"Over and over again!"
+
+"In words?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In writing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you see what I am coming to?"
+
+"Hardly yet."
+
+"You referred, when we first met in this room, to a letter which you
+recovered from Bishopriggs, at Perth. I have ascertained from Arnold
+Brinkworth that the sheet of note-paper stolen from you contained two
+letters. One was written by you to Delamayn--the other was written by
+Delamayn to you. The substance of this last Arnold remembered. Your
+letter he had not read. It is of the utmost importance, Miss Silvester,
+to let me see that correspondence before we part to-day."
+
+Anne made no answer. She sat with her clasped hands on her lap. Her eyes
+looked uneasily away from Sir Patrick's face, for the first time.
+
+"Will it not be enough," she asked, after an interval, "if I tell you
+the substance of my letter, without showing it?"
+
+"It will _not_ be enough," returned Sir Patrick, in the plainest manner.
+"I hinted--if you remember--at the propriety of my seeing the letter,
+when you first mentioned it, and I observed that you purposely abstained
+from understanding me, I am grieved to put you, on this occasion, to a
+painful test. But if you _are_ to help me at this serious crisis, I have
+shown you the way."
+
+Anne rose from her chair, and answered by putting the letter into Sir
+Patrick's hands. "Remember what he has done, since I wrote that," she
+said. "And try to excuse me, if I own that I am ashamed to show it to
+you now."
+
+With those words she walked aside to the window. She stood there, with
+her hand pressed on her breast, looking out absently on the murky London
+view of house roof and chimney, while Sir Patrick opened the letter.
+
+It is necessary to the right appreciation of events, that other
+eyes besides Sir Patrick's should follow the brief course of the
+correspondence in this place.
+
+1. _From Anne Silvester to Geoffrey Delamayn._
+
+WINDYGATES HOUSE. _August_ 19, 1868.
+
+"GEOFFREY DELAMAYN,--I have waited in the hope that you would ride over
+from your brother's place, and see me--and I have waited in vain. Your
+conduct to me is cruelty itself; I will bear it no longer. Consider! in
+your own interests, consider--before you drive the miserable woman who
+has trusted you to despair. You have promised me marriage by all that is
+sacred. I claim your promise. I insist on nothing less than to be
+what you vowed I should be--what I have waited all this weary time to
+be--what I _am,_ in the sight of Heaven, your wedded wife. Lady Lundie
+gives a lawn-party here on the 14th. I know you have been asked. I
+expect you to accept her invitation. If I don't see you, I won't answer
+for what may happen. My mind is made up to endure this suspense no
+longer. Oh, Geoffrey, remember the past! Be faithful--be just--to your
+loving wife,
+
+"ANNE SILVESTER."
+
+2. _From Geoffrey Delamayn to Anne Silvester._
+
+"DEAR ANNE,--Just called to London to my father. They have telegraphed
+him in a bad way. Stop where you are, and I will write you. Trust the
+bearer. Upon my soul, I'll keep my promise. Your loving husband that is
+to be,
+
+"GEOFFREY DELAMAYN.
+
+"WINDYGATES HOUSE _Augt._ 14, 4 P. M.
+
+"In a mortal hurry. The train starts 4.30."
+
+
+Sir Patrick read the correspondence with breathless attention to the
+end. At the last lines of the last letter he did what he had not done
+for twenty years past--he sprang to his feet at a bound, and he crossed
+a room without the help of his ivory cane.
+
+Anne started; and turning round from the window, looked at him in silent
+surprise. He was under the influence of strong emotion; his face, his
+voice, his manner, all showed it.
+
+"How long had you been in Scotland, when you wrote this?" He pointed to
+Anne's letter as he asked the question, put ting it so eagerly that he
+stammered over the first words. "More than three weeks?" he added, with
+his bright black eyes fixed in absorbing interest on her face.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you sure of that?"
+
+"I am certain of it."
+
+"You can refer to persons who have seen you?"
+
+"Easily."
+
+He turned the sheet of note-paper, and pointed to Geoffrey's penciled
+letter on the fourth page.
+
+"How long had _he_ been in Scotland, when _he_ wrote this? More than
+three weeks, too?"
+
+Anne considered for a moment.
+
+"For God's sake, be careful!" said Sir Patrick. "You don't know what
+depends on this, If your memory is not clear about it, say so."
+
+"My memory was confused for a moment. It is clear again now. He had been
+at his brother's in Perthshire three weeks before he wrote that. And
+before he went to Swanhaven, he spent three or four days in the valley
+of the Esk."
+
+"Are you sure again?"
+
+"Quite sure!"
+
+"Do you know of any one who saw him in the valley of the Esk?"
+
+"I know of a person who took a note to him, from me."
+
+"A person easily found?"
+
+"Quite easily."
+
+Sir Patrick laid aside the letter, and seized in ungovernable agitation
+on both her hands.
+
+"Listen to me," he said. "The whole conspiracy against Arnold Brinkworth
+and you falls to the ground before that correspondence. When you and he
+met at the inn--"
+
+He paused, and looked at her. Her hands were beginning to tremble in
+his.
+
+"When you and Arnold Brinkworth met at the inn," he resumed, "the law of
+Scotland had made you a married woman. On the day, and at the hour,
+when he wrote those lines at the back of your letter to him, you were
+_Geoffrey Delamayn's wedded wife!_"
+
+He stopped, and looked at her again.
+
+Without a word in reply, without the slightest movement in her from head
+to foot, she looked back at him. The blank stillness of horror was in
+her face. The deadly cold of horror was in her hands.
+
+In silence, on his side, Sir Patrick drew back a step, with a faint
+reflection of _her_ dismay in his face. Married--to the villain who had
+not hesitated to calumniate the woman whom he had ruined, and then to
+cast her helpless on the world. Married--to the traitor who had not
+shrunk from betraying Arnold's trust in him, and desolating Arnold's
+home. Married--to the ruffian who would have struck her that morning, if
+the hands of his own friends had not held him back. And Sir Patrick had
+never thought of it! Absorbed in the one idea of Blanche's future, he
+had never thought of it, till that horror-stricken face looked at him,
+and said, Think of _my_ future, too!
+
+He came back to her. He took her cold hand once more in his.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "for thinking first of Blanche."
+
+Blanche's name seemed to rouse her. The life came back to her face; the
+tender brightness began to shine again in her eyes. He saw that he might
+venture to speak more plainly still: he went on.
+
+"I see the dreadful sacrifice as _you_ see it. I ask myself, have I any
+right, has Blanche any right--"
+
+She stopped him by a faint pressure of his hand.
+
+"Yes," she said, softly, "if Blanche's happiness depends on it."
+
+
+
+
+THIRTEENTH SCENE.--FULHAM.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.
+
+THE FOOT-RACE.
+
+A SOLITARY foreigner, drifting about London, drifted toward Fulham on
+the day of the Foot-Race.
+
+Little by little, he found himself involved in the current of a throng
+of impetuous English people, all flowing together toward one given
+point, and all decorated alike with colors of two prevailing hues--pink
+and yellow. He drifted along with the stream of passengers on the
+pavement (accompanied by a stream of carriages in the road) until they
+stopped with one accord at a gate--and paid admission money to a man in
+office--and poured into a great open space of ground which looked like
+an uncultivated garden.
+
+Arrived here, the foreign visitor opened his eyes in wonder at the scene
+revealed to view. He observed thousands of people assembled, composed
+almost exclusively of the middle and upper classes of society. They
+were congregated round a vast inclosure; they were elevated on
+amphitheatrical wooden stands, and they were perched on the roofs of
+horseless carriages, drawn up in rows. From this congregation there rose
+such a roar of eager voices as he had never heard yet from any assembled
+multitude in these islands. Predominating among the cries, he detected
+one everlasting question. It began with, "Who backs--?" and it ended in
+the alternate pronouncing of two British names unintelligible to foreign
+ears. Seeing these extraordinary sights, and hearing these stirring
+sounds, he applied to a policeman on duty; and said, in his best
+producible English, "If you please, Sir, what is this?"
+
+The policeman answered, "North against South--Sports."
+
+The foreigner was informed, but not satisfied. He pointed all round the
+assembly with a circular sweep of his hand; and said, "Why?"
+
+The policeman declined to waste words on a man who could ask such a
+question as that. He lifted a large purple forefinger, with a broad
+white nail at the end of it, and pointed gravely to a printed Bill,
+posted on the wall behind him. The drifting foreigner drifted to the
+Bill.
+
+After reading it carefully, from top to bottom, he consulted a polite
+private individual near at hand, who proved to be far more communicative
+than the policeman. The result on his mind, as a person not thoroughly
+awakened to the enormous national importance of Athletic Sports, was
+much as follows:
+
+The color of North is pink. The color of South is yellow. North produces
+fourteen pink men, and South produces thirteen yellow men. The meeting
+of pink and yellow is a solemnity. The solemnity takes its rise in
+an indomitable national passion for hardening the arms and legs, by
+throwing hammers and cricket-balls with the first, and running and
+jumping with the second. The object in view is to do this in public
+rivalry. The ends arrived at are (physically) an excessive development
+of the muscles, purchased at the expense of an excessive strain on the
+heart and the lungs--(morally), glory; conferred at the moment by the
+public applause; confirmed the next day by a report in the newspapers.
+Any person who presumes to see any physical evil involved in these
+exercises to the men who practice them, or any moral obstruction in
+the exhibition itself to those civilizing influences on which the true
+greatness of all nations depends, is a person without a biceps, who is
+simply incomprehensible. Muscular England develops itself, and takes no
+notice of him.
+
+The foreigner mixed with the assembly, and looked more closely at the
+social spectacle around him.
+
+He had met with these people before. He had seen them (for instance) at
+the theatre, and observed their manners and customs with considerable
+curiosity and surprise. When the curtain was down, they were so little
+interested in what they had come to see, that they had hardly spirit
+enough to speak to each other between the acts. When the curtain was up,
+if the play made any appeal to their sympathy with any of the higher and
+nobler emotions of humanity, they received it as something wearisome, or
+sneered at it as something absurd. The public feeling of the countrymen
+of Shakespeare, so far as they represented it, recognized but two duties
+in the dramatist--the duty of making them laugh, and the duty of getting
+it over soon. The two great merits of a stage proprietor, in England
+(judging by the rare applause of his cultivated customers), consisted
+in spending plenty of money on his scenery, and in hiring plenty of
+brazen-faced women to exhibit their bosoms and their legs. Not at
+theatres only; but among other gatherings, in other places, the
+foreigner had noticed the same stolid languor where any effort was
+exacted from genteel English brains, and the same stupid contempt where
+any appeal was made to genteel English hearts. Preserve us from enjoying
+any thing but jokes and scandal! Preserve us from respecting any thing
+but rank and money! There were the social aspirations of these insular
+ladies and gentlemen, as expressed under other circumstances, and as
+betrayed amidst other scenes. Here, all was changed. Here was the strong
+feeling, the breathless interest, the hearty enthusiasm, not visible
+elsewhere. Here were the superb gentlemen who were too weary to speak,
+when an Art was addressing them, shouting themselves hoarse with burst
+on burst of genuine applause. Here were the fine ladies who yawned
+behind their fans, at the bare idea of being called on to think or
+to feel, waving their handkerchiefs in honest delight, and actually
+flushing with excitement through their powder and their paint. And all
+for what? All for running and jumping--all for throwing hammers and
+balls.
+
+The foreigner looked at it, and tried, as a citizen of a civilized
+country, to understand it. He was still trying--when there occurred a
+pause in the performances.
+
+Certain hurdles, which had served to exhibit the present satisfactory
+state of civilization (in jumping) among the upper classes, were
+removed. The privileged persons who had duties to perform within the
+inclosure, looked all round it; and disappeared one after another. A
+great hush of expectation pervaded the whole assembly. Something of no
+common interest and importance was evidently about to take place. On a
+sudden, the silence was broken by a roar of cheering from the mob in
+the road outside the grounds. People looked at each other excitedly,
+and said, "One of them has come." The silence prevailed again--and was
+a second time broken by another roar of applause. People nodded to each
+other with an air of relief and said, "Both of them have come." Then the
+great hush fell on the crowd once more, and all eyes looked toward one
+particular point of the ground, occupied by a little wooden pavilion,
+with the blinds down over the open windows, and the door closed.
+
+The foreigner was deeply impressed by the silent expectation of the
+great throng about him. He felt his own sympathies stirred, without
+knowing why. He believed himself to be on the point of understanding the
+English people.
+
+Some ceremony of grave importance was evidently in preparation. Was a
+great orator going to address the assembly? Was a glorious anniversary
+to be commemorated? Was a religious service to be performed? He looked
+round him to apply for information once more. Two gentlemen--who
+contrasted favorably, so far as refinement of manner was concerned, with
+most of the spectators present--were slowly making their way, at that
+moment, through the crowd near him. He respectfully asked what national
+solemnity was now about to take place. They informed him that a pair
+of strong young men were going to run round the inclosure for a given
+number of turns, with the object of ascertaining which could run the
+fastest of the two.
+
+The foreigner lifted his hands and eyes to heaven. Oh, multifarious
+Providence! who would have suspected that the infinite diversities of
+thy creation included such beings as these! With that aspiration, he
+turned his back on the race-course, and left the place.
+
+On his way out of the grounds he had occasion to use his handkerchief,
+and found that it was gone. He felt next for his purse. His purse was
+missing too. When he was back again in his own country, intelligent
+inquiries were addressed to him on the subject of England. He had but
+one reply to give. "The whole nation is a mystery to me. Of all the
+English people I only understand the English thieves!"
+
+
+
+In the mean time the two gentlemen, making their way through the crowd,
+reached a wicket-gate in the fence which surrounded the inclosure.
+
+Presenting a written order to the policeman in charge of the gate, they
+were forthwith admitted within the sacred precincts The closely packed
+spectators, regarding them with mixed feelings of envy and curiosity,
+wondered who they might be. Were they referees appointed to act at
+the coming race? or reporters for the newspapers? or commissioners of
+police? They were neither the one nor the other. They were only Mr.
+Speedwell, the surgeon, and Sir Patrick Lundie.
+
+The two gentlemen walked into the centre of the inclosure, and looked
+round them.
+
+The grass on which they were standing was girdled by a broad smooth
+path, composed of finely-sifted ashes and sand--and this again was
+surrounded by the fence and by the spectators ranked behind it. Above
+the lines thus formed rose on one side the amphitheatres with their
+tiers of crowded benches, and on the other the long rows of carriages
+with the sight-seers inside and out. The evening sun was shining
+brightly, the light and shade lay together in grand masses, the varied
+colors of objects blended softly one with the other. It was a splendid
+and an inspiriting scene.
+
+Sir Patrick turned from the rows of eager faces all round him to his
+friend the surgeon.
+
+"Is there one person to be found in this vast crowd," he asked, "who has
+come to see the race with the doubt in his mind which has brought _us_
+to see it?"
+
+Mr. Speedwell shook his head. "Not one of them knows or cares what the
+struggle may cost the men who engage in it."
+
+Sir Patrick looked round him again. "I almost wish I had not come to see
+it," he said. "If this wretched man--"
+
+The surgeon interposed. "Don't dwell needlessly, Sir Patrick, on the
+gloomy view," he rejoined. "The opinion I have formed has, thus far, no
+positive grounds to rest on. I am guessing rightly, as I believe, but at
+the same time I am guessing in the dark. Appearances _may_ have misled
+me. There may be reserves of vital force in Mr. Delamayn's constitution
+which I don't suspect. I am here to learn a lesson--not to see a
+prediction fulfilled. I know his health is broken, and I believe he
+is going to run this race at his own proper peril. Don't feel too sure
+beforehand of the event. The event may prove me to be wrong."
+
+For the moment Sir Patrick dropped the subject. He was not in his usual
+spirits.
+
+Since his interview with Anne had satisfied him that she was Geoffrey's
+lawful wife, the conviction had inevitably forced itself on his mind
+that the one possible chance for her in the future, was the chance of
+Geoffrey's death. Horrible as it was to him, he had been possessed by
+that one idea--go where he might, do what he might, struggle as he might
+to force his thoughts in other directions. He looked round the broad
+ashen path on which the race was to be run, conscious that he had a
+secret interest in it which it was unutterably repugnant to him to feel.
+He tried to resume the conversation with his friend, and to lead it to
+other topics. The effort was useless. In despite of himself, he returned
+to the one fatal subject of the struggle that was now close at hand.
+
+"How many times must they go round this inclosure," he inquired, "before
+the race is ended?"
+
+Mr. Speedwell turned toward a gentleman who was approaching them at the
+moment. "Here is somebody coming who can tell us," he said.
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"He is one of my patients."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"After the two runners he is the most important personage on the ground.
+He is the final authority--the umpire of the race."
+
+The person thus described was a middle-aged man, with a prematurely
+wrinkled face, with prematurely white hair and with something of a
+military look about him--brief in speech, and quick in manner.
+
+"The path measures four hundred and forty yards round," he said, when
+the surgeon had repeated Sir Patrick's question to him. "In plainer
+words, and not to put you to your arithmetic once round it is a quarter
+of a mile. Each round is called a 'Lap.' The men must run sixteen Laps
+to finish the race. Not to put you to your arithmetic again, they must
+run four miles--the longest race of this kind which it is customary to
+attempt at Sports like these."
+
+"Professional pedestrians exceed that limit, do they not?"
+
+"Considerably--on certain occasions."
+
+"Are they a long-lived race?"
+
+"Far from it. They are exceptions when they live to be old men."
+
+Mr. Speedwell looked at Sir Patrick. Sir Patrick put a question to the
+umpire.
+
+"You have just told us," he said, "that the two young men who appear
+to-day are going to run the longest distance yet attempted in their
+experience. Is it generally thought, by persons who understand such
+things, that they are both fit to bear the exertion demanded of them?"
+
+"You can judge for yourself, Sir. Here is one of them."
+
+He pointed toward the pavilion. At the same moment there rose a mighty
+clapping of hands from the great throng of spectators. Fleetwood,
+champion of the North, decorated in his pink colors, descended the
+pavilion steps and walked into the arena.
+
+Young, lithe, and elegant, with supple strength expressed in every
+movement of his limbs, with a bright smile on his resolute young face,
+the man of the north won the women's hearts at starting. The murmur
+of eager talk rose among them on all sides. The men were
+quieter--especially the men who understood the subject. It was a serious
+question with these experts whether Fleetwood was not "a little too
+fine." Superbly trained, it was admitted--but, possibly, a little
+over-trained for a four-mile race.
+
+The northern hero was followed into the inclosure by his friends and
+backers, and by his trainer. This last carried a tin can in his hand.
+"Cold water," the umpire explained. "If he gets exhausted, his trainer
+will pick him up with a dash of it as he goes by."
+
+A new burst of hand-clapping rattled all round the arena. Delamayn,
+champion of the South, decorated in his yellow colors, presented himself
+to the public view.
+
+The immense hum of voices rose louder and louder as he walked into the
+centre of the great green space. Surprise at the extraordinary contrast
+between the two men was the prevalent emotion of the moment. Geoffrey
+was more than a head taller than his antagonist, and broader in full
+proportion. The women who had been charmed with the easy gait and
+confident smile of Fleetwood, were all more or less painfully impressed
+by the sullen strength of the southern man, as he passed before them
+slowly, with his head down and his brows knit, deaf to the applause
+showered on him, reckless of the eyes that looked at him; speaking to
+nobody; concentrated in himself; biding his time. He held the men who
+understood the subject breathless with interest. There it was! the
+famous "staying power" that was to endure in the last terrible half-mile
+of the race, when the nimble and jaunty Fleetwood was run off his legs.
+Whispers had been spread abroad hinting at something which had gone
+wrong with Delamayn in his training. And now that all eyes could judge
+him, his appearance suggested criticism in some quarters. It was exactly
+the opposite of the criticism passed on his antagonist. The doubt as to
+Delamayn was whether he had been sufficiently trained. Still the
+solid strength of the man, the slow, panther-like smoothness of his
+movements--and, above all, his great reputation in the world of
+muscle and sport--had their effect. The betting which, with occasional
+fluctuations, had held steadily in his favor thus far, held, now that he
+was publicly seen, steadily in his favor still.
+
+"Fleetwood for shorter distances, if you like; but Delamayn for a
+four-mile race."
+
+"Do you think he sees us?" whispered Sir Patrick to the surgeon.
+
+"He sees nobody."
+
+"Can you judge of the condition he is in, at this distance?"
+
+"He has twice the muscular strength of the other man. His trunk and
+limbs are magnificent. It is useless to ask me more than that about his
+condition. We are too far from him to see his face plainly."
+
+The conversation among the audience began to flag again; and the silent
+expectation set in among them once more. One by one, the different
+persons officially connected with the race gathered together on the
+grass. The trainer Perry was among them, with his can of water in his
+hand, in anxious whispering conversation with his principal--giving him
+the last words of advice before the start. The trainer's doctor, leaving
+them together, came up to pay his respects to his illustrious colleague.
+
+"How has he got on since I was at Fulham?" asked Mr. Speedwell.
+
+"First-rate, Sir! It was one of his bad days when you saw him. He has
+done wonders in the last eight-and-forty hours."
+
+"Is he going to win the race?"
+
+Privately the doctor had done what Perry had done before him--he had
+backed Geoffrey's antagonist. Publicly he was true to his colors. He
+cast a disparaging look at Fleetwood--and answered Yes, without the
+slightest hesitation.
+
+At that point, the conversation was suspended by a sudden movement in
+the inclosure. The runners were on their way to the starting-place. The
+moment of the race had come.
+
+
+
+Shoulder to shoulder, the two men waited--each with his foot touching
+the mark. The firing of a pistol gave the signal for the start. At the
+instant when the report sounded they were off.
+
+Fleetwood at once took the lead, Delamayn following, at from two to
+three yards behind him. In that order they ran the first round, the
+second, and the third--both reserving their strength; both watched with
+breathless interest by every soul in the place. The trainers, with their
+cans in their hands, ran backward and forward over the grass, meeting
+their men at certain points, and eying them narrowly, in silence. The
+official persons stood together in a group; their eyes following the
+runners round and round with the closest attention. The trainer's
+doctor, still attached to his illustrious colleague, offered the
+necessary explanations to Mr. Speedwell and his friend.
+
+"Nothing much to see for the first mile, Sir, except the 'style' of the
+two men."
+
+"You mean they are not really exerting themselves yet?"
+
+"No. Getting their wind, and feeling their legs. Pretty runner,
+Fleetwood--if you notice Sir? Gets his legs a trifle better in front,
+and hardly lifts his heels quite so high as our man. His action's the
+best of the two; I grant that. But just look, as they come by, which
+keeps the straightest line. There's where Delamayn has him! It's a
+steadier, stronger, truer pace; and you'll see it tell when they're
+half-way through." So, for the first three rounds, the doctor expatiated
+on the two contrasted "styles"--in terms mercifully adapted to the
+comprehension of persons unacquainted with the language of the running
+ring.
+
+At the fourth round--in other words, at the round which completed the
+first mile, the first change in the relative position of the runners
+occurred. Delamayn suddenly dashed to the front. Fleetwood smiled as the
+other passed him. Delamayn held the lead till they were half way through
+the fifth round--when Fleetwood, at a hint from his trainer, forced the
+pace. He lightly passed Delamayn in an instant; and led again to the
+completion of the sixth round.
+
+At the opening of the seventh, Delamayn forced the pace on his side. For
+a few moments, they ran exactly abreast. Then Delamayn drew away inch
+by inch; and recovered the lead. The first burst of applause (led by the
+south) rang out, as the big man beat Fleetwood at his own tactics, and
+headed him at the critical moment when the race was nearly half run.
+
+"It begins to look as if Delamayn _was_ going to win!" said Sir Patrick.
+
+The trainer's doctor forgot himself. Infected by the rising excitement
+of every body about him, he let out the truth.
+
+"Wait a bit!" he said. "Fleetwood has got directions to let him
+pass--Fleetwood is waiting to see what he can do."
+
+"Cunning, you see, Sir Patrick, is one of the elements in a manly
+sport," said Mr. Speedwell, quietly.
+
+At the end of the seventh round, Fleetwood proved the doctor to be
+right. He shot past Delamayn like an arrow from a bow. At the end of the
+eight round, he was leading by two yards. Half the race had then been
+run. Time, ten minutes and thirty-three seconds.
+
+Toward the end of the ninth round, the pace slackened a little; and
+Delamayn was in front again. He kept ahead, until the opening of the
+eleventh round. At that point, Fleetwood flung up one hand in the air
+with a gesture of triumph; and bounded past Delamayn with a shout of
+"Hooray for the North!" The shout was echoed by the spectators. In
+proportion as the exertion began to tell upon the men, so the excitement
+steadily rose among the people looking at them.
+
+At the twelfth round, Fleetwood was leading by six yards. Cries of
+triumph rose among the adherents of the north, met by counter-cries of
+defiance from the south. At the next turn Delamayn resolutely lessened
+the distance between his antagonist and himself. At the opening of the
+fourteenth round, they were coming sid e by side. A few yards more, and
+Delamayn was in front again, amidst a roar of applause from the whole
+public voice. Yet a few yards further, and Fleetwood neared him, passed
+him, dropped behind again, led again, and was passed again at the end
+of the round. The excitement rose to its highest pitch, as the
+runners--gasping for breath; with dark flushed faces, and heaving
+breasts--alternately passed and repassed each other. Oaths were heard
+now as well as cheers. Women turned pale and men set their teeth, as the
+last round but one began.
+
+At the opening of it, Delamayn was still in advance. Before six yards
+more had been covered, Fleetwood betrayed the purpose of his running in
+the previous round, and electrified the whole assembly, by dashing past
+his antagonist--for the first time in the race at the top of his speed.
+Every body present could see, now, that Delamayn had been allowed to
+lead on sufferance--had been dextrously drawn on to put out his whole
+power--and had then, and not till then, been seriously deprived of the
+lead. He made another effort, with a desperate resolution that roused
+the public enthusiasm to frenzy. While the voices were roaring; while
+the hats and handkerchiefs were waving round the course; while
+the actual event of the race was, for one supreme moment, still in
+doubt--Mr. Speedwell caught Sir Patrick by the arm.
+
+"Prepare yourself!" he whispered. "It's all over."
+
+As the words passed his lips, Delamayn swerved on the path. His trainer
+dashed water over him. He rallied, and ran another step or two--swerved
+again--staggered--lifted his arm to his mouth with a hoarse cry of
+rage--fastened his own teeth in his flesh like a wild beast--and fell
+senseless on the course.
+
+A Babel of sounds arose. The cries of alarm in some places, mingling
+with the shouts of triumph from the backers of Fleetwood in others--as
+their man ran lightly on to win the now uncontested race. Not the
+inclosure only, but the course itself was invaded by the crowd. In the
+midst of the tumult the fallen man was drawn on to the grass--with Mr.
+Speedwell and the trainer's doctor in attendance on him. At the terrible
+moment when the surgeon laid his hand on the heart, Fleetwood passed the
+spot--a passage being forced for him through the people by his friends
+and the police--running the sixteenth and last round of the race.
+
+Had the beaten man fainted under it, or had he died under it? Every body
+waited, with their eyes riveted on the surgeon's hand.
+
+The surgeon looked up from him, and called for water to throw over his
+face, for brandy to put into his mouth. He was coming to life again--he
+had survived the race. The last shout of applause which hailed
+Fleetwood's victory rang out as they lifted him from the ground to carry
+him to the pavilion. Sir Patrick (admitted at Mr. Speedwell's request)
+was the one stranger allowed to pass the door. At the moment when he was
+ascending the steps, some one touched his arm. It was Captain Newenden.
+
+"Do the doctors answer for his life?" asked the captain. "I can't get my
+niece to leave the ground till she is satisfied of that."
+
+Mr. Speedwell heard the question and replied to it briefly from the top
+of the pavilion steps.
+
+"For the present--yes," he said.
+
+The captain thanked him, and disappeared.
+
+They entered the pavilion. The necessary restorative measures were
+taken under Mr. Speedwell's directions. There the conquered athlete lay:
+outwardly an inert mass of strength, formidable to look at, even in its
+fall; inwardly, a weaker creature, in all that constitutes vital
+force, than the fly that buzzed on the window-pane. By slow degrees the
+fluttering life came back. The sun was setting; and the evening light
+was beginning to fail. Mr. Speedwell beckoned to Perry to follow him
+into an unoccupied corner of the room.
+
+"In half an hour or less he will be well enough to be taken home. Where
+are his friends? He has a brother--hasn't he?"
+
+"His brother's in Scotland, Sir."
+
+"His father?"
+
+Perry scratched his head. "From all I hear, Sir, he and his father don't
+agree."
+
+Mr. Speedwell applied to Sir Patrick.
+
+"Do you know any thing of his family affairs?"
+
+"Very little. I believe what the man has told you to be the truth."
+
+"Is his mother living?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will write to her myself. In the mean time, somebody must take him
+home. He has plenty of friends here. Where are they?"
+
+He looked out of the window as he spoke. A throng of people had gathered
+round the pavilion, waiting to hear the latest news. Mr. Speedwell
+directed Perry to go out and search among them for any friends of his
+employer whom he might know by sight. Perry hesitated, and scratched his
+head for the second time.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" asked the surgeon, sharply. "You know his
+friends by sight, don't you?"
+
+"I don't think I shall find them outside," said Perry.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"They backed him heavily, Sir--and they have all lost."
+
+Deaf to this unanswerable reason for the absence of friends, Mr.
+Speedwell insisted on sending Perry out to search among the persons
+who composed the crowd. The trainer returned with his report. "You were
+right, Sir. There are some of his friends outside. They want to see
+him."
+
+"Let two or three of them in."
+
+Three came in. They stared at him. They uttered brief expressions of
+pity in slang. They said to Mr. Speedwell, "We wanted to see him. What
+is it--eh?"
+
+"It's a break-down in his health."
+
+"Bad training?"
+
+"Athletic Sports."
+
+"Oh! Thank you. Good-evening."
+
+Mr. Speedwell's answer drove them out like a flock of sheep before a
+dog. There was not even time to put the question to them as to who was
+to take him home.
+
+"I'll look after him, Sir," said Perry. "You can trust me."
+
+"I'll go too," added the trainer's doctor; "and see him littered down
+for the night."
+
+(The only two men who had "hedged" their bets, by privately backing his
+opponent, were also the only two men who volunteered to take him home!)
+
+They went back to the sofa on which he was lying. His bloodshot
+eyes were rolling heavily and vacantly about him, on the search for
+something. They rested on the doctor--and looked away again. They turned
+to Mr. Speedwell--and stopped, riveted on his face. The surgeon bent
+over him, and said, "What is it?"
+
+He answered with a thick accent and laboring breath--uttering a word at
+a time: "Shall--I--die?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"No."
+
+He looked round him again. This time his eyes rested on the trainer.
+Perry came forward.
+
+"What can I do for you, Sir?"
+
+The reply came slowly as before. "My--coat--pocket."
+
+"This one, Sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"This?"
+
+"Yes. Book."
+
+The trainer felt in the pocket, and produced a betting-book.
+
+"What's to be done with this. Sir?"
+
+"Read."
+
+The trainer held the book before him; open at the last two pages on
+which entries had been made. He rolled his head impatiently from side to
+side of the sofa pillow. It was plain that he was not yet sufficiently
+recovered to be able to read what he had written.
+
+"Shall I read for you, Sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The trainer read three entries, one after another, without result; they
+had all been honestly settled. At the fourth the prostrate man said,
+"Stop!" This was the first of the entries which still depended on a
+future event. It recorded the wager laid at Windygates, when Geoffrey
+had backed himself (in defiance of the surgeon's opinion) to row in the
+University boat-race next spring--and had forced Arnold Brinkworth to
+bet against him.
+
+"Well, Sir? What's to be done about this?"
+
+He collected his strength for the effort; and answered by a word at a
+time.
+
+"Write--brother--Julius. Pay--Arnold--wins."
+
+His lifted hand, solemnly emphasizing what he said, dropped at his side.
+He closed his eyes; and fell into a heavy stertorous sleep. Give him his
+due. Scoundrel as he was, give him his due. The awful moment, when his
+life was trembling in the balance, found him true to the last living
+faith left among the men of his tribe and time--the faith of the
+betting-book.
+
+
+
+Sir Patrick and Mr. Speedwell quitted the race-ground together; Geoffrey
+having been previously removed to his lodgings hard by. They met Arnold
+Brinkworth at the gate. He had, by his own desire, kept out of view
+among the crowd; and he decided on walking back by himself. The
+separation from Blanche had changed him in all his habits. He asked but
+two favors during the interval which was to elapse before he saw his
+wife again--to be allowed to bear it in his own way, and to be left
+alone.
+
+Relieved of the oppression which had kept him silent while the race was
+in progress, Sir Patrick put a question to the surgeon as they drove
+home, which had been in his mind from the moment when Geoffrey had lost
+the day.
+
+"I hardly understand the anxiety you showed about Delamayn," he said,
+"when you found that he had only fainted under the fatigue. Was it
+something more than a common fainting fit?"
+
+"It is useless to conceal it now," replied Mr. Speedwell. "He has had a
+narrow escape from a paralytic stroke."
+
+"Was that what you dreaded when you spoke to him at Windygates?"
+
+"That was what I saw in his face when I gave him the warning. I was
+right, so far. I was wrong in my estimate of the reserve of vital power
+left in him. When he dropped on the race-course, I firmly believed we
+should find him a dead man."
+
+"Is it hereditary paralysis? His father's last illness was of that
+sort."
+
+Mr. Speedwell smiled. "Hereditary paralysis?" he repeated. "Why the man
+is (naturally) a phenomenon of health and strength--in the prime of his
+life. Hereditary paralysis might have found him out thirty years
+hence. His rowing and his running, for the last four years, are alone
+answerable for what has happened to-day."
+
+Sir Patrick ventured on a suggestion.
+
+"Surely," he said, "with your name to compel attention to it, you ought
+to make this public--as a warning to others?"
+
+"It would be quite useless. Delamayn is far from being the first man
+who has dropped at foot-racing, under the cruel stress laid on the vital
+organs. The public have a happy knack of forgetting these accidents.
+They would be quite satisfied when they found the other man (who happens
+to have got through it) produced as a sufficient answer to me."
+
+Anne Silvester's future was still dwelling on Sir Patrick's mind. His
+next inquiry related to the serious subject of Geoffrey's prospect of
+recovery in the time to come.
+
+"He will never recover," said Mr. Speedwell. "Paralysis is hanging over
+him. How long he may live it is impossible for me to say. Much depends
+on himself. In his condition, any new imprudence, any violent emotion,
+may kill him at a moment's notice."
+
+"If no accident happens," said Sir Patrick, "will he be sufficiently
+himself again to leave his bed and go out?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"He has an appointment that I know of for Saturday next. Is it likely
+that he will be able to keep it?"
+
+"Quite likely."
+
+Sir Patrick said no more. Anne's face was before him again at the
+memorable moment when he had told her that she was Geoffrey's wife.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTEENTH SCENE.--PORTLAND PLACE.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-SIXTH.
+
+A SCOTCH MARRIAGE.
+
+IT was Saturday, the third of October--the day on which the assertion of
+Arnold's marriage to Anne Silvester was to be put to the proof.
+
+Toward two o'clock in the afternoon Blanche and her step-mother entered
+the drawing-room of Lady Lundie's town house in Portland Place.
+
+Since the previous evening the weather had altered for the worse. The
+rain, which had set in from an early hour that morning, still fell.
+Viewed from the drawing-room windows, the desolation of Portland Place
+in the dead season wore its aspect of deepest gloom. The dreary opposite
+houses were all shut up; the black mud was inches deep in the roadway;
+the soot, floating in tiny black particles, mixed with the falling rain,
+and heightened the dirty obscurity of the rising mist. Foot-passengers
+and vehicles, succeeding each other at rare intervals, left great gaps
+of silence absolutely uninterrupted by sound. Even the grinders of
+organs were mute; and the wandering dogs of the street were too wet to
+bark. Looking back from the view out of Lady Lundie's state windows
+to the view in Lady Lundie's state room, the melancholy that reigned
+without was more than matched by the melancholy that reigned within.
+The house had been shut up for the season: it had not been considered
+necessary, during its mistress's brief visit, to disturb the existing
+state of things. Coverings of dim brown hue shrouded the furniture.
+The chandeliers hung invisible in enormous bags. The silent clocks
+hibernated under extinguishers dropped over them two months since. The
+tables, drawn up in corners--loaded with ornaments at other times--had
+nothing but pen, ink, and paper (suggestive of the coming proceedings)
+placed on them now. The smell of the house was musty; the voice of the
+house was still. One melancholy maid haunted the bedrooms up stairs,
+like a ghost. One melancholy man, appointed to admit the visitors, sat
+solitary in the lower regions--the last of the flunkies, mouldering
+in an extinct servants' hall. Not a word passed, in the drawing-room,
+between Lady Lundie and Blanche. Each waited the appearance of the
+persons concerned in the coming inquiry, absorbed in her own thoughts.
+Their situation at the moment was a solemn burlesque of the situation
+of two ladies who are giving an evening party, and who are waiting to
+receive their guests. Did neither of them see this? Or, seeing it, did
+they shrink from acknowledging it? In similar positions, who does not
+shrink? The occasions are many on which we have excellent reason to
+laugh when the tears are in our eyes; but only children are bold enough
+to follow the impulse. So strangely, in human existence, does the
+mockery of what is serious mingle with the serious reality itself, that
+nothing but our own self-respect preserves our gravity at some of the
+most important emergencies in our lives. The two ladies waited the
+coming ordeal together gravely, as became the occasion. The silent maid
+flitted noiseless up stairs. The silent man waited motionless in the
+lower regions. Outside, the street was a desert. Inside, the house was a
+tomb.
+
+The church clock struck the hour. Two.
+
+At the same moment the first of the persons concerned in the
+investigation arrived.
+
+Lady Lundie waited composedly for the opening of the drawing-room door.
+Blanche started, and trembled. Was it Arnold? Was it Anne?
+
+The door opened--and Blanche drew a breath of relief. The first arrival
+was only Lady Lundie's solicitor--invited to attend the proceedings
+on her ladyship's behalf. He was one of that large class of purely
+mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice
+of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science,
+be superseded by machinery. He made himself useful in altering the
+arrangement of the tables and chairs, so as to keep the contending
+parties effectually separated from each other. He also entreated Lady
+Lundie to bear in mind that he knew nothing of Scotch law, and that he
+was there in the capacity of a friend only. This done, he sat down, and
+looked out with silent interest at the rain--as if it was an operation
+of Nature which he had never had an opportunity of inspecting before.
+
+The next knock at the door heralded the arrival of a visitor of a
+totally different order. The melancholy man-servant announced Captain
+Newenden.
+
+Possibly, in deference to the occasion, possibly, in defiance of the
+weather, the captain had taken another backward step toward the days of
+his youth. He was painted and padded, wigged and dressed, to represent
+the abstract idea of a male human being of five-and twenty in robust
+health. There might have been a little stiffness in the region of
+the waist, and a slight want of firmness in the eyelid and the
+chin. Otherwise there was the fiction of five-and twenty, founded in
+appearance on the fact of five-and-thirty--with the truth invisible
+behind it, counting seventy years! Wearing a flower in his buttonhole,
+and carrying a jaunty little cane in his hand--brisk, rosy, smiling,
+perfumed--the captain's appearance brightened the dreary room. It was
+pleasantly suggestive of a morning visit from an idle young man. He
+appeared to be a little surprised to find Blanche present on the scene
+of approaching conflict. Lady Lundie thought it due to herself to
+explain. "My step-daughter is here in direct defiance of my entreaties
+and my advice. Persons may present themselves whom it is, in my opinion,
+improper she should see. Revelations will take place which no young
+woman, in her position, should hear. She insists on it, Captain
+Newenden--and I am obliged to submit."
+
+The captain shrugged his shoulders, and showed his beautiful teeth.
+
+Blanche was far too deeply interested in the coming ordeal to care
+to defend herself: she looked as if she had not even heard what her
+step-mother had said of her. The solicitor remained absorbed in the
+interesting view of the falling rain. Lady Lundie asked after Mrs.
+Glenarm. The captain, in reply, described his niece's anxiety as
+something--something--something, in short, only to be indicated by
+shaking his ambrosial curls and waving his jaunty cane. Mrs. Delamayn
+was staying with her until her uncle returned with the news. And where
+was Julius? Detained in Scotland by election business. And Lord and Lady
+Holchester? Lord and Lady Holchester knew nothing about it.
+
+There was another knock at the door. Blanche's pale face turned paler
+still. Was it Arnold? Was it Anne? After a longer delay than usual, the
+servant announced Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn and Mr. Moy.
+
+Geoffrey, slowly entering first, saluted the two ladies in silence, and
+noticed no one else. The London solicitor, withdrawing himself for a
+moment from the absorbing prospect of the rain, pointed to the places
+reserved for the new-comer and for the legal adviser whom he had brought
+with him. Geoffrey seated himself, without so much as a glance round the
+room. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he vacantly traced patterns on
+the carpet with his clumsy oaken walking-stick. Stolid indifference
+expressed itself in his lowering brow and his loosely-hanging mouth.
+The loss of the race, and the circumstances accompanying it, appeared
+to have made him duller than usual and heavier than usual--and that was
+all.
+
+Captain Newenden, approaching to speak to him, stopped half-way,
+hesitated, thought better of it--and addressed himself to Mr. Moy.
+
+Geoffrey's legal adviser--a Scotchman of the ruddy, ready, and convivial
+type--cordially met the advance. He announced, in reply to the captain's
+inquiry, that the witnesses (Mrs. Inchbare and Bishopriggs) were waiting
+below until they were wanted, in the housekeeper's room. Had there been
+any difficulty in finding them? Not the least. Mrs. Inchbare was, as
+a matter of course, at her hotel. Inquiries being set on foot for
+Bishopriggs, it appeared that he and the landlady had come to an
+understanding, and that he had returned to his old post of headwaiter at
+the inn. The captain and Mr. Moy kept up the conversation between them,
+thus begun, with unflagging ease and spirit. Theirs were the only voices
+heard in the trying interval that elapsed before the next knock was
+heard at the door.
+
+At last it came. There could be no doubt now as to the persons who might
+next be expected to enter the room. Lady Lundie took her step-daughter
+firmly by the hand. She was not sure of what Blanche's first impulse
+might lead her to do. For the first time in her life, Blanche left her
+hand willingly in her step-mother's grasp.
+
+The door opened, and they came in.
+
+Sir Patrick Lundie entered first, with Anne Silvester on his arm. Arnold
+Brinkworth followed them.
+
+Both Sir Patrick and Anne bowed in silence to the persons assembled.
+Lady Lundie ceremoniously returned her brother-in-law's salute--and
+pointedly abstained from noticing Anne's presence in the room. Blanche
+never looked up. Arnold advanced to her, with his hand held out. Lady
+Lundie rose, and motioned him back. "Not _yet,_ Mr. Brinkworth!" she
+said, in her most quietly merciless manner. Arnold stood, heedless of
+her, looking at his wife. His wife lifted her eyes to his; the tears
+rose in them on the instant. Arnold's dark complexion turned ashy pale
+under the effort that it cost him to command himself. "I won't distress
+you," he said, gently--and turned back again to the table at which Sir
+Patrick and Anne were seated together apart from the rest. Sir Patrick
+took his hand, and pressed it in silent approval.
+
+The one person who took no part, even as spectator, in the events
+that followed the appearance of Sir Patrick and his companions in the
+room--was Geoffrey. The only change visible in him was a change in
+the handling of his walking-stick. Instead of tracing patterns on the
+carpet, it beat a tattoo. For the rest, there he sat with his heavy
+head on his breast and his brawny arms on his knees--weary of it by
+anticipation before it had begun.
+
+Sir Patrick broke the silence. He addressed himself to his
+sister-in-law.
+
+"Lady Lundie, are all the persons present whom you expected to see here
+to-day?"
+
+The gathered venom in Lady Lundie seized the opportunity of planting its
+first sting.
+
+"All whom I expected are here," she answered. "And more than I
+expected," she added, with a look at Anne.
+
+The look was not returned--was not even seen. From the moment when she
+had taken her place by Sir Patrick, Anne's eyes had rested on
+Blanche. They never moved--they never for an instant lost their tender
+sadness--when the woman who hated her spoke. All that was beautiful
+and true in that noble nature seemed to find its one sufficient
+encouragement in Blanche. As she looked once more at the sister of the
+unforgotten days of old, its native beauty of expression shone out again
+in her worn and weary face. Every man in the room (but Geoffrey) looked
+at her; and every man (but Geoffrey) felt for her.
+
+Sir Patrick addressed a second question to his sister-in-law.
+
+"Is there any one here to represent the interests of Mr. Geoffrey
+Delamayn?" he asked.
+
+Lady Lundie referred Sir Patrick to Geoffrey himself. Without looking
+up, Geoffrey motioned with his big brown hand to Mr. Moy, sitting by his
+side.
+
+Mr. Moy (holding the legal rank in Scotland which corresponds to the
+rank held by solicitors in England) rose and bowed to Sir Patrick, with
+the courtesy due to a man eminent in his time at the Scottish Bar.
+
+"I represent Mr. Delamayn," he said. "I congratulate myself, Sir
+Patrick, on having your ability and experience to appeal to in the
+conduct of the pending inquiry."
+
+Sir Patrick returned the compliment as well as the bow.
+
+"It is I who should learn from you," he answered. "_I_ have had time,
+Mr. Moy, to forget what I once knew."
+
+Lady Lundie looked from one to the other with unconcealed impatience as
+these formal courtesies were exchanged between the lawyers. "Allow me to
+remind you, gentlemen, of the suspense that we are suffering at this
+end of the room," she said. "And permit me to ask when you propose to
+begin?"
+
+Sir Patrick looked invitingly at Mr. Moy. Mr. Moy looked invitingly at
+Sir Patrick. More formal courtesies! a polite contest this time as to
+which of the two learned gentlemen should permit the other to speak
+first! Mr. Moy's modesty proving to be quite immovable, Sir Patrick
+ended it by opening the proceedings.
+
+"I am here," he said, "to act on behalf of my friend, Mr. Arnold
+Brinkworth. I beg to present him to you, Mr. Moy as the husband of my
+niece--to whom he was lawfully married on the seventh of September last,
+at the Church of Saint Margaret, in the parish of Hawley, Kent. I have a
+copy of the marriage certificate here--if you wish to look at it."
+
+Mr. Moy's modesty declined to look at it.
+
+"Quite needless, Sir Patrick! I admit that a marriage ceremony took
+place on the date named, between the persons named; but I contend that
+it was not a valid marriage. I say, on behalf of my client here present
+(Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn), that Arnold Brinkworth was married at a date
+prior to the seventh of September last--namely, on the fourteenth of
+August in this year, and at a place called Craig Fernie, in Scotland--to
+a lady named Anne Silvester, now living, and present among us (as I
+understand) at this moment."
+
+Sir Patrick presented Anne. "This is the lady, Mr. Moy."
+
+Mr. Moy bowed, and made a suggestion. "To save needless formalities, Sir
+Patrick, shall we take the question of identity as established on both
+sides?"
+
+Sir Patrick agreed with his learned friend. Lad y Lundie opened and
+shut her fan in undisguised impatience. The London solicitor was deeply
+interested. Captain Newenden, taking out his handkerchief, and using
+it as a screen, yawned behind it to his heart's content. Sir Patrick
+resumed.
+
+"You assert the prior marriage," he said to his colleague. "It rests
+with you to begin."
+
+Mr. Moy cast a preliminary look round him at the persons assembled.
+
+"The object of our meeting here," he said, "is, if I am not mistaken,
+of a twofold nature. In the first place, it is thought desirable, by
+a person who has a special interest in the issue of this inquiry" (he
+glanced at the captain--the captain suddenly became attentive), "to put
+my client's assertion, relating to Mr. Brinkworth's marriage, to the
+proof. In the second place, we are all equally desirous--whatever
+difference of opinion may otherwise exist--to make this informal inquiry
+a means, if possible, of avoiding the painful publicity which would
+result from an appeal to a Court of Law."
+
+At those words the gathered venom in Lady Lundie planted its second
+sting--under cover of a protest addressed to Mr. Moy.
+
+"I beg to inform you, Sir, on behalf of my step-daughter," she said,
+"that we have nothing to dread from the widest publicity. We consent
+to be present at, what you call, 'this informal inquiry,' reserving our
+right to carry the matter beyond the four walls of this room. I am not
+referring now to Mr. Brinkworth's chance of clearing himself from an
+odious suspicion which rests upon him, and upon another Person present.
+That is an after-matter. The object immediately before us--so far as a
+woman can pretend to understand it--is to establish my step-daughter's
+right to call Mr. Brinkworth to account in the character of his wife. If
+the result, so far, fails to satisfy us in that particular, we shall not
+hesitate to appeal to a Court of Law." She leaned back in her chair, and
+opened her fan, and looked round her with the air of a woman who called
+society to witness that she had done her duty.
+
+An expression of pain crossed Blanche's face while her step-mother
+was speaking. Lady Lundie took her hand for the second time. Blanche
+resolutely and pointedly withdrew it--Sir Patrick noticing the action
+with special interest. Before Mr. Moy could say a word in answer, Arnold
+centred the general attention on himself by suddenly interfering in the
+proceedings. Blanche looked at him. A bright flash of color appeared on
+her face--and left it again. Sir Patrick noted the change of color--and
+observed her more attentively than ever. Arnold's letter to his wife,
+with time to help it, had plainly shaken her ladyship's influence over
+Blanche.
+
+"After what Lady Lundie has said, in my wife's presence," Arnold burst
+out, in his straightforward, boyish way, "I think I ought to be allowed
+to say a word on my side. I only want to explain how it was I came to
+go to Craig Fernie at all--and I challenge Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn to deny
+it, if he can."
+
+His voice rose at the last words, and his eyes brightened with
+indignation as he looked at Geoffrey.
+
+Mr. Moy appealed to his learned friend.
+
+"With submission, Sir Patrick, to your better judgment," he said, "this
+young gentleman's proposal seems to be a little out of place at the
+present stage of the proceedings."
+
+"Pardon me," answered Sir Patrick. "You have yourself described
+the proceedings as representing an informal inquiry. An informal
+proposal--with submission to _your_ better judgment, Mr. Moy--is hardly
+out of place, under those circumstances, is it?"
+
+Mr. Moy's inexhaustible modesty gave way, without a struggle. The answer
+which he received had the effect of puzzling him at the outset of the
+investigation. A man of Sir Patrick's experience must have known that
+Arnold's mere assertion of his own innocence could be productive of
+nothing but useless delay in the proceedings. And yet he sanctioned that
+delay. Was he privately on the watch for any accidental circumstance
+which might help him to better a case that he knew to be a bad one?
+
+Permitted to speak, Arnold spoke. The unmistakable accent of truth was
+in every word that he uttered. He gave a fairly coherent account of
+events, from the time when Geoffrey had claimed his assistance at the
+lawn-party to the time when he found himself at the door of the inn
+at Craig Fernie. There Sir Patrick interfered, and closed his lips. He
+asked leave to appeal to Geoffrey to confirm him. Sir Patrick amazed
+Mr. Moy by sanctioning this irregularity also. Arnold sternly addressed
+himself to Geoffrey.
+
+"Do you deny that what I have said is true?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Moy did his duty by his client. "You are not bound to answer," he
+said, "unless you wish it yourself."
+
+Geoffrey slowly lifted his heavy head, and confronted the man whom he
+had betrayed.
+
+"I deny every word of it," he answered--with a stolid defiance of tone
+and manner.
+
+"Have we had enough of assertion and counter-assertion, Sir Patrick, by
+this time?" asked Mr. Moy, with undiminished politeness.
+
+After first forcing Arnold--with some little difficulty--to control
+himself, Sir Patrick raised Mr. Moy's astonishment to the culminating
+point. For reasons of his own, he determined to strengthen the favorable
+impression which Arnold's statement had plainly produced on his wife
+before the inquiry proceeded a step farther.
+
+"I must throw myself on your indulgence, Mr. Moy," he said. "I have not
+had enough of assertion and counter-assertion, even yet."
+
+Mr. Moy leaned back in his chair, with a mixed expression of
+bewilderment and resignation. Either his colleague's intellect was in a
+failing state--or his colleague had some purpose in view which had not
+openly asserted itself yet. He began to suspect that the right reading
+of the riddle was involved in the latter of those two alternatives.
+Instead of entering any fresh protest, he wisely waited and watched.
+
+Sir Patrick went on unblushingly from one irregularity to another.
+
+"I request Mr. Moy's permission to revert to the alleged marriage, on
+the fourteenth of August, at Craig Fernie," he said. "Arnold Brinkworth!
+answer for yourself, in the presence of the persons here assembled. In
+all that you said, and all that you did, while you were at the inn, were
+you not solely influenced by the wish to make Miss Silvester's position
+as little painful to her as possible, and by anxiety to carry out the
+instructions given to you by Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn? Is that the whole
+truth?"
+
+"That is the whole truth, Sir Patrick."
+
+"On the day when you went to Craig Fernie, had you not, a few hours
+previously, applied for my permission to marry my niece?"
+
+"I applied for your permission, Sir Patrick; and you gave it me."
+
+"From the moment when you entered the inn to the moment when you left
+it, were you absolutely innocent of the slightest intention to marry
+Miss Silvester?"
+
+"No such thing as the thought of marrying Miss Silvester ever entered my
+head."
+
+"And this you say, on your word of honor as a gentleman?"
+
+"On my word of honor as a gentleman."
+
+Sir Patrick turned to Anne.
+
+"Was it a matter of necessity, Miss Silvester, that you should appear
+in the assumed character of a married woman--on the fourteenth of August
+last, at the Craig Fernie inn?"
+
+Anne looked away from Blanche for the first time. She replied to Sir
+Patrick quietly, readily, firmly--Blanche looking at her, and listening
+to her with eager interest.
+
+"I went to the inn alone, Sir Patrick. The landlady refused, in the
+plainest terms, to let me stay there, unless she was first satisfied
+that I was a married woman."
+
+"Which of the two gentlemen did you expect to join you at the inn--Mr.
+Arnold Brinkworth, or Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?"
+
+"Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn."
+
+"When Mr. Arnold Brinkworth came in his place and said what was
+necessary to satisfy the scruples of the landlady, you understood that
+he was acting in your interests, from motives of kindness only, and
+under the instructions of Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?"
+
+"I understood that; and I objected as strongly as I could to Mr.
+Brinkworth placing himself in a false position on my account."
+
+"Did your objection proceed from any knowledge of the Scottish law of
+marriage, and of the position in which the peculiarities of that law
+might place Mr. Brinkworth?"
+
+"I had no knowledge of the Scottish law. I had a vague dislike and dread
+of the deception which Mr. Brinkworth was practicing on the people
+of the inn. And I feared that it might lead to some possible
+misinterpretation of me on the part of a person whom I dearly loved."
+
+"That person being my niece?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You appealed to Mr. Brinkworth (knowing of his attachment to my niece),
+in her name, and for her sake, to leave you to shift for yourself?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"As a gentleman who had given his promise to help and protect a lady,
+in the absence of the person whom she had depended on to join her, he
+refused to leave you to shift by yourself?"
+
+"Unhappily, he refused on that account."
+
+"From first to last, you were absolutely innocent of the slightest
+intention to marry Mr. Brinkworth?"
+
+"I answer, Sir Patrick, as Mr. Brinkworth has answered. No such thing as
+the thought of marrying him ever entered my head."
+
+"And this you say, on your oath as a Christian woman?"
+
+"On my oath as a Christian woman."
+
+Sir Patrick looked round at Blanche. Her face was hidden in her hands.
+Her step-mother was vainly appealing to her to compose herself.
+
+In the moment of silence that followed, Mr. Moy interfered in the
+interests of his client.
+
+"I waive my claim, Sir Patrick, to put any questions on my side. I
+merely desire to remind you, and to remind the company present, that all
+that we have just heard is mere assertion--on the part of two persons
+strongly interested in extricating themselves from a position which
+fatally compromises them both. The marriage which they deny I am
+now waiting to prove--not by assertion, on my side, but by appeal to
+competent witnesses."
+
+After a brief consultation with her own solicitor, Lady Lundie followed
+Mr. Moy, in stronger language still.
+
+"I wish you to understand, Sir Patrick, before you proceed any farther,
+that I shall remove my step-daughter from the room if any more attempts
+are made to harrow her feelings and mislead her judgment. I want words
+to express my sense of this most cruel and unfair way of conducting the
+inquiry."
+
+The London lawyer followed, stating his professional approval of his
+client's view. "As her ladyship's legal adviser," he said, "I support
+the protest which her ladyship has just made."
+
+Even Captain Newenden agreed in the general disapproval of Sir Patrick's
+conduct. "Hear, hear!" said the captain, when the lawyer had spoken.
+"Quite right. I must say, quite right."
+
+Apparently impenetrable to all due sense of his position, Sir Patrick
+addressed himself to Mr. Moy, as if nothing had happened.
+
+"Do you wish to produce your witnesses at once?" he asked. "I have not
+the least objection to meet your views--on the understanding that I am
+permitted to return to the proceedings as interrupted at this point."
+
+Mr. Moy considered. The adversary (there could be no doubt of it by this
+time) had something in reserve--and the adversary had not yet shown his
+hand. It was more immediately important to lead him into doing this than
+to insist on rights and privileges of the purely formal sort. Nothing
+could shake the strength of the position which Mr. Moy occupied. The
+longer Sir Patrick's irregularities delayed the proceedings, the more
+irresistibly the plain facts of the case would assert themselves--with
+all the force of contrast--out of the mouths of the witnesses who were
+in attendance down stairs. He determined to wait.
+
+"Reserving my right of objection, Sir Patrick," he answered, "I beg you
+to go on."
+
+To the surprise of every body, Sir Patrick addressed himself directly
+to Blanche--quoting the language in which Lady Lundie had spoken to him,
+with perfect composure of tone and manner.
+
+"You know me well enough, my dear," he said, "to be assured that I
+am incapable of willingly harrowing your feelings or misleading your
+judgment. I have a question to ask you, which you can answer or not,
+entirely as you please."
+
+Before he could put the question there was a momentary contest between
+Lady Lundie and her legal adviser. Silencing her ladyship (not without
+difficulty), the London lawyer interposed. He also begged leave to
+reserve the right of objection, so far as _his_ client was concerned.
+
+Sir Patrick assented by a sign, and proceeded to put his question to
+Blanche.
+
+"You have heard what Arnold Brinkworth has said, and what Miss Silvester
+has said," he resumed. "The husband who loves you, and the sisterly
+friend who loves you, have each made a solemn declaration. Recall your
+past experience of both of them; remember what they have just said; and
+now tell me--do you believe they have spoken falsely?"
+
+Blanche answered on the instant.
+
+"I believe, uncle, they have spoken the truth!"
+
+Both the lawyers registered their objections. Lady Lundie made another
+attempt to speak, and was stopped once more--this time by Mr. Moy as
+well as by her own adviser. Sir Patrick went on.
+
+"Do you feel any doubt as to the entire propriety of your husband's
+conduct and your friend's conduct, now you have seen them and heard
+them, face to face?"
+
+Blanche answered again, with the same absence of reserve.
+
+"I ask them to forgive me," she said. "I believe I have done them both a
+great wrong."
+
+She looked at her husband first--then at Anne. Arnold attempted to leave
+his chair. Sir Patrick firmly restrained him. "Wait!" he whispered. "You
+don't know what is coming." Having said that, he turned toward Anne.
+Blanche's look had gone to the heart of the faithful woman who loved
+her. Anne's face was turned away--the tears were forcing themselves
+through the worn weak hands that tried vainly to hide them.
+
+The formal objections of the lawyers were registered once more. Sir
+Patrick addressed himself to his niece for the last time.
+
+"You believe what Arnold Brinkworth has said; you believe what Miss
+Silvester has said. You know that not even the thought of marriage was
+in the mind of either of them, at the inn. You know--whatever else may
+happen in the future--that there is not the most remote possibility of
+either of them consenting to acknowledge that they ever have been, or
+ever can be, Man and Wife. Is that enough for you? Are you willing,
+before this inquiry proceeds any farther to take your husband's hand;
+to return to your husband's protection; and to leave the rest to
+me--satisfied with my assurance that, on the facts as they happened, not
+even the Scotch Law can prove the monstrous assertion of the marriage at
+Craig Fernie to be true?"
+
+Lady Lundie rose. Both the lawyers rose. Arnold sat lost in
+astonishment. Geoffrey himself--brutishly careless thus far of all that
+had passed--lifted his head with a sudden start. In the midst of the
+profound impression thus produced, Blanche, on whose decision the whole
+future course of the inquiry now turned, answered in these words:
+
+"I hope you will not think me ungrateful, uncle. I am sure that Arnold
+has not, knowingly, done me any wrong. But I can't go back to him until
+I am first _certain_ that I am his wife."
+
+Lady Lundie embraced her step-daughter with a sudden outburst of
+affection. "My dear child!" exclaimed her ladyship, fervently. "Well
+done, my own dear child!"
+
+Sir Patrick's head dropped on his breast. "Oh, Blanche! Blanche!" Arnold
+heard him whisper to himself; "if you only knew what you are forcing me
+to!"
+
+Mr. Moy put in his word, on Blanche's side of the question.
+
+"I must most respectfully express my approval also of the course which
+the young lady has taken," he said. "A more dangerous compromise than
+the compromise which we have just heard suggested it is difficult to
+imagine. With all deference to Sir Patrick Lundie, his opinion of the
+impossibility of proving the marriage at Craig Fernie remains to be
+confirmed as the right one. My own professional opinion is opposed
+to it. The opinion of another Scottish lawyer (in Glasgow) is, to my
+certain knowledge, opposed to it. If the young lady had not acted with
+a wisdom and courage which do her honor, she might have lived to see
+the day when her reputation would have been destroyed, and her children
+declared illegitimate. Who is to say that circumstances may not happen
+in the future which may force Mr. Brinkworth or Miss Silvester--one or
+the other--to assert the very marriage which they repudiate now? Who is
+to say that interested relatives (property being concerned here) may not
+in the lapse of years, discover motives of their own for questioning
+the asserted marriage in Kent? I acknowledge that I envy the immense
+self-confidence which emboldens Sir Patrick to venture, what he is
+willing to venture upon his own individual opinion on an undecided point
+of law."
+
+He sat down amidst a murmur of approval, and cast a slyly-expectant look
+at his defeated adversary. "If _that_ doesn't irritate him into showing
+his hand," thought Mr. Moy, "nothing will!"
+
+Sir Patrick slowly raised his head. There was no irritation--there was
+only distress in his face--when he spoke next.
+
+"I don't propose, Mr. Moy, to argue the point with you," he said,
+gently. "I can understand that my conduct must necessarily appear
+strange and even blameworthy, not in your eyes only, but in the eyes of
+others. My young friend here will tell you" (he looked toward Arnold)
+"that the view which you express as to the future peril involved in this
+case was once the view in my mind too, and that in what I have done thus
+far I have acted in direct contradiction to advice which I myself gave
+at no very distant period. Excuse me, if you please, from entering (for
+the present at least) into the motive which has influenced me from
+the time when I entered this room. My position is one of unexampled
+responsibility and of indescribable distress. May I appeal to that
+statement to stand as my excuse, if I plead for a last extension of
+indulgence toward the last irregularity of which I shall be guilty, in
+connection with these proceedings?"
+
+Lady Lundie alone resisted the unaffected and touching dignity with
+which those words were spoken.
+
+"We have had enough of irregularity," she said sternly. "I, for one,
+object to more."
+
+Sir Patrick waited patiently for Mr. Moy's reply. The Scotch lawyer and
+the English lawyer looked at each other--and understood each other. Mr.
+Moy answered for both.
+
+"We don't presume to restrain you, Sir Patrick, by other limits than
+those which, as a gentleman, you impose on yourself. Subject," added
+the cautious Scotchman, "to the right of objection which we have already
+reserved."
+
+"Do you object to my speaking to your client?" asked Sir Patrick.
+
+"To Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+All eyes turned on Geoffrey. He was sitting half asleep, as it
+seemed--with his heavy hands hanging listlessly over his knees, and his
+chin resting on the hooked handle of his stick.
+
+Looking toward Anne, when Sir Patrick pronounced Geoffrey's name, Mr.
+Moy saw a change in her. She withdrew her hands from her face, and
+turned suddenly toward her legal adviser. Was she in the secret of the
+carefully concealed object at which his opponent had been aiming from
+the first? Mr. Moy decided to put that doubt to the test. He invited
+Sir Patrick, by a gesture, to proceed. Sir Patrick addressed himself to
+Geoffrey.
+
+"You are seriously interested in this inquiry," he said; "and you have
+taken no part in it yet. Take a part in it now. Look at this lady."
+
+Geoffrey never moved.
+
+"I've seen enough of her already," he said, brutally.
+
+"You may well be ashamed to look at her," said Sir Patrick, quietly.
+"But you might have acknowledged it in fitter words. Carry your memory
+back to the fourteenth of August. Do you deny that you promised to many
+Miss Silvester privately at the Craig Fernie inn?"
+
+"I object to that question," said Mr. Moy. "My client is under no sort
+of obligation to answer it."
+
+Geoffrey's rising temper--ready to resent any thing--resented his
+adviser's interference. "I shall answer if I like," he retorted,
+insolently. He looked up for a moment at Sir Patrick, without moving his
+chin from the hook of his stick. Then he looked down again. "I do deny
+it," he said.
+
+"You deny that you have promised to marry Miss Silvester?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I asked you just now to look at her--"
+
+"And I told you I had seen enough of her already."
+
+"Look at _me._ In my presence, and in the presence of the other persons
+here, do you deny that you owe this lady, by your own solemn engagement,
+the reparation of marriage?"
+
+He suddenly lifted his head. His eyes, after resting for an instant only
+on Sir Patrick, turned, little by little; and, brightening slowly, fixed
+themselves with a hideous, tigerish glare on Anne's face. "I know what I
+owe her," he said.
+
+The devouring hatred of his look was matched by the ferocious
+vindictiveness of his tone, as he spoke those words. It was horrible to
+see him; it was horrible to hear him. Mr. Moy said to him, in a whisper,
+"Control yourself, or I will throw up your case."
+
+Without answering--without even listening--he lifted one of his hands,
+and looked at it vacantly. He whispered something to himself; and
+counted out what he was whispering slowly; in divisions of his own, on
+three of his fingers in succession. He fixed his eyes again on Anne with
+the same devouring hatred in their look, and spoke (this time directly
+addressing himself to her) with the same ferocious vindictiveness in his
+tone. "But for you, I should be married to Mrs. Glenarm. But for you,
+I should be friends with my father. But for you, I should have won
+the race. I know what I owe you." His loosely hanging hands stealthily
+clenched themselves. His head sank again on his broad breast. He said no
+more.
+
+Not a soul moved--not a word was spoken. The same common horror held
+them all speechless. Anne's eyes turned once more on Blanche. Anne's
+courage upheld her, even at that moment.
+
+Sir Patrick rose. The strong emotion which he had suppressed thus far,
+showed itself plainly in his face--uttered itself plainly in his voice.
+
+"Come into the next room," he said to Anne. "I must speak to you
+instantly!"
+
+Without noticing the astonishment that he caused; without paying
+the smallest attention to the remonstrances addressed to him by his
+sister-in-law and by the Scotch lawyer, he took Anne by the arm, opened
+the folding-doors at one end of the room--entered the room beyond with
+her--and closed the doors again.
+
+Lady Lundie appealed to her legal adviser. Blanche rose--advanced a few
+steps--and stood in breathless suspense, looking at the folding-doors.
+Arnold advanced a step, to speak to his wife. The captain approached Mr.
+Moy.
+
+"What does this mean?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Moy answered, in strong agitation on his side.
+
+"It means that I have not been properly instructed. Sir Patrick Lundie
+has some evidence in his possession that seriously compromises Mr.
+Delamayn's case. He has shrunk from producing it hitherto--he finds
+himself forced to produce it now. How is it," asked the lawyer, turning
+sternly on his client, "that you have left me in the dark?"
+
+"I know nothing about it," answered Geoffrey, without lifting his head.
+
+Lady Lundie signed to Blanche to stand aside, and advanced toward the
+folding-doors. Mr. Moy stopped her.
+
+"I advise your ladyship to be patient. Interference is useless there."
+
+"Am I not to interfere, Sir, in my own house?"
+
+"Unless I am entirely mistaken, madam, the end of the proceedings
+in your house is at hand. You will damage your own interests by
+interfering. Let us know what we are about at last. Let the end come."
+
+Lady Lundie yielded, and returned to her place. They all waited in
+silence for the opening of the doors.
+
+
+
+Sir Patrick Lundie and Anne Silvester were alone in the room.
+
+He took from the breast-pocket of his coat the sheet of note-paper which
+contained Anne's letter, and Geoffrey's reply. His hand trembled as he
+held it; his voice faltered as he spoke.
+
+"I have done all that can be done," he said. "I have left nothing
+untried, to prevent the necessity of producing this."
+
+"I feel your kindness gratefully, Sir Patrick. You must produce it now."
+
+The woman's calmness presented a strange and touching contrast to
+the man's emotion. There was no shrinking in her face, there was no
+unsteadiness in her voice as she answered him. He took her hand. Twice
+he attempted to speak; and twice his own agitation overpowered him. He
+offered the letter to her in silence.
+
+In silence, on her side, she put the letter away from her, wondering
+what he meant.
+
+"Take it back," he said. "I can't produce it! I daren't produce it!
+After what my own eyes have seen, after what my own ears have heard,
+in the next room--as God is my witness, I daren't ask you to declare
+yourself Geoffrey Delamayn's wife!"
+
+She answered him in one word.
+
+"Blanche!"
+
+He shook his head impatiently. "Not even in Blanche's interests! Not
+even for Blanche's sake! If there is any risk, it is a risk I am ready
+to run. I hold to my own opinion. I believe my own view to be right. Let
+it come to an appeal to the law! I will fight the case, and win it."
+
+"Are you _sure_ of winning it, Sir Patrick?"
+
+Instead of replying, he pressed the letter on her. "Destroy it," he
+whispered. "And rely on my silence."
+
+She took the letter from him.
+
+"Destroy it," he repeated. "They may open the doors. They may come in at
+any moment, and see it in your hand."
+
+"I have something to ask you, Sir Patrick, before I destroy it. Blanche
+refuses to go back to her husband, unless she returns with the certain
+assurance of being really his wife. If I produce this letter, she may
+go back to him to-day. If I declare myself Geoffrey Delamayn's wife, I
+clear Arnold Brinkworth, at once and forever of all suspicion of being
+married to me. Can you as certainly and effectually clear him in any
+other way? Answer me that, as a man of honor speaking to a woman who
+implicitly trusts him!"
+
+She looked him full in the face. His eyes dropped before hers--he made
+no reply.
+
+"I am answered," she said.
+
+With those words, she passed him, and laid her hand on the door.
+
+He checked her. The tears rose in his eyes as he drew her gently back
+into the room.
+
+"Why should we wait?" she asked.
+
+"Wait," he answered, "as a favor to _me._"
+
+She seated herself calmly in the nearest chair, and rested her head on
+her hand, thinking.
+
+He bent over her, and roused her, impatiently, almost angrily. The
+steady resolution in her face was terrible to him, when he thought of
+the man in the next room.
+
+"Take time to consider," he pleaded. "Don't be led away by your own
+impulse. Don't act under a false excitement. Nothing binds you to this
+dreadful sacrifice of yourself."
+
+"Excitement! Sacrifice!" She smiled sadly as she repeated the words. "Do
+you know, Sir Patrick, what I was thinking of a moment since? Only of
+old times, when I was a little girl. I saw the sad side of life sooner
+than most children see it. My mother was cruelly deserted. The hard
+marriage laws of this country were harder on her than on me. She died
+broken-hearted. But one friend comforted her at the last moment, and
+promised to be a mother to her child. I can't remember one unhappy day
+in all the after-time when I lived with that faithful woman and her
+little daughter--till the day that parted us. She went away with her
+husband; and I and the little daughter were left behind. She said her
+last words to me. Her heart was sinking under the dread of coming death.
+'I promised your mother that you should be like my own child to me,
+and it quieted her mind. Quiet _my_ mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever
+happens in years to come--promise me to be always what you are now, a
+sister to Blanche.' Where is the false excitement, Sir Patrick, in old
+remembrances like these? And how can there be a sacrifice in any thing
+that I do for Blanche?"
+
+She rose, and offered him her hand. Sir Patrick lifted it to his lips in
+silence.
+
+"Come!" she said. "For both our sakes, let us not prolong this."
+
+He turned aside his head. It was no moment to let her see that she had
+completely unmanned him. She waited for him, with her hand on the lock.
+He rallied his courage--he forced himself to face the horror of the
+situation calmly. She opened the door, and led the way back into the
+other room.
+
+
+
+Not a word was spoken by any of the persons present, as the two returned
+to their places. The noise of a carriage passing in the street was
+painfully audible. The chance banging of a door in the lower regions of
+the house made every one start.
+
+Anne's sweet voice broke the dreary silence.
+
+"Must I speak for myself, Sir Patrick? Or will you (I ask it as a last
+and greatest favor) speak for me?"
+
+"You insist on appealing to the letter in your hand?"
+
+"I am resolved to appeal to it."
+
+"Will nothing induce you to defer the close of this inquiry--so far as
+you are concerned--for four-and-twenty hours?"
+
+"Either you or I, Sir Patrick, must say what is to be said, and do what
+is to be done, before we leave this room."
+
+"Give me the letter."
+
+She gave it to him. Mr. Moy whispered to his client, "Do you know what
+that is?" Geoffrey shook his head. "Do you really remember nothing about
+it?" Geoffrey answered in one surly word, "Nothing!"
+
+Sir Patrick addressed himself to the assembled company.
+
+"I have to ask your pardon," he said, "for abruptly leaving the room,
+and for obliging Miss Silvester to leave it with me. Every body present,
+except that man" (he pointed to Geoffrey), "will, I believe, understand
+and forgive me, now that I am forced to make my conduct the subject
+of the plainest and the fullest explanation. I shall address that
+explanation, for reasons which will presently appear, to my niece."
+
+Blanche started. "To me!" she exclaimed.
+
+"To you," Sir Patrick answered.
+
+Blanche turned toward Arnold, daunted by a vague sense of something
+serious to come. The letter that she had received from her husband on
+her departure from Ham Farm had necessarily alluded to relations between
+Geoffrey and Anne, of which Blanche had been previously ignorant. Was
+any reference coming to those relations? Was there something yet to be
+disclosed which Arnold's letter had not prepared her to hear?
+
+Sir Patrick resumed.
+
+"A short time since," he said to Blanche, "I proposed to you to return
+to your husband's protection--and to leave the termination of this
+matter in my hands. You have refused to go back to him until you are
+first certainly assured that you are his wife. Thanks to a sacrifice
+to your interests and your happiness, on Miss Silvester's part--which I
+tell you frankly I have done my utmost to prevent--I am in a position to
+prove positively that Arnold Brinkworth was a single man when he married
+you from my house in Kent."
+
+Mr. Moy's experience forewarned him of what was coming. He pointed to
+the letter in Sir Patrick's hand.
+
+"Do you claim on a promise of marriage?" he asked.
+
+Sir Patrick rejoined by putting a question on his side.
+
+"Do you remember the famous decision at Doctors' Commons, which
+established the marriage of Captain Dalrymple and Miss Gordon?"
+
+Mr. Moy was answered. "I understand you, Sir Patrick," he said. After
+a moment's pause, he addressed his next words to Anne. "And from the
+bottom of my heart, madam, I respect _you._"
+
+It was said with a fervent sincerity of tone which wrought the interest
+of the other persons, who were still waiting for enlightenment, to the
+highest pitch. Lady Lundie and Captain Newenden whispered to each other
+anxiously. Arnold turned pale. Blanche burst into tears.
+
+Sir Patrick turned once more to his niece.
+
+"Some little time since," he said, "I had occasion to speak to you of
+the scandalous uncertainty of the marriage laws of Scotland. But for
+that uncertainty (entirely without parallel in any other civilized
+country in Europe), Arnold Brinkworth would never have occupied the
+position in which he stands here to-day--and these proceedings
+would never have taken place. Bear that fact in mind. It is not only
+answerable for the mischief that has been already done, but for the far
+more serious evil which is still to come."
+
+Mr. Moy took a note. Sir Patrick went on.
+
+"Loose and reckless as the Scotch law is, there happens, however, to be
+one case in which the action of it has been confirmed and settled by the
+English Courts. A written promise of marriage exchanged between a man
+and woman, in Scotland, marries that man and woman by Scotch law. An
+English Court of Justice (sitting in judgment on the ease I have just
+mentioned to Mr. Moy) has pronounced that law to be good--and the
+decision has since been confirmed by the supreme authority of the House
+of Lords. Where the persons therefore--living in Scotland at the
+time--have promised each other marriage in writing, there is now no
+longer any doubt they are certainly, and lawfully, Man and Wife." He
+turned from his niece, and appealed to Mr. Moy. "Am I right?"
+
+"Quite right, Sir Patrick, as to the facts. I own, however, that your
+commentary on them surprises me. I have the highest opinion of our
+Scottish marriage law. A man who has betrayed a woman under a promise of
+marriage is forced by that law (in the interests of public morality) to
+acknowledge her as his wife."
+
+"The persons here present, Mr. Moy, are now about to see the moral merit
+of the Scotch law of marriage (as approved by England) practically in
+operation before their own eyes. They will judge for themselves of the
+morality (Scotch or English) which first forces a deserted woman back on
+the villain who has betrayed her, and then virtuously leaves her to bear
+the consequences."
+
+With that answer, he turned to Anne, and showed her the letter, open in
+his hand.
+
+"For the last time," he said, "do you insist on my appealing to this?"
+
+She rose, and bowed her head gravely.
+
+"It is my distressing duty," said Sir Patrick, "to declare, in this
+lady's name, and on the faith of written promises of marriage exchanged
+between the parties, then residing in Scotland, that she claims to
+be now--and to have been on the afternoon of the fourteenth of August
+last--Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn's wedded wife."
+
+A cry of horror from Blanche, a low murmur of dismay from the rest,
+followed the utterance of those words.
+
+There was a pause of an instant.
+
+Then Geoffrey rose slowly to his feet, and fixed his eyes on the wife
+who had claimed him.
+
+The spectators of the terrible scene turned with one accord toward the
+sacrificed woman. The look which Geoffrey had cast on her--the words
+which Geoffrey had spoken to her--were present to all their minds. She
+stood, waiting by Sir Patrick's side--her soft gray eyes resting sadly
+and tenderly on Blanche's face. To see that matchless courage and
+resignation was to doubt the reality of what had happened. They were
+forced to look back at the man to possess their minds with the truth.
+
+The triumph of law and morality over him was complete. He never uttered
+a word. His furious temper was perfectly and fearfully calm. With the
+promise of merciless vengeance written in the Devil s writing on his
+Devil-possessed face, he kept his eyes fixed on the hated woman whom he
+had ruined--on the hated woman who was fastened to him as his wife.
+
+His lawyer went over to the table at which Sir Patrick sat. Sir Patrick
+handed him the sheet of note-paper.
+
+He read the two letters contained in it with absorbed and deliberate
+attention. The moments that passed before he lifted his head from his
+reading seemed like hours. "Can you prove the handwritings?" he asked.
+"And prove the residence?"
+
+Sir Patrick took up a second morsel of paper lying ready under his hand.
+
+"There are the names of persons who can prove the writing, and prove
+the residence," he replied. "One of your two witnesses below stairs
+(otherwise useless) can speak to the hour at which Mr. Brinkworth
+arrived at the inn, and so can prove that the lady for whom he asked
+was, at that moment, Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn. The indorsement on the back
+of the note-paper, also referring to the question of time, is in the
+handwriting of the same witness--to whom I refer you, when it suits your
+convenience to question him."
+
+"I will verify the references, Sir Patrick, as matter of form. In the
+mean time, not to interpose needless and vexatious delay, I am bound to
+say that I can not resist the evidence of the marriage."
+
+Having replied in those terms he addressed himself, with marked respect
+and sympathy, to Anne.
+
+"On the faith of the written promise of marriage exchanged between
+you in Scotland," he said, "you claim Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn as your
+husband?"
+
+She steadily repented the words after him.
+
+"I claim Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn as my husband."
+
+Mr. Moy appealed to his client. Geoffrey broke silence at last.
+
+"Is it settled?" he asked.
+
+"To all practical purposes, it is settled."
+
+He went on, still looking at nobody but Anne.
+
+"Has the law of Scotland made her my wife?"
+
+"The law of Scotland has made her your wife."
+
+He asked a third and last question.
+
+"Does the law tell her to go where her husband goes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He laughed softly to himself, and beckoned to her to cross the room to
+the place at which he was standing.
+
+She obeyed. At the moment when she took the first step to approach him,
+Sir Patrick caught her hand, and whispered to her, "Rely on me!" She
+gently pressed his hand in token that she understood him, and advanced
+to Geoffrey. At the same moment, Blanche rushed between them, and flung
+her arms around Anne's neck.
+
+"Oh, Anne! Anne!"
+
+An hysterical passion of tears choked her utterance. Anne gently unwound
+the arms that clung round her--gently lifted the head that lay helpless
+on her bosom.
+
+"Happier days are coming, my love," she said. "Don't think of _me._"
+
+She kissed her--looked at her--kissed her again--and placed her in her
+husband's arms. Arnold remembered her parting words at Craig Fernie,
+when they had wished each other good-night. "You have not befriended an
+ungrateful woman. The day may yet come when I shall prove it." Gratitude
+and admiration struggled in him which should utter itself first, and
+held him speechless.
+
+She bent her head gently in token that she understood him. Then she went
+on, and stood before Geoffrey.
+
+"I am here," she said to him. "What do you wish me to do?"
+
+A hideous smile parted his heavy lips. He offered her his arm.
+
+"Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn," he said. "Come home."
+
+The picture of the lonely house, isolated amidst its high walls; the
+ill-omened figure of the dumb woman with the stony eyes and the savage
+ways--the whole scene, as Anne had pictured it to him but two days
+since, rose vivid as reality before Sir Patrick's mind. "No!" he cried
+out, carried away by the generous impulse of the moment. "It shall _not_
+be!"
+
+Geoffrey stood impenetrable--waiting with his offered arm. Pale and
+resolute, she lifted her noble head--called back the courage which had
+faltered for a moment--and took his arm. He led her to the door. "Don't
+let Blanche fret about me," she said, simply, to Arnold as they went by.
+They passed Sir Patrick next. Once more his sympathy for her set
+every other consideration at defiance. He started up to bar the way to
+Geoffrey. Geoffrey paused, and looked at Sir Patrick for the first time.
+
+"The law tells her to go with her husband," he said. "The law forbids
+you to part Man and Wife."
+
+True. Absolutely, undeniably true. The law sanctioned the sacrifice of
+her as unanswerably as it had sanctioned the sacrifice of her mother
+before her. In the name of Morality, let him take her! In the interests
+of Virtue, let her get out of it if she can!
+
+Her husband opened the door. Mr. Moy laid his hand on Sir Patrick's arm.
+Lady Lundie, Captain Newenden, the London lawyer, all left their places,
+influenced, for once, by the same interest; feeling, for once, the same
+suspense. Arnold followed them, supporting his wife. For one memorable
+instant Anne looked back at them all. Then she and her husband crossed
+the threshold. They descended the stairs together. The opening and
+closing of the house door was heard. They were gone.
+
+
+
+Done, in the name of Morality. Done, in the interests of Virtue. Done,
+in an age of progress, and under the most perfect government on the face
+of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTEENTH SCENE.--HOLCHESTER HOUSE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH.
+
+THE LAST CHANCE.
+
+"HIS lordship is dangerously ill, Sir. Her ladyship can receive no
+visitors."
+
+"Be so good as to take that card to Lady Holchester. It is absolutely
+necessary that your mistress should be made acquainted--in the interests
+of her younger son--with something which I can only mention to her
+ladyship herself."
+
+The two persons speaking were Lord Holchester's head servant and Sir
+Patrick Lundie. At that time barely half an hour had passed since the
+close of the proceedings at Portland Place.
+
+The servant still hesitated with the card in his hand. "I shall forfeit
+my situation," he said, "if I do it."
+
+"You will most assuredly forfeit your situation if you _don't_ do it,"
+returned Sir Patrick. "I warn you plainly, this is too serious a matter
+to be trifled with."
+
+The tone in which those words were spoken had its effect. The man went
+up stairs with his message.
+
+Sir Patrick waited in the hall. Even the momentary delay of entering
+one of the reception-rooms was more than he could endure at that moment.
+Anne's happiness was hopelessly sacrificed already. The preservation
+of her personal safety--which Sir Patrick firmly believed to be in
+danger--was the one service which it was possible to render to her
+now. The perilous position in which she stood toward her husband--as
+an immovable obstacle, while she lived, between Geoffrey and Mrs.
+Glenarm--was beyond the reach of remedy. But it was still possible to
+prevent her from becoming the innocent cause of Geoffrey's pecuniary
+ruin, by standing in the way of a reconciliation between father and son.
+
+Resolute to leave no means untried of serving Anne's interests, Sir
+Patrick had allowed Arnold and Blanche to go to his own residence in
+London, alone, and had not even waited to say a farewell word to any of
+the persons who had taken part in the inquiry. "Her life may depend on
+what I can do for her at Holchester House!" With that conviction in him,
+he had left Portland Place. With that conviction in him, he had sent his
+message to Lady Holchester, and was now waiting for the reply.
+
+The servant appeared again on the stairs. Sir Patrick went up to meet
+him.
+
+"Her ladyship will see you, Sir, for a few minutes."
+
+The door of an upper room was opened; and Sir Patrick found himself in
+the presence of Geoffrey's mother. There was only time to observe that
+she possessed the remains of rare personal beauty, and that she
+received her visitor with a grace and courtesy which implied (under the
+circumstances) a considerate regard for _his_ position at the expense of
+her own.
+
+"You have something to say to me, Sir Patrick, on the subject of my
+second son. I am in great affliction. If you bring me bad news, I will
+do my best to bear it. May I trust to your kindness not to keep me in
+suspense?"
+
+"It will help me to make my intrusion as little painful as possible
+to your ladyship," replied Sir Patrick, "if I am permitted to ask a
+question. Have you heard of any obstacle to the contemplated marriage of
+Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn and Mrs. Glenarm?"
+
+Even that distant reference to Anne produced an ominous change for the
+worse in Lady Holchester's manner.
+
+"I have heard of the obstacle to which you allude," she said. "Mrs.
+Glenarm is an intimate friend of mine. She has informed me that a person
+named Silvester, an impudent adventuress--"
+
+"I beg your ladyship's pardon. You are doing a cruel wrong to the
+noblest woman I have ever met with."
+
+"I can not undertake, Sir Patrick, to enter into your reasons for
+admiring her. Her conduct toward my son has, I repeat, been the conduct
+of an impudent adventuress."
+
+Those words showed Sir Patrick the utter hopelessness of shaking
+her prejudice against Anne. He decided on proceeding at once to the
+disclosure of the truth.
+
+"I entreat you so say no more," he answered. "Your ladyship is speaking
+of your son's wife."
+
+"My son has married Miss Silvester?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She turned deadly pale. It appeared, for an instant, as if the shock had
+completely overwhelmed her. But the mother's weakness was only momentary
+The virtuous indignation of the great lady had taken its place before
+Sir Patrick could speak again. She rose to terminate the interview.
+
+"I presume," she said, "that your errand here is as an end."
+
+Sir Patrick rose, on his side, resolute to do the duty which had brought
+him to the house.
+
+"I am compelled to trespass on your ladyship's attention for a few
+minutes more," he answered. "The circumstances attending the marriage of
+Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn are of no common importance. I beg permission (in
+the interests of his family) to state, very briefly, what they are."
+
+In a few clear sentences he narrated what had happened, that afternoon,
+in Portland Place. Lady Holchester listened with the steadiest and
+coldest attention. So far as outward appearances were concerned, no
+impression was produced upon her.
+
+"Do you expect me," she asked, "to espouse the interests of a person who
+has prevented my son from marrying the lady of his choice, and of mine?"
+
+"Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn, unhappily, has that reason for resenting his
+wife's innocent interference with interests of considerable, importance
+to him," returned Sir Patrick. "I request your ladyship to consider
+whether it is desirable--in view of your son's conduct in the future--to
+allow his wife to stand in the doubly perilous relation toward him of
+being also a cause of estrangement between his father and himself."
+
+He had put it with scrupulous caution. But Lady Holchester understood
+what he had refrained from saving as well as what he had actually said.
+She had hitherto remained standing--she now sat down again. There was a
+visible impression produced on her at last.
+
+"In Lord Holchester's critical state of health," she answered, "I
+decline to take the responsibility of telling him what you have just
+told me. My own influence has been uniformly exerted in my son's
+favor--as long as my interference could be productive of any good
+result. The time for my interference has passed. Lord Holchester has
+altered his will this morning. I was not present; and I have not yet
+been informed of what has been done. Even if I knew--"
+
+"Your ladyship would naturally decline," said Sir Patrick, "to
+communicate the information to a stranger."
+
+"Certainly. At the same time, after what you have said, I do not feel
+justified in deciding on this matter entirely by myself. One of Lord
+Holchester's executors is now in the house. There can be no impropriety
+in your seeing him--if you wish it. You are at liberty to say, from me,
+that I leave it entirely to his discretion to decide what ought to be
+done."
+
+"I gladly accept your ladyship's proposal."
+
+Lady Holchester rang the bell at her side.
+
+"Take Sir Patrick Lundie to Mr. Marchwood," she said to the servant.
+
+Sir Patrick started. The name was familiar to him, as the name of a
+friend.
+
+"Mr. Marchwood of Hurlbeck?" he asked.
+
+"The same."
+
+With that brief answer, Lady Holchester dismissed her visitor. Following
+the servant to the other end of the corridor, Sir Patrick was conducted
+into a small room--the ante-chamber to the bedroom in which Lord
+Holchester lay. The door of communication was closed. A gentleman sat
+writing at a table near the window. He rose, and held out his hand, with
+a look of surprise, when the servant announced Sir Patrick's name. This
+was Mr. Marchwood.
+
+After the first explanations had been given, Sir Patrick patiently
+reverted to the object of his visit to Holchester House. On the first
+occasion when he mentioned Anne's name he observed that Mr. Marchwood
+became, from that moment, specially interested in what he was saying.
+
+"Do you happen to be acquainted with the lady?" he asked
+
+"I only know her as the cause of a very strange proceeding, this
+morning, in that room." He pointed to Lord Holchester's bedroom as he
+spoke.
+
+"Are you at liberty to mention what the proceeding was?"
+
+"Hardly--even to an old friend like you--unless I felt it a matter of
+duty, on my part, to state the circumstances. Pray go on with what you
+were saying to me. You were on the point of telling me what brought you
+to this house."
+
+Without a word more of preface, Sir Patrick told him the news of
+Geoffrey's marriage to Anne.
+
+"Married!" cried Mr. Marchwood. "Are you sure of what you say?"
+
+"I am one of the witnesses of the marriage."
+
+"Good Heavens! And Lord Holchester's lawyer has left the house!"
+
+"Can I replace him? Have I, by any chance justified you in telling me
+what happened this morning in the next room?"
+
+"Justified me? You have left me no other alternative. The doctors are
+all agreed in dreading apoplexy--his lordship may die at any moment.
+In the lawyer's absence, I must take it on myself. Here are the facts.
+There is the codicil to Lord Holchester's Will which is still unsigned."
+
+"Relating to his second son?"
+
+"Relating to Geoffrey Delamayn, and giving him (when it is once
+executed) a liberal provision for life."
+
+"What is the object in the way of his executing it?"
+
+"The lady whom you have just mentioned to me."
+
+"Anne Silvester!"
+
+"Anne Silvester--now (as you tell me) Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn. I can
+only explain the thing very imperfectly. There are certain painful
+circumstances associated in his lordship's memory with this lady,
+or with some member of her family. We can only gather that he did
+something--in the early part of his professional career--which was
+strictly within the limits of his duty, but which apparently led to very
+sad results. Some days since he unfortunately heard (either through Mrs.
+Glenarm or through Mrs. Julius Delamayn) of Miss Silvester's appearance
+at Swanhaven Lodge. No remark on the subject escaped him at the time.
+It was only this morning, when the codicil giving the legacy to Geoffrey
+was waiting to be executed, that his real feeling in the matter came
+out. To our astonishment, he refused to sign it. 'Find Anne Silvester'
+(was the only answer we could get from him); 'and bring her to my
+bedside. You all say my son is guiltless of injuring her. I am lying on
+my death-bed. I have serious reasons of my own--I owe it to the memory
+of the dead--to assure myself of the truth. If Anne Silvester herself
+acquits him of having wronged her, I will provide for Geoffrey. Not
+otherwise.' We went the length of reminding him that he might die before
+Miss Silvester could be found. Our interference had but one result.
+He desired the lawyer to add a second codicil to the Will--which he
+executed on the spot. It directs his executors to inquire into the
+relations that have actually existed between Anne Silvester and his
+younger son. If we find reason to conclude that Geoffrey has gravely
+wronged her, we are directed to pay her a legacy--provided that she is a
+single woman at the time."
+
+"And her marriage violates the provision!" exclaimed Sir Patrick.
+
+"Yes. The codicil actually executed is now worthless. And the other
+codicil remains unsigned until the lawyer can produce Miss Silvester. He
+has left the house to apply to Geoffrey at Fulham, as the only means at
+our disposal of finding the lady. Some hours have passed--and he has not
+yet returned."
+
+"It is useless to wait for him," said Sir Patrick. "While the lawyer was
+on his way to Fulham, Lord Holchester's son was on his way to Portland
+Place. This is even more serious than you suppose. Tell me, what under
+less pressing circumstances I should have no right to ask. Apart from
+the unexecuted codicil what is Geoffrey Delamayn's position in the
+will?"
+
+"He is not even mentioned in it."
+
+"Have you got the will?"
+
+Mr. Marchwood unlocked a drawer, and took it out.
+
+Sir Patrick instantly rose from his chair. "No waiting for the lawyer!"
+he repeated, vehemently. "This is a matter of life and death. Lady
+Holchester bitterly resents her son's marriage. She speaks and feels as
+a friend of Mrs. Glenarm. Do you think Lord Holchester would take the
+same view if he knew of it?"
+
+"It depends entirely on the circumstances."
+
+"Suppose I informed him--as I inform you in confidence--that his son
+_has_ gravely wronged Miss Silvester? And suppose I followed that up by
+telling him that his son has made atonement by marrying her?"
+
+"After the feeling that he has shown in the matter, I believe he would
+sign the codicil."
+
+"Then, for God's sake, let me see him!"
+
+"I must speak to the doctor."
+
+"Do it instantly!"
+
+With the will in his hand, Mr. Marchwood advanced to the bedroom door.
+It was opened from within before he could get to it. The doctor appeared
+on the threshold. He held up his hand warningly when Mr. Marchwood
+attempted to speak to him.
+
+"Go to Lady Holchester," he said. "It's all over."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+
+
+
+SIXTEENTH SCENE.--SALT PATCH.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH.
+
+THE PLACE.
+
+EARLY in the present century it was generally reported among the
+neighbors of one Reuben Limbrick that he was in a fair way to make a
+comfortable little fortune by dealing in Salt.
+
+His place of abode was in Staffordshire, on a morsel of freehold land
+of his own--appropriately called Salt Patch. Without being absolutely
+a miser, he lived in the humblest manner, saw very little company;
+skillfully invested his money; and persisted in remaining a single man.
+
+Toward eighteen hundred and forty he first felt the approach of the
+chronic malady which ultimately terminated his life. After trying what
+the medical men of his own locality could do for him, with very poor
+success, he met by accident with a doctor living in the western
+suburbs of London, who thoroughly understood his complaint. After some
+journeying backward and forward to consult this gentleman, he decided
+on retiring from business, and on taking up his abode within an easy
+distance of his medical man.
+
+Finding a piece of freehold land to be sold in the neighborhood of
+Fulham, he bought it, and had a cottage residence built on it, under his
+own directions. He surrounded the whole--being a man singularly jealous
+of any intrusion on his retirement, or of any chance observation of his
+ways and habits--with a high wall, which cost a large sum of money,
+and which was rightly considered a dismal and hideous object by the
+neighbors. When the new residence was completed, he called it after
+the name of the place in Staffordshire where he had made his money,
+and where he had lived during the happiest period of his life. His
+relatives, failing to understand that a question of sentiment was
+involved in this proceeding, appealed to hard facts, and reminded him
+that there were no salt mines in the neighborhood. Reuben Limbrick
+answered, "So much the worse for the neighborhood"--and persisted in
+calling his property, "Salt Patch."
+
+The cottage was so small that it looked quite lost in the large garden
+all round it. There was a ground-floor and a floor above it--and that
+was all.
+
+On either side of the passage, on the lower floor, were two rooms. At
+the right-hand side, on entering by the front-door, there was a kitchen,
+with its outhouses attached. The room next to the kitchen looked into
+the garden. In Reuben Limbrick's time it was called the study
+and contained a small collection of books and a large store of
+fishing-tackle. On the left-hand side of the passage there was a
+drawing-room situated at the back of the house, and communicating with
+a dining-room in the front. On the upper floor there were five
+bedrooms--two on one side of the passage, corresponding in size with the
+dining-room and the drawing-room below, but not opening into each other;
+three on the other side of the passage, consisting of one larger room
+in front, and of two small rooms at the back. All these were solidly and
+completely furnished. Money had not been spared, and workmanship had not
+been stinted. It was all substantial--and, up stairs and down stairs, it
+was all ugly.
+
+The situation of Salt Patch was lonely. The lands of the
+market-gardeners separated it from other houses. Jealously surrounded
+by its own high walls, the cottage suggested, even to the most
+unimaginative persons, the idea of an asylum or a prison. Reuben
+Limbrick's relatives, occasionally coming to stay with him, found the
+place prey on their spirits, and rejoiced when the time came for going
+home again. They were never pressed to stay against their will. Reuben
+Limbrick was not a hospitable or a sociable man. He set very little
+value on human sympathy, in his attacks of illness; and he bore
+congratulations impatiently, in his intervals of health. "I care about
+nothing but fishing," he used to say. "I find my dog very good company.
+And I am quite happy as long as I am free from pain."
+
+On his death-bed, he divided his money justly enough among his
+relations. The only part of his Will which exposed itself to unfavorable
+criticism, was a clause conferring a legacy on one of his sisters (then
+a widow) who had estranged herself from her family by marrying beneath
+her. The family agreed in considering this unhappy person as undeserving
+of notice or benefit. Her name was Hester Dethridge. It proved to be
+a great aggravation of Hester's offenses, in the eyes of Hester's
+relatives, when it was discovered that she possessed a life-interest in
+Salt Patch, and an income of two hundred a year.
+
+Not visited by the surviving members of her family, living, literally,
+by herself in the world, Hester decided, in spite of her comfortable
+little income, on letting lodgings. The explanation of this strange
+conduct which she had written on her slate, in reply to an inquiry from
+Anne, was the true one. "I have not got a friend in the world: I dare
+not live alone." In that desolate situation, and with that melancholy
+motive, she put the house into an agent's hands. The first person in
+want of lodgings whom the agent sent to see the place was Perry the
+trainer; and Hester's first tenant was Geoffrey Delamayn.
+
+The rooms which the landlady reserved for herself were the kitchen, the
+room next to it, which had once been her brother's "study," and the
+two small back bedrooms up stairs--one for herself, the other for the
+servant-girl whom she employed to help her. The whole of the rest of
+the cottage was to let. It was more than the trainer wanted; but Hester
+Dethridge refused to dispose of her lodgings--either as to the rooms
+occupied, or as to the period for which they were to be taken--on other
+than her own terms. Perry had no alternative but to lose the advantage
+of the garden as a private training-ground, or to submit.
+
+Being only two in number, the lodgers had three bedrooms to choose from.
+Geoffrey established himself in the back-room, over the drawing-room.
+Perry chose the front-room, placed on the other side of the cottage,
+next to the two smaller apartments occupied by Hester and her maid.
+Under this arrangement, the front bedroom, on the opposite side of the
+passage--next to the room in which Geoffrey slept--was left empty, and
+was called, for the time being, the spare room. As for the lower floor,
+the athlete and his trainer ate their meals in the dining-room; and left
+the drawing-room, as a needless luxury, to take care of itself.
+
+The Foot-Race once over, Perry's business at the cottage was at an end.
+His empty bedroom became a second spare room. The term for which the
+lodgings had been taken was then still unexpired. On the day after the
+race Geoffrey had to choose between sacrificing the money, or remaining
+in the lodgings by himself, with two spare bedrooms on his hands, and
+with a drawing-room for the reception of his visitors--who called with
+pipes in their mouths, and whose idea of hospitality was a pot of beer
+in the garden.
+
+To use his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggish reluctance to
+face change of any kind possessed him. He decided on staying at Salt
+Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm (which he then looked upon as
+a certainty) obliged him to alter his habits completely, once for all.
+From Fulham he had gone, the next day, to attend the inquiry in Portland
+Place. And to Fulham he returned, when he brought the wife who had been
+forced upon him to her "home."
+
+Such was the position of the tenant, and such were the arrangements
+of the interior of the cottage, on the memorable evening when Anne
+Silvester entered it as Geoffrey's wife.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.
+
+THE NIGHT.
+
+ON leaving Lady Lundie's house, Geoffrey called the first empty cab that
+passed him. He opened the door, and signed to Anne to enter the vehicle.
+She obeyed him mechanically. He placed himself on the seat opposite to
+her, and told the man to drive to Fulham.
+
+The cab started on its journey; husband and wife preserving absolute
+silence. Anne laid her head back wearily, and closed her eyes. Her
+strength had broken down under the effort which had sustained her from
+the beginning to the end of the inquiry. Her power of thinking was gone.
+She felt nothing, knew nothing, feared nothing. Half in faintness, half
+in slumber, she had lost all sense of her own terrible position before
+the first five minutes of the journey to Fulham had come to an end.
+
+Sitting opposite to her, savagely self-concentrated in his own thoughts,
+Geoffrey roused himself on a sudden. An idea had sprung to life in
+his sluggish brain. He put his head out of the window of the cab, and
+directed the driver to turn back, and go to an hotel near the Great
+Northern Railway.
+
+Resuming his seat, he looked furtively at Anne. She neither moved nor
+opened her eyes--she was, to all appearance, unconscious of what had
+happened. He observed her attentively. Was she really ill? Was the
+time coming when he would be freed from her? He pondered over that
+question--watching her closely. Little by little the vile hope in him
+slowly died away, and a vile suspicion took its place. What, if this
+appearance of illness was a pretense? What, if she was waiting to throw
+him off his guard, and escape from him at the first opportunity? He put
+his head out of the window again, and gave another order to the driver.
+The cab diverged from the direct route, and stopped at a public house in
+Holborn, kept (under an assumed name) by Perry the trainer.
+
+Geoffrey wrote a line in pencil on his card, and sent it into the house
+by the driver. After waiting some minutes, a lad appeared and touched
+his hat. Geoffrey spoke to him, out of the window, in an under-tone. The
+lad took his place on the box by the driver. The cab turned back, and
+took the road to the hotel near the Great Northern Railway.
+
+Arrived at the place, Geoffrey posted the lad close at the door of the
+cab, and pointed to Anne, still reclining with closed eyes; still, as it
+seemed, too weary to lift her head, too faint to notice any thing that
+happened. "If she attempts to get out, stop her, and send for me." With
+those parting directions he entered the hotel, and asked for Mr. Moy.
+
+Mr. Moy was in the house; he had just returned from Portland Place. He
+rose, and bowed coldly, when Geoffrey was shown into his sitting-room.
+
+"What is your business with me?" he asked.
+
+"I've had a notion come into my head," said Geoffrey. "And I want to
+speak to you about it directly."
+
+"I must request you to consult some one else. Consider me, if you
+please, as having withdrawn from all further connection with your
+affairs."
+
+Geoffrey looked at him in stolid surprise.
+
+"Do you mean to say you're going to leave me in the lurch?" he asked.
+
+"I mean to say that I will take no fresh step in any business of yours,"
+answered Mr. Moy, firmly. "As to the future, I have ceased to be your
+legal adviser. As to the past, I shall carefully complete the formal
+duties toward you which remain to be done. Mrs. Inchbare and Bishopriggs
+are coming here by appointment, at six this evening, to receive the
+money due to them before they go back. I shall return to Scotland myself
+by the night mail. The persons referred to, in the matter of the promise
+of marriage, by Sir Patrick, are all in Scotland. I will take their
+evidence as to the handwriting, and as to the question of residence in
+the North--and I will send it to you in written form. That done, I shall
+have done all. I decline to advise you in any future step which you
+propose to take."
+
+After reflecting for a moment, Geoffrey put a last question.
+
+"You said Bishopriggs and the woman would be here at six this evening."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where are they to be found before that?"
+
+Mr. Moy wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and handed it to Geoffrey.
+"At their lodgings," he said. "There is the address."
+
+Geoffrey took the address, and left the room. Lawyer and client parted
+without a word on either side.
+
+Returning to the cab, Geoffrey found the lad steadily waiting at his
+post.
+
+"Has any thing happened?"
+
+"The lady hasn't moved, Sir, since you left her."
+
+"Is Perry at the public house?"
+
+"Not at this time, Sir."
+
+"I want a lawyer. Do you know who Perry's lawyer is?"
+
+"Yes, Sir."
+
+"And where he is to be found?"
+
+"Yes, Sir."
+
+"Get up on the box, and tell the man where to drive to."
+
+The cab went on again along the Euston Road, and stopped at a house in
+a side-street, with a professional brass plate on the door. The lad got
+down, and came to the window.
+
+"Here it is, Sir."
+
+"Knock at the door, and see if he is at home."
+
+He proved to be at home. Geoffrey entered the house, leaving his
+emissary once more on the watch. The lad noticed that the lady moved
+this time. She shivered as if she felt cold--opened her eyes for a
+moment wearily, and looked out through the window--sighed, and sank back
+again in the corner of the cab.
+
+After an absence of more than half an hour Geoffrey came out again.
+His interview with Perry's lawyer appeared to have relieved his mind of
+something that had oppressed it. He once more ordered the driver to
+go to Fulham--opened the door to get into the cab--then, as it seemed,
+suddenly recollected himself--and, calling the lad down from the box,
+ordered him to get inside, and took his place by the driver.
+
+As the cab started he looked over his shoulder at Anne through the front
+window. "Well worth trying," he said to himself. "It's the way to be
+even with her. And it's the way to be free."
+
+They arrived at the cottage. Possibly, repose had restored Anne's
+strength. Possibly, the sight of the place had roused the instinct of
+self-preservation in her at last. To Geoffrey's surprise, she left the
+cab without assistance. When he opened the wooden gate, with his own
+key, she recoiled from it, and looked at him for the first time.
+
+He pointed to the entrance.
+
+"Go in," he said.
+
+"On what terms?" she asked, without stirring a step.
+
+Geoffrey dismissed the cab; and sent the lad in, to wait for further
+orders. These things done, he answered her loudly and brutally the
+moment they were alone:
+
+"On any terms I please."
+
+"Nothing will induce me," she said, firmly, "to live with you as your
+wife. You may kill me--but you will never bend me to that."
+
+He advanced a step--opened his lips--and suddenly checked himself. He
+waited a while, turning something over in his mind. When he spoke again,
+it was with marked deliberation and constraint--with the air of a man
+who was repeating words put into his lips, or words prepared beforehand.
+
+"I have something to tell you in the presence of witnesses," he said. "I
+don't ask you, or wish you, to see me in the cottage alone."
+
+She started at the change in him. His sudden composure, and his sudden
+nicety in the choice of words, tried her courage far more severely than
+it had been tried by his violence of the moment before.
+
+He waited her decision, still pointing through the gate. She trembled
+a little--steadied herself again--and went in. The lad, waiting in the
+front garden, followed her.
+
+He threw open the drawing-room door, on the left-hand side of the
+passage. She entered the room. The servant-girl appeared. He said to
+her, "Fetch Mrs. Dethridge; and come back with her yourself." Then he
+went into the room; the lad, by his own directions, following him in;
+and the door being left wide open.
+
+Hester Dethridge came out from the kitchen with the girl behind her. At
+the sight of Anne, a faint and momentary change passed over the stony
+stillness of her face. A dull light glimmered in her eyes. She slowly
+nodded her head. A dumb sound, vaguely expressive of something like
+exultation or relief, escaped her lips.
+
+Geoffrey spoke--once more, with marked deliberation and constraint;
+once more, with the air of repeating something which had been prepared
+beforehand. He pointed to Anne.
+
+"This woman is my wife," he said. "In the presence of you three, as
+witnesses, I tell her that I don't forgive her. I have brought her
+here--having no other place in which I can trust her to be--to wait the
+issue of proceedings, undertaken in defense of my own honor and good
+name. While she stays here, she will live separate from me, in a room of
+her own. If it is necessary for me to communicate with her, I shall only
+see her in the presence of a third person. Do you all understand me?"
+
+Hester Dethridge bowed her head. The other two answered, "Yes"--and
+turned to go out.
+
+Anne rose. At a sign from Geoffrey, the servant and the lad waited in
+the room to hear what she had to say.
+
+"I know nothing in my conduct," she said, addressing herself to
+Geoffrey, "which justifies you in telling these people that you don't
+forgive me. Those words applied by you to me are an insult. I am equally
+ignorant of what you mean when you speak of defending your good name.
+All I understand is, that we are separate persons in this house, and
+that I am to have a room of my own. I am grateful, whatever your motives
+may be, for the arrangement that you have proposed. Direct one of these
+two women to show me my room."
+
+Geoffrey turned to Hester Dethridge.
+
+"Take her up stairs," he said; "and let her pick which room she pleases.
+Give her what she wants to eat or drink. Bring down the address of the
+place where her luggage is. The lad here will go back by railway, and
+fetch it. That's all. Be off."
+
+Hester went out. Anne followed her up the stairs. In the passage on the
+upper floor she stopped. The dull light flickered again for a moment
+in her eyes. She wrote on her slate, and held it up to Anne, with these
+words on it: "I knew you would come back. It's not over yet between
+you and him." Anne made no reply. She went on writing, with something
+faintly like a smile on her thin, colorless lips. "I know something of
+bad husbands. Yours is as bad a one as ever stood in shoes. He'll try
+you." Anne made an effort to stop her. "Don't you see how tired I am?"
+she said, gently. Hester Dethridge dropped the slate--looked with a
+steady and uncompassionate attention in Anne's face--nodded her head,
+as much as to say, "I see it now"--and led the way into one of the empty
+rooms.
+
+It was the front bedroom, over the drawing-room. The first glance
+round showed it to be scrupulously clean, and solidly and tastelessly
+furnished. The hideous paper on the walls, the hideous carpet on the
+floor, were both of the best quality. The great heavy mahogany bedstead,
+with its curtains hanging from a hook in the ceiling, and with its
+clumsily carved head and foot on the same level, offered to the view the
+anomalous spectacle of French design overwhelmed by English execution.
+The most noticeable thing in the room was the extraordinary attention
+which had been given to the defense of the door. Besides the usual lock
+and key, it possessed two solid bolts, fastening inside at the top and
+the bottom. It had been one among the many eccentric sides of Reuben
+Limbrick's character to live in perpetual dread of thieves breaking into
+his cottage at night. All the outer doors and all the window shutters
+were solidly sheathed with iron, and had alarm-bells attached to them
+on a new principle. Every one of the bedrooms possessed its two bolts
+on the inner side of the door. And, to crown all, on the roof of the
+cottage was a little belfry, containing a bell large enough to make
+itself heard at the Fulham police station. In Reuben Limbrick's time the
+rope had communicated with his bedroom. It hung now against the wall, in
+the passage outside.
+
+Looking from one to the other of the objects around her, Anne's eyes
+rested on the partition wall which divided the room from the room
+next to it. The wall was not broken by a door of communication, it had
+nothing placed against it but a wash-hand-stand and two chairs.
+
+"Who sleeps in the next room?" said Anne.
+
+Hester Dethridge pointed down to the drawing-room in which they had left
+Geoffrey, Geoffrey slept in the room.
+
+Anne led the way out again into the passage.
+
+"Show me the second room," she said.
+
+The second room was also in front of the house. More ugliness (of
+first-rate quality) in the paper and the carpet. Another heavy mahogany
+bedstead; but, this time, a bedstead with a canopy attached to the head
+of it--supporting its own curtains. Anticipating Anne's inquiry, on
+this occasion, Hester looked toward the next room, at the back of the
+cottage, and pointed to herself. Anne at once decided on choosing the
+second room; it was the farthest from Geoffrey. Hester waited while she
+wrote the address at which her luggage would be found (at the house
+of the musical agent), and then, having applied for, and received her
+directions as to the evening meal which she should send up stairs,
+quitted the room.
+
+Left alone, Anne secured the door, and threw herself on the bed. Still
+too weary to exert her mind, still physically incapable of realizing
+the helplessness and the peril of her position, she opened a locket that
+hung from her neck, kissed the portrait of her mother and the portrait
+of Blanche placed opposite to each other inside it, and sank into a deep
+and dreamless sleep.
+
+Meanwhile Geoffrey repeated his final orders to the lad, at the cottage
+gate.
+
+"When you have got the luggage, you are to go to the lawyer. If he can
+come here to-night, you will show him the way. If he can't come, you
+will bring me a letter from him. Make any mistake in this, and it will
+be the worst day's work you ever did in your life. Away with you, and
+don't lose the train."
+
+The lad ran off. Geoffrey waited, looking after him, and turning over in
+his mind what had been done up to that time.
+
+"All right, so far," he said to himself. "I didn't ride in the cab with
+her. I told her before witnesses I didn't forgive her, and why I had
+her in the house. I've put her in a room by herself. And if I _must_ see
+her, I see her with Hester Dethridge for a witness. My part's done--let
+the lawyer do his."
+
+He strolled round into the back garden, and lit his pipe. After a while,
+as the twilight faded, he saw a light in Hester's sitting-room on the
+ground-floor. He went to the window. Hester and the servant-girl were
+both there at work. "Well?" he asked. "How about the woman up stairs?"
+Hester's slate, aided by the girl's tongue, told him all about "the
+woman" that was to be told. They had taken up to her room tea and an
+omelet; and they had been obliged to wake her from a sleep. She had
+eaten a little of the omelet, and had drunk eagerly of the tea. They had
+gone up again to take the tray down. She had returned to the bed. She
+was not asleep--only dull and heavy. Made no remark. Looked clean worn
+out. We left her a light; and we let her be. Such was the report. After
+listening to it, without making any remark, Geoffrey filled a second
+pipe, and resumed his walk. The time wore on. It began to feel chilly in
+the garden. The rising wind swept audibly over the open lands round the
+cottage; the stars twinkled their last; nothing was to be seen overhead
+but the black void of night. More rain coming. Geoffrey went indoors.
+
+An evening newspaper was on the dining-room table. The candles were lit.
+He sat down, and tried to read. No! There was nothing in the newspaper
+that he cared about. The time for hearing from the lawyer was drawing
+nearer and nearer. Reading was of no use. Sitting still was of no use.
+He got up, and went out in the front of the cottage--strolled to the
+gate--opened it--and looked idly up and down the road.
+
+But one living creature was visible by the light of the gas-lamp over
+the gate. The creature came nearer, and proved to be the postman going
+his last round, with the last delivery for the night. He came up to the
+gate with a letter in his hand.
+
+"The Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn?"
+
+"All right."
+
+He took the letter from the postman, and went back into the dining-room.
+Looking at the address by the light of the candles, he recognized the
+handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. "To congratulate me on my marriage!" he
+said to himself, bitterly, and opened the letter.
+
+Mrs. Glenarm's congratulations were expressed in these terms:
+
+"MY ADORED GEOFFREY,--I have heard all. My beloved one! my own! you are
+sacrificed to the vilest wretch that walks the earth, and I have lost
+you! How is it that I live after hearing it? How is it that I can think,
+and write, with my brain on fire, and my heart broken! Oh, my angel,
+there is a purpose that supports me--pure, beautiful, worthy of us both.
+I live, Geoffrey--I live to dedicate myself to the adored idea of You.
+My hero! my first, last, love! I will marry no other man. I will live
+and die--I vow it solemnly on my bended knees--I will live and die true
+to You. I am your Spiritual Wife. My beloved Geoffrey! _she_ can't come
+between us, there--_she_ can never rob you of my heart's unalterable
+fidelity, of my soul's unearthly devotion. I am your Spiritual Wife! Oh,
+the blameless luxury of writing those words! Write back to me, beloved
+one, and say you feel it too. Vow it, idol of my heart, as I have vowed
+it. Unalterable fidelity! unearthly devotion! Never, never will I be
+the wife of any other man! Never, never will I forgive the woman who has
+come between us! Yours ever and only; yours with the stainless passion
+that burns on the altar of the heart; yours, yours, yours--E. G."
+
+This outbreak of hysterical nonsense--in itself simply
+ridiculous--assumed a serious importance in its effect on Geoffrey.
+It associated the direct attainment of his own interests with
+the gratification of his vengeance on Anne. Ten thousand a year
+self-dedicated to him--and nothing to prevent his putting out his hand
+and taking it but the woman who had caught him in her trap, the woman up
+stairs who had fastened herself on him for life!
+
+He put the letter into his pocket. "Wait till I hear from the lawyer,"
+he said to himself. "The easiest way out of it is _that_ way. And it's
+the law."
+
+He looked impatiently at his watch. As he put it back again in his
+pocket there was a ring at the bell. Was it the lad bringing the
+luggage? Yes. And, with it, the lawyer's report? No. Better than
+that--the lawyer himself.
+
+"Come in!" cried Geoffrey, meeting his visitor at the door.
+
+The lawyer entered the dining-room. The candle-light revealed to view a
+corpulent, full-lipped, bright-eyed man--with a strain of negro blood in
+his yellow face, and with unmistakable traces in his look and manner of
+walking habitually in the dirtiest professional by-ways of the law.
+
+"I've got a little place of my own in your neighborhood," he said. "And
+I thought I would look in myself, Mr. Delamayn, on my way home."
+
+"Have you seen the witnesses?"
+
+"I have examined them both, Sir. First, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr.
+Bishopriggs together. Next, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr. Bishopriggs
+separately."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, Sir, the result is unfavorable, I am sorry to say."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other of them, Mr. Delamayn, can give the
+evidence we want. I have made sure of that."
+
+"Made sure of that? You have made an infernal mess of it! You don't
+understand the case!"
+
+The mulatto lawyer smiled. The rudeness of his client appeared only to
+amuse him.
+
+"Don't I?" he said. "Suppose you tell me where I am wrong about it? Here
+it is in outline only. On the fourteenth of August last your wife was
+at an inn in Scotland. A gentleman named Arnold Brinkworth joined her
+there. He represented himself to be her husband, and he staid with her
+till the next morning. Starting from those facts, the object you have
+in view is to sue for a Divorce from your wife. You make Mr. Arnold
+Brinkworth the co-respondent. And you produce in evidence the waiter and
+the landlady of the inn. Any thing wrong, Sir, so far?"
+
+Nothing wrong. At one cowardly stroke to cast Anne disgraced on the
+world, and to set himself free--there, plainly and truly stated, was
+the scheme which he had devised, when he had turned back on the way to
+Fulham to consult Mr. Moy.
+
+"So much for the case," resumed the lawyer. "Now for what I have done on
+receiving your instructions. I have examined the witnesses; and I have
+had an interview (not a very pleasant one) with Mr. Moy. The result of
+those two proceedings is briefly this. First discovery: In assuming the
+character of the lady's husband Mr. Brinkworth was acting under your
+directions--which tells dead against _you._ Second discovery: Not the
+slightest impropriety of conduct, not an approach even to harmless
+familiarity, was detected by either of the witnesses, while the lady and
+gentleman were together at the inn. There is literally no evidence to
+produce against them, except that they _were_ together--in two rooms.
+How are you to assume a guilty purpose, when you can't prove an approach
+to a guilty act? You can no more take such a case as that into Court
+than you can jump over the roof of this cottage."
+
+He looked hard at his client, expecting to receive a violent reply. His
+client agreeably disappointed him. A very strange impression appeared
+to have been produced on this reckless and headstrong man. He got up
+quietly; he spoke with perfect outward composure of face and manner when
+he said his next words.
+
+"Have you given up the case?"
+
+"As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case."
+
+"And no hope of my getting divorced from her?"
+
+"Wait a moment. Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere since they
+were together at the Scotch inn?"
+
+"Nowhere."
+
+"As to the future, of course I can't say. As to the past, there is no
+hope of your getting divorced from her."
+
+"Thank you. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Delamayn."
+
+
+
+Fastened to her for life--and the law powerless to cut the knot.
+
+He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it and
+fixed it in his mind. Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm's letter, and read
+it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.
+
+Nothing could shake her devotion to him. Nothing would induce her to
+marry another man. There she was--in her own words--dedicated to him:
+waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his wife. There
+also was his father, waiting (so far as _he_ knew, in the absence of
+any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs. Glenarm as a
+daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm's husband an income of his
+own. As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man could desire. And nothing
+in the way of it but the woman who had caught him in her trap--the woman
+up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life.
+
+He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.
+
+There was open communication, on all sides, between the back garden and
+the front. He walked round and round the cottage--now appearing in a
+stream of light from a window; now disappearing again in the darkness.
+The wind blew refreshingly over his bare head. For some minutes he went
+round and round, faster and faster, without a pause. When he stopped
+at last, it was in front of the cottage. He lifted his head slowly, and
+looked up at the dim light in the window of Anne's room.
+
+"How?" he said to himself. "That's the question. How?"
+
+He went indoors again, and rang the bell. The servant-girl who answered
+it started back at the sight of him. His florid color was all gone. His
+eyes looked at her without appearing to see her. The perspiration was
+standing on his forehead in great heavy drops.
+
+"Are you ill, Sir?" said the girl.
+
+He told her, with an oath, to hold her tongue and bring the brandy. When
+she entered the room for the second time, he was standing with his back
+to her, looking out at the night. He never moved when she put the bottle
+on the table. She heard him muttering as if he was talking to himself.
+
+The same difficulty which had been present to his mind in secret under
+Anne's window was present to his mind still.
+
+How? That was the problem to solve. How?
+
+He turned to the brandy, and took counsel of that.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH.
+
+THE MORNING.
+
+WHEN does the vain regret find its keenest sting? When is the doubtful
+future blackened by its darkest cloud? When is life least worth having,
+and death oftenest at the bedside? In the terrible morning hours,
+when the sun is rising in its glory, and the birds are singing in the
+stillness of the new-born day.
+
+Anne woke in the strange bed, and looked round her, by the light of the
+new morning, at the strange room.
+
+The rain had all fallen in the night. The sun was master in the clear
+autumn sky. She rose, and opened the window. The fresh morning air, keen
+and fragrant, filled the room. Far and near, the same bright stillness
+possessed the view. She stood at the window looking out. Her mind was
+clear again--she could think, she could feel; she could face the one
+last question which the merciless morning now forced on her--How will it
+end?
+
+Was there any hope?--hope for instance, in what she might do for
+herself. What can a married woman do for herself? She can make her
+misery public--provided it be misery of a certain kind--and can reckon
+single-handed with Society when she has done it. Nothing more.
+
+Was there hope in what others might do for her? Blanche might write to
+her--might even come and see her--if her husband allowed it; and that
+was all. Sir Patrick had pressed her hand at parting, and had told her
+to rely on him. He was the firmest, the truest of friends. But what
+could he do? There were outrages which her husband was privileged to
+commit, under the sanction of marriage, at the bare thought of which her
+blood ran cold. Could Sir Patrick protect her? Absurd! Law and Society
+armed her husband with his conjugal rights. Law and Society had but one
+answer to give, if she appealed to them--You are his wife.
+
+No hope in herself; no hope in her friends; no hope any where on earth.
+Nothing to be done but to wait for the end--with faith in the Divine
+Mercy; with faith in the better world.
+
+She took out of her trunk a little book of Prayers and Meditations--worn
+with much use--which had once belonged to her mother. She sat by the
+window reading it. Now and then she looked up from it--thinking. The
+parallel between her mother's position and her own position was now
+complete. Both married to husbands who hated them; to husbands whose
+interests pointed to mercenary alliances with other women; to husbands
+whose one want and one purpose was to be free from their wives. Strange,
+what different ways had led mother and daughter both to the same
+fate! Would the parallel hold to the end? "Shall I die," she wondered,
+thinking of her mother's last moments, "in Blanche's arms?"
+
+The time had passed unheeded. The morning movement in the house had
+failed to catch her ear. She was first called out of herself to the
+sense of the present and passing events by the voice of the servant-girl
+outside the door.
+
+"The master wants you, ma'am, down stairs."
+
+She rose instantly and put away the little book.
+
+"Is that all the message?" she asked, opening the door.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+She followed the girl down stairs; recalling to her memory the strange
+words addressed to her by Geoffrey, in the presence of the servants, on
+the evening before. Was she now to know what those words really meant?
+The doubt would soon be set at rest. "Be the trial what it may," she
+thought to herself, "let me bear it as my mother would have borne it."
+
+The servant opened the door of the dining-room. Breakfast was on
+the table. Geoffrey was standing at the window. Hester Dethridge
+was waiting, posted near the door. He came forward--with the nearest
+approach to gentleness in his manner which she had ever yet seen in
+it--he came forward, with a set smile on his lips, and offered her his
+hand!
+
+She had entered the room, prepared (as she believed) for any thing
+that could happen. She was not prepared for this. She stood speechless,
+looking at him.
+
+After one glance at her, when she came in, Hester Dethridge looked at
+him, too--and from that moment never looked away again, as long as Anne
+remained in the room.
+
+He broke the silence--in a voice that was not like his own; with a
+furtive restraint in his manner which she had never noticed in it
+before.
+
+"Won't you shake hands with your husband," he asked, "when your husband
+asks you?"
+
+She mechanically put her hand in his. He dropped it instantly, with a
+start. "God! how cold!" he exclaimed. His own hand was burning hot, and
+shook incessantly.
+
+He pointed to a chair at the head of the table.
+
+"Will you make the tea?" he asked.
+
+She had given him her hand mechanically; she advanced a step
+mechanically--and then stopped.
+
+"Would you prefer breakfasting by yourself?" he said.
+
+"If you please," she answered, faintly.
+
+"Wait a minute. I have something to say before you go."
+
+She waited. He considered with himself; consulting his memory--visibly,
+unmistakably, consulting it before he spoke again.
+
+"I have had the night to think in," he said. "The night has made a new
+man of me. I beg your pardon for what I said yesterday. I was not myself
+yesterday. I talked nonsense yesterday. Please to forget it, and forgive
+it. I wish to turn over a new leaf and make amends--make amends for
+my past conduct. It shall be my endeavor to be a good husband. In the
+presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I request you to give me a chance. I won't
+force your inclinations. We are married--what's the use of regretting
+it? Stay here, as you said yesterday, on your own terms. I wish to make
+it up. In the presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I say I wish to make it up. I
+won't detain you. I request you to think of it. Good-morning."
+
+He said those extraordinary words like a slow boy saying a hard
+lesson--his eyes on the ground, his fingers restlessly fastening and
+unfastening a button on his waistcoat.
+
+Anne left the room. In the passage she was obliged to wait, and support
+herself against the wall. His unnatural politeness was horrible; his
+carefully asserted repentance chilled her to the soul with dread.
+She had never felt--in the time of his fiercest anger and his foulest
+language--the unutterable horror of him that she felt now.
+
+Hester Dethridge came out, closing the door behind her. She looked
+attentively at Anne--then wrote on her slate, and held it out, with
+these words on it:
+
+"Do you believe him?"
+
+Anne pushed the slate away, and ran up stairs. She fastened the
+door--and sank into a chair.
+
+"He is plotting something against me," she said to herself. "What?"
+
+A sickening, physical sense of dread--entirely new in her experience of
+herself--made her shrink from pursuing the question. The sinking at her
+heart turned her faint. She went to get the air at the open window.
+
+At the same moment there was a ring at the gate bell. Suspicious of any
+thing and every thing, she felt a sudden distrust of letting herself be
+seen. She drew back behind the curtain and looked out.
+
+A man-servant, in livery, was let in. He had a letter in his hand.
+He said to the girl as he passed Anne's window, "I come from Lady
+Holchester; I must see Mr. Delamayn instantly."
+
+They went in. There was an interval. The footman reappeared, leaving the
+place. There was another interval. Then there came a knock at the door.
+Anne hesitated. The knock was repeated, and the dumb murmuring of Hester
+Dethridge was heard outside. Anne opened the door.
+
+Hester came in with the breakfast. She pointed to a letter among other
+things on the tray. It was addressed to Anne, in Geoffrey's handwriting,
+and it contained these words:
+
+"My father died yesterday. Write your orders for your mourning. The
+boy will take them. You are not to trouble yourself to go to London.
+Somebody is to come here to you from the shop."
+
+Anne dropped the paper on her lap without looking up. At the same moment
+Hester Dethridge's slate was passed stealthily between her eyes and the
+note--with these words traced on it. "His mother is coming to-day. His
+brother has been telegraphed from Scotland. He was drunk last night.
+He's drinking again. I know what that means. Look out, missus--look
+out."
+
+Anne signed to her to leave the room. She went out, pulling the door to,
+but not closing it behind her.
+
+There was another ring at the gate bell. Once more Anne went to the
+window. Only the lad, this time; arriving to take his orders for the
+day. He had barely entered the garden when he was followed by the
+postman with letters. In a minute more Geoffrey's voice was heard in
+the passage, and Geoffrey's heavy step ascended the wooden stairs. Anne
+hurried across the room to draw the bolts. Geoffrey met her before she
+could close the door.
+
+"A letter for you," he said, keeping scrupulously out of the room. "I
+don't wish to force your inclinations--I only request you to tell me who
+it's from."
+
+His manner was as carefully subdued as ever. But the unacknowledged
+distrust in him (when he looked at her) betrayed itself in his eye.
+
+She glanced at the handwriting on the address.
+
+"From Blanche," she answered.
+
+He softly put his foot between the door and the post--and waited until
+she had opened and read Blanche's letter.
+
+"May I see it?" he asked--and put in his hand for it through the door.
+
+The spirit in Anne which would once have resisted him was dead in her
+now. She handed him the open letter.
+
+It was very short. Excepting some brief expressions of fondness, it
+was studiously confined to stating the purpose for which it had been
+written. Blanche proposed to visit Anne that afternoon, accompanied by
+her uncle, she sent word beforehand, to make sure of finding Anne at
+home. That was all. The letter had evidently been written under Sir
+Patrick's advice.
+
+Geoffrey handed it back, after first waiting a moment to think.
+
+"My father died yesterday," he said. "My wife can't receive visitors
+before he is buried. I don't wish to force your inclinations. I only say
+I can't let visitors in here before the funeral--except my own family.
+Send a note down stairs. The lad will take it to your friend when he
+goes to London." With those words he left.
+
+An appeal to the proprieties of life, in the mouth of Geoffrey Delamayn,
+could only mean one of two things. Either he had spoken in brutal
+mockery--or he had spoken with some ulterior object in view. Had he
+seized on the event of his father's death as a pretext for isolating his
+wife from all communication with the outer world? Were there reasons,
+which had not yet asserted themselves, for his dreading the result, if
+he allowed Anne to communicate with her friends?
+
+The hour wore on, and Hester Dethridge appeared again. The lad was
+waiting for Anne's orders for her mourning, and for her note to Mrs.
+Arnold Brinkworth.
+
+Anne wrote the orders and the note. Once more the horrible slate
+appeared when she had done, between the writing paper and her eyes, with
+the hard lines of warning pitilessly traced on it. "He has locked the
+gate. When there's a ring we are to come to him for the key. He has
+written to a woman. Name outside the letter, Mrs. Glenarm. He has had
+more brandy. Like my husband. Mind yourself."
+
+The one way out of the high walls all round the cottage locked. Friends
+forbidden to see her. Solitary imprisonment, with her husband for a
+jailer. Before she had been four-and-twenty hours in the cottage it had
+come to that. And what was to follow?
+
+She went back mechanically to the window. The sight of the outer world,
+the occasional view of a passing vehicle, helped to sustain her.
+
+The lad appeared in the front garden departing to perform his errand to
+London. Geoffrey went with him to open the gate, and called after him,
+as he passed through it, "Don't forget the books!"
+
+The "books?" What "books?" Who wanted them? The slightest thing now
+roused Anne's suspicion. For hours afterward the books haunted her mind.
+
+He secured the gate and came back again. He stopped under Anne's window
+and called to her. She showed herself. "When you want air and exercise,"
+he said, "the back garden is at your own disposal." He put the key of
+the gate in his pocket and returned to the house.
+
+After some hesitation Anne decided on taking him at his word. In her
+state of suspense, to remain within the four walls of the bedroom was
+unendurable. If some lurking snare lay hid under the fair-sounding
+proposal which Geoffrey had made, it was less repellent to her boldly to
+prove what it might be than to wait pondering over it with her mind
+in the dark. She put on her hat and went down into the garden. Nothing
+happened out of the common. Wherever he was he never showed himself.
+She wandered up and down, keeping on the side of the garden which was
+farthest from the dining-room window. To a woman, escape from the place
+was simply impossible. Setting out of the question the height of the
+walls, they were armed at the top with a thick setting of jagged broken
+glass. A small back-door in the end wall (intended probably for the
+gardener's use) was bolted and locked--the key having been taken out.
+There was not a house near. The lands of the local growers of vegetables
+surrounded the garden on all sides. In the nineteenth century, and in
+the immediate neighborhood of a great metropolis, Anne was as absolutely
+isolated from all contact with the humanity around her as if she lay in
+her grave.
+
+After the lapse of half an hour the silence was broken by a noise of
+carriage wheels on the public road in front, and a ring at the bell.
+Anne kept close to the cottage, at the back; determined, if a chance
+offered, on speaking to the visitor, whoever the visitor might be.
+
+She heard voices in the dining-room through the open window--Geoffrey's
+voice and the voice of a woman. Who was the woman? Not Mrs. Glenarm,
+surely? After a while the visitor's voice was suddenly raised. "Where
+is she?" it said. "I wish to see her." Anne instantly advanced to the
+back-door of the house--and found herself face to face with a lady who
+was a total stranger to her.
+
+"Are you my son's wife?" asked the lady.
+
+"I am your son's prisoner," Anne answered.
+
+Lady Holchester's pale face turned paler still. It was plain that Anne's
+reply had confirmed some doubt in the mother s mind which had been
+already suggested to it by the son.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, in a whisper.
+
+Geoffrey's heavy footsteps crossed the dining-room. There was no time to
+explain. Anne whispered back,
+
+"Tell my friends what I have told you."
+
+Geoffrey appeared at the dining-room door.
+
+"Name one of your friends," said Lady Holchester.
+
+"Sir Patrick Lundie."
+
+Geoffrey heard the answer. "What about Sir Patrick Lundie?" he asked.
+
+"I wish to see Sir Patrick Lundie," said his mother. "And your wife can
+tell me where to find him."
+
+Anne instantly understood that Lady Holchester would communicate with
+Sir Patrick. She mentioned his London address. Lady Holchester turned to
+leave the cottage. Her son stopped her.
+
+"Let's set things straight," he said, "before you go. My mother," he
+went on, addressing himself to Anne, "don't think there's much
+chance for us two of living comfortably together. Bear witness to the
+truth--will you? What did I tell you at breakfast-time? Didn't I say it
+should be my endeavor to make you a good husband? Didn't I say--in Mrs.
+Dethridge's presence--I wanted to make it up?" He waited until Anne had
+answered in the affirmative, and then appealed to his mother. "Well?
+what do you think now?"
+
+Lady Holchester declined to reveal what she thought. "You shall see me,
+or hear from me, this evening," she said to Anne. Geoffrey attempted
+to repeat his unanswered question. His mother looked at him. His eyes
+instantly dropped before hers. She gravely bent her head to Anne, and
+drew her veil. Her son followed her out in silence to the gate.
+
+Anne returned to her room, sustained by the first sense of relief which
+she had felt since the morning. "His mother is alarmed," she said to
+herself. "A change will come."
+
+A change _was_ to come--with the coming night.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIRST.
+
+THE PROPOSAL.
+
+TOWARD sunset, Lady Holchester's carriage drew up before the gate of the
+cottage.
+
+Three persons occupied the carriage: Lady Holchester, her eldest son
+(now Lord Holchester), and Sir Patrick Lundie.
+
+"Will you wait in the carriage, Sir Patrick?" said Julius. "Or will
+you come in?"
+
+"I will wait. If I can be of the least use to _her,_, send for me
+instantly. In the mean time don't forget to make the stipulation which I
+have suggested. It is the one certain way of putting your brother's real
+feeling in this matter to the test."
+
+The servant had rung the bell without producing any result. He rang
+again. Lady Holchester put a question to Sir Patrick.
+
+"If I have an opportunity of speaking to my son's wife alone," she said,
+"have you any message to give?"
+
+Sir Patrick produced a little note.
+
+"May I appeal to your ladyship's kindness to give her this?" The gate
+was opened by the servant-girl, as Lady Holchester took the note.
+"Remember," reiterated Sir Patrick, earnestly "if I can be of the
+smallest service to her--don't think of my position with Mr. Delamayn.
+Send for me at once."
+
+Julius and his mother were conducted into the drawing-room. The girl
+informed them that her master had gone up stairs to lie down, and that
+he would be with them immediately.
+
+Both mother and son were too anxious to speak. Julius wandered uneasily
+about the room. Some books attracted his notice on a table in the
+corner--four dirty, greasy volumes, with a slip of paper projecting from
+the leaves of one of them, and containing this inscription, "With Mr.
+Perry's respects." Julius opened the volume. It was the ghastly popular
+record of Criminal Trials in England, called the Newgate Calendar.
+Julius showed it to his mother.
+
+"Geoffrey's taste in literature!" he said, with a faint smile.
+
+Lady Holchester signed to him to put the book back.
+
+"You have seen Geoffrey's wife already--have you not?" she asked.
+
+There was no contempt now in her tone when she referred to Anne. The
+impression produced on her by her visit to the cottage, earlier in the
+day, associated Geoffrey's wife with family anxieties of no trivial
+kind. She might still (for Mrs. Glenarm's sake) be a woman to be
+disliked--but she was no longer a woman to be despised.
+
+"I saw her when she came to Swanhaven," said Julius. "I agree with Sir
+Patrick in thinking her a very interesting person."
+
+"What did Sir Patrick say to you about Geoffrey this afternoon--while I
+was out of the room?"
+
+"Only what he said to _you._ He thought their position toward each other
+here a very deplorable one. He considered that the reasons were serious
+for our interfering immediately."
+
+"Sir Patrick's own opinion, Julius, goes farther than that."
+
+"He has not acknowledged it, that I know of."
+
+"How _can_ he acknowledge it--to us?"
+
+The door opened, and Geoffrey entered the room.
+
+Julius eyed him closely as they shook hands. His eyes were bloodshot;
+his face was flushed; his utterance was thick--the look of him was the
+look of a man who had been drinking hard.
+
+"Well?" he said to his mother. "What brings you back?"
+
+"Julius has a proposal to make to you," Lady Holchester answered. "I
+approve of it; and I have come with him."
+
+Geoffrey turned to his brother.
+
+"What can a rich man like you want with a poor devil like me?" he asked.
+
+"I want to do you justice, Geoffrey--if you will help me, by meeting me
+half-way. Our mother has told you about the will?"
+
+"I'm not down for a half-penny in the will. I expected as much. Go on."
+
+"You are wrong--you _are_ down in it. There is liberal provision made
+for you in a codicil. Unhappily, my father died without signing it. It
+is needless to say that I consider it binding on me for all that. I am
+ready to do for you what your father would have done for you. And I only
+ask for one concession in return."
+
+"What may that be?"
+
+"You are living here very unhappily, Geoffrey, with your wife."
+
+"Who says so? I don't, for one."
+
+Julius laid his hand kindly on his brother's arm.
+
+"Don't trifle with such a serious matter as this," he said. "Your
+marriage is, in every sense of the word, a misfortune--not only to you
+but to your wife. It is impossible that you can live together. I have
+come here to ask you to consent to a separation. Do that--and the
+provision made for you in the unsigned codicil is yours. What do you
+say?"
+
+Geoffrey shook his brother's hand off his arm.
+
+"I say--No!" he answered.
+
+Lady Holchester interfered for the first time.
+
+"Your brother's generous offer deserves a better answer than that," she
+said.
+
+"My answer," reiterated Geoffrey, "is--No!"
+
+He sat between them with his clenched fists resting on his
+knees--absolutely impenetrable to any thing that either of them could
+say.
+
+"In your situation," said Julius, "a refusal is sheer madness. I won't
+accept it."
+
+"Do as you like about that. My mind's made up. I won't let my wife be
+taken away from me. Here she stays."
+
+The brutal tone in which he had made that reply roused Lady Holchester's
+indignation.
+
+"Take care!" she said. "You are not only behaving with the grossest
+ingratitude toward your brother--you are forcing a suspicion into your
+mother's mind. You have some motive that you are hiding from us."
+
+He turned on his mother with a sudden ferocity which made Julius spring
+to his feet. The next instant his eyes were on the ground, and the devil
+that possessed him was quiet again.
+
+"Some motive I'm hiding from you?" he repeated, with his head down, and
+his utterance thicker than ever. "I'm ready to have my motive posted all
+over London, if you like. I'm fond of her."
+
+He looked up as he said the last words. Lady Holchester turned away
+her head--recoiling from her own son. So overwhelming was the shock
+inflicted on her that even the strongly rooted prejudice which Mrs.
+Glenarm had implanted in her mind yielded to it. At that moment she
+absolutely pitied Anne!
+
+"Poor creature!" said Lady Holchester.
+
+He took instant offense at those two words. "I won't have my wife pitied
+by any body." With that reply, he dashed into the passage; and called
+out, "Anne! come down!"
+
+Her soft voice answered; her light footfall was heard on the stairs. She
+came into the room. Julius advanced, took her hand, and held it kindly
+in his. "We are having a little family discussion," he said, trying to
+give her confidence. "And Geoffrey is getting hot over it, as usual."
+
+Geoffrey appealed sternly to his mother.
+
+"Look at her!" he said. "Is she starved? Is she in rags? Is she covered
+with bruises?" He turned to Anne. "They have come here to propose a
+separation. They both believe I hate you. I don't hate you. I'm a good
+Christian. I owe it to you that I'm cut out of my father's will. I
+forgive you that. I owe it to you that I've lost the chance of marrying
+a woman with ten thousand a year. I forgive you _that._ I'm not a man
+who does things by halves. I said it should be my endeavor to make you a
+good husband. I said it was my wish to make it up. Well! I am as good
+as my word. And what's the consequence? I am insulted. My mother comes
+here, and my brother comes here--and they offer me money to part from
+you. Money be hanged! I'll be beholden to nobody. I'll get my own
+living. Shame on the people who interfere between man and wife!
+Shame!--that's what I say--shame!"
+
+Anne looked, for an explanation, from her husband to her husband's
+mother.
+
+"Have you proposed a separation between us?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--on terms of the utmost advantage to my son; arranged with every
+possible consideration toward you. Is there any objection on your side?"
+
+"Oh, Lady Holchester! is it necessary to ask me? What does he say?"
+
+"He has refused."
+
+"Refused!"
+
+"Yes," said Geoffrey. "I don't go back from my word; I stick to what I
+said this morning. It's my endeavor to make you a good husband. It's
+my wish to make it up." He paused, and then added his last reason: "I'm
+fond of you."
+
+Their eyes met as he said it to her. Julius felt Anne's hand suddenly
+tighten round his. The desperate grasp of the frail cold fingers, the
+imploring terror in the gentle sensitive face as it slowly turned his
+way, said to him as if in words, "Don't leave me friendless to-night!"
+
+"If you both stop here till domesday," said Geoffrey, "you'll get
+nothing more out of me. You have had my reply."
+
+With that, he seated himself doggedly in a corner of the room;
+waiting--ostentatiously waiting--for his mother and his brother to take
+their leave. The position was serious. To argue the matter with him that
+night was hopeless. To invite Sir Patrick's interference would only be
+to provoke his savage temper to a new outbreak. On the other hand, to
+leave the helpless woman, after what had passed, without another effort
+to befriend her, was, in her situation, an act of downright inhumanity,
+and nothing less. Julius took the one way out of the difficulty that was
+left--the one way worthy of him as a compassionate and an honorable man.
+
+"We will drop it for to-night, Geoffrey," he said. "But I am not the
+less resolved, in spite of all that you have said, to return to the
+subject to-morrow. It would save me some inconvenience--a second journey
+here from town, and then going back again to my engagements--if I staid
+with you to-night. Can you give me a bed?"
+
+A look flashed on him from Anne, which thanked him as no words could
+have thanked him.
+
+"Give you a bed?" repeated Geoffrey. He checked himself, on the point
+of refusing. His mother was watching him; his wife was watching him--and
+his wife knew that the room above them was a room to spare. "All right!"
+he resumed, in another tone, with his eye on his mother. "There's my
+empty room up stairs. Have it, if you like. You won't find I've changed
+my mind to-morrow--but that's your look-out. Stop here, if the fancy
+takes you. I've no objection. It don't matter to Me.--Will you trust his
+lordship under my roof?" he added, addressing his mother. "I might have
+some motive that I'm hiding from you, you know!" Without waiting for an
+answer, he turned to Anne. "Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets
+on the bed. Say there's a live lord in the house--she's to send in
+something devilish good for supper!" He burst fiercely into a forced
+laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the
+room. "I shall not be here when you return," she said. "Let me bid you
+good-night."
+
+She shook hands with Anne--giving her Sir Patrick's note, unseen, at the
+same moment. Anne left the room. Without addressing another word to her
+second son, Lady Holchester beckoned to Julius to give her his arm. "You
+have acted nobly toward your brother," she said to him. "My one comfort
+and my one hope, Julius, are in you." They went out together to the
+gate, Geoffrey following them with the key in his hand. "Don't be too
+anxious," Julius whispered to his mother. "I will keep the drink out
+of his way to-night--and I will bring you a better account of him
+to-morrow. Explain every thing to Sir Patrick as you go home."
+
+He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving
+Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the
+cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother--but he was seriously
+uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their
+brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey
+had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately
+acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some
+abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius.
+For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary
+consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey's mind.
+They went back into the drawing-room. "What will you have to drink?"
+said Geoffrey.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You won't keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?"
+
+"No. You have had enough brandy-and-water."
+
+After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey
+abruptly agreed with Julius "I look like it," he said. "I'll soon put
+that right." He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round
+his head. "What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready?
+Liberty Hall here. I've taken to cultivating my mind---I'm a reformed
+character, you know, now I'm a married man. You do what you like. I
+shall read."
+
+He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate
+Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.
+
+"You won't cultivate your mind," he said, "with such a book as that.
+Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in
+every sense of the word."
+
+"It will do for me. I don't know good English when I see it."
+
+With that frank acknowledgment--to which the great majority of his
+companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the
+slightest injustice to the present state of English education--Geoffrey
+drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record
+of crime.
+
+The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and
+seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise,
+that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book.
+Instead of beginning at the first page, he ran the leaves through his
+fingers, and turned them down at certain places, before he entered on
+his reading. If Julius had looked over his brother's shoulder, instead
+of only looking at him across the table, he would have seen that
+Geoffrey passed by all the lighter crimes reported in the Calendar, and
+marked for his own private reading the cases of murder only.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SECOND.
+
+THE APPARITION.
+
+THE night had advanced. It was close on twelve o'clock when Anne heard
+the servant's voice, outside her bedroom door, asking leave to speak
+with her for a moment.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"The gentleman down stairs wishes to see you, ma'am."
+
+"Do you mean Mr. Delamayn's brother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is Mr. Delamayn?"
+
+"Out in the garden, ma'am."
+
+Anne went down stairs, and found Julius alone in the drawing-room.
+
+"I am sorry to disturb you," he said. "I am afraid Geoffrey is ill. The
+landlady has gone to bed, I am told--and I don't know where to apply for
+medical assistance. Do you know of any doctor in the neighborhood?"
+
+Anne, like Julius, was a perfect stranger to the neighborhood. She
+suggested making inquiry of the servant. On speaking to the girl, it
+turned out that she knew of a medical man, living within ten minutes'
+walk of the cottage. She could give plain directions enabling any person
+to find the place--but she was afraid, at that hour of the night and in
+that lonely neighborhood, to go out by herself.
+
+"Is he seriously ill?" Anne asked.
+
+"He is in such a state of nervous irritability," said Julius, "that he
+can't remain still for two moments together in the same place. It began
+with incessant restlessness while he was reading here. I persuaded him
+to go to bed. He couldn't lie still for an instant--he came down again,
+burning with fever, and more restless than ever. He is out in the garden
+in spite of every thing I could do to prevent him; trying, as he says,
+to 'run it off.' It appears to be serious to _me._. Come and judge for
+yourself."
+
+He led Anne into the next room; and, opening the shutter, pointed to the
+garden.
+
+The clouds had cleared off; the night was fine. The clear starlight
+showed Geoffrey, stripped to his shirt and drawers, running round and
+round the garden. He apparently believed himself to be contending at the
+Fulham foot-race. At times, as the white figure circled round and
+round in the star-light, they heard him cheering for "the South." The
+slackening thump of his feet on the ground, the heavier and heavier
+gasps in which he drew his breath, as he passed the window, gave warning
+that his strength was failing him. Exhaustion, if it led to no worse
+consequences, would force him to return to the house. In the state of
+his brain at that moment who could say what the result might be, if
+medical help was not called in?
+
+"I will go for the doctor," said Julius, "if you don't mind my leaving
+you."
+
+It was impossible for Anne to set any apprehensions of her own against
+the plain necessity for summoning assistance. They found the key of the
+gate in the pocket of Geoffrey's coat up stairs. Anne went with Julius
+to let him out. "How can I thank you!" she said, gratefully. "What
+should I have done without _you!_"
+
+"I won't be a moment longer than I can help," he answered, and left her.
+
+She secured the gate again, and went back to the cottage. The servant
+met her at the door, and proposed calling up Hester Dethridge.
+
+"We don't know what the master may do while his brother's away," said
+the girl. "And one more of us isn't one too many, when we are only women
+in the house."
+
+"You are quite right," said Anne. "Wake your mistress."
+
+After ascending the stairs, they looked out into the garden, through the
+window at the end of the passage on the upper floor. He was still going
+round and round, but very slowly: his pace was fast slackening to a
+walk.
+
+Anne went back to her room, and waited near the open door--ready to
+close and fasten it instantly if any thing occurred to alarm her. "How
+changed I am!" she thought to herself. "Every thing frightens me, now."
+
+The inference was the natural one--but not the true one. The change
+was not in herself, but in the situation in which she was placed. Her
+position during the investigation at Lady Lundie's house had tried her
+moral courage only. It had exacted from her one of those noble efforts
+of self-sacrifice which the hidden forces in a woman's nature are
+essentially capable of making. Her position at the cottage tried her
+physical courage: it called on her to rise superior to the sense of
+actual bodily danger--while that danger was lurking in the dark. There,
+the woman's nature sank under the stress laid on it--there, her courage
+could strike no root in the strength of her love--there, the animal
+instincts were the instincts appealed to; and the firmness wanted was
+the firmness of a man.
+
+Hester Dethridge's door opened. She walked straight into Anne's room.
+
+The yellow clay-cold color of her face showed a faint flush of warmth;
+its deathlike stillness was stirred by a touch of life. The stony eyes,
+fixed as ever in their gaze, shone strangely with a dim inner lustre.
+Her gray hair, so neatly arranged at other times, was in disorder under
+her cap. All her movements were quicker than usual. Something had roused
+the stagnant vitality in the woman--it was working in her mind; it was
+forcing itself outward into her face. The servants at Windygates, in
+past times, had seen these signs, and had known them for a warning to
+leave Hester Dethridge to herself.
+
+Anne asked her if she had heard what had happened.
+
+She bowed her head.
+
+"I hope you don't mind being disturbed?"
+
+She wrote on her slate: "I'm glad to be disturbed. I have been dreaming
+bad dreams. It's good for me to be wakened, when sleep takes me backward
+in my life. What's wrong with you? Frightened?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She wrote again, and pointed toward the garden with one hand, while she
+held the slate up with the other: "Frightened of _him?_"
+
+"Terribly frightened."
+
+She wrote for the third time, and offered the slate to Anne with a
+ghastly smile: "I have been through it all. I know. You're only at the
+beginning now. He'll put the wrinkles in your face, and the gray in your
+hair. There will come a time when you'll wish yourself dead and buried.
+You will live through it, for all that. Look at Me."
+
+As she read the last three words, Anne heard the garden door below
+opened and banged to again. She caught Hester Dethridge by the arm,
+and listened. The tramp of Geoffrey's feet, staggering heavily in the
+passage, gave token of his approach to the stairs. He was talking to
+himself, still possessed by the delusion that he was at the foot-race.
+"Five to four on Delamayn. Delamayn's won. Three cheers for the South,
+and one cheer more. Devilish long race. Night already! Perry! where's
+Perry?"
+
+He advanced, staggering from side to side of the passage. The stairs
+below creaked as he set his foot on them. Hester Dethridge dragged
+herself free from Anne, advanced, with her candle in her hand, and threw
+open Geoffrey's bedroom door; returned to the head of the stairs; and
+stood there, firm as a rock, waiting for him. He looked up, as he set
+his foot on the next stair, and met the view of Hester's face, brightly
+illuminated by the candle, looking down at him. On the instant he
+stopped, rooted to the place on which he stood. "Ghost! witch! devil!"
+he cried out, "take your eyes off me!" He shook his fist at her
+furiously, with an oath--sprang back into the hall--and shut himself
+into the dining-room from the sight of her. The panic which had seized
+him once already in the kitchen-garden at Windygates, under the eyes
+of the dumb cook, had fastened its hold on him once more.
+Frightened--absolutely frightened--of Hester Dethridge!
+
+The gate bell rang. Julius had returned with the doctor.
+
+Anne gave the key to the girl to let them in. Hester wrote on her
+slate, as composedly as if nothing had happened: "They'll find me in the
+kitchen, if they want me. I sha'n't go back to my bedroom. My bedroom's
+full of bad dreams." She descended the stairs. Anne waited in the upper
+passage, looking over into the hall below. "Your brother is in the
+drawing-room," she called down to Julius. "The landlady is in the
+kitchen, if you want her." She returned to her room, and waited for what
+might happen next.
+
+After a brief interval she heard the drawing-room door open, and the
+voices of the men out side. There seemed to be some difficulty in
+persuading Geoffrey to ascend the stairs; he persisted in declaring that
+Hester Dethridge was waiting for him at the top of them. After a little
+they persuaded him that the way was free. Anne heard them ascend the
+stairs and close his bedroom door.
+
+Another and a longer interval passed before the door opened again.
+The doctor was going away. He said his parting words to Julius in the
+passage. "Look in at him from time to time through the night, and give
+him another dose of the sedative mixture if he wakes. There is nothing
+to b e alarmed about in the restlessness and the fever. They are only
+the outward manifestations of some serious mischief hidden under them.
+Send for the medical man who has last attended him. Knowledge of the
+patient's constitution is very important knowledge in this case."
+
+As Julius returned from letting the doctor out, Anne met him in the
+hall. She was at once struck by the worn look in his face, and by the
+fatigue which expressed itself in all his movements.
+
+"You want rest," she said. "Pray go to your room. I have heard what the
+doctor said to you. Leave it to the landlady and to me to sit up."
+
+Julius owned that he had been traveling from Scotland during the
+previous night. But he was unwilling to abandon the responsibility of
+watching his brother. "You are not strong enough, I am sure, to take my
+place," he said, kindly. "And Geoffrey has some unreasoning horror of
+the landlady which makes it very undesirable that he should see her
+again, in his present state. I will go up to my room, and rest on the
+bed. If you hear any thing you have only to come and call me."
+
+An hour more passed.
+
+Anne went to Geoffrey's door and listened. He was stirring in his bed,
+and muttering to himself. She went on to the door of the next room,
+which Julius had left partly open. Fatigue had overpowered him; she
+heard, within, the quiet breathing of a man in a sound sleep. Anne
+turned back again resolved not to disturb him.
+
+At the head of the stairs she hesitated--not knowing what to do. Her
+horror of entering Geoffrey's room, by herself, was insurmountable.
+But who else was to do it? The girl had gone to bed. The reason which
+Julius had given for not employing the assistance of Hester Dethridge
+was unanswerable. She listened again at Geoffrey's door. No sound was
+now audible in the room to a person in the passage outside. Would it be
+well to look in, and make sure that he had only fallen asleep again?
+She hesitated once more--she was still hesitating, when Hester Dethridge
+appeared from the kitchen.
+
+She joined Anne at the top of the stairs--looked at her--and wrote a
+line on her slate: "Frightened to go in? Leave it to Me."
+
+The silence in the room justified the inference that he was asleep.
+If Hester looked in, Hester could do no harm now. Anne accepted the
+proposal.
+
+"If you find any thing wrong," she said, "don't disturb his brother.
+Come to me first."
+
+With that caution she withdrew. It was then nearly two in the morning.
+She, like Julius, was sinking from fatigue. After waiting a little, and
+hearing nothing, she threw herself on the sofa in her room. If any thing
+happened, a knock at the door would rouse her instantly.
+
+
+
+In the mean while Hester Dethridge opened Geoffrey's bedroom door and
+went in.
+
+The movements and the mutterings which Anne had heard, had been
+movements and mutterings in his sleep. The doctor's composing draught,
+partially disturbed in its operation for the moment only, had recovered
+its sedative influence on his brain. Geoffrey was in a deep and quiet
+sleep.
+
+Hester stood near the door, looking at him. She moved to go out
+again--stopped--and fixed her eyes suddenly on one of the inner corners
+of the room.
+
+The same sinister change which had passed over her once already in
+Geoffrey's presence, when they met in the kitchen-garden at Windygates,
+now passed over her again. Her closed lips dropped apart. Her eyes
+slowly dilated--moved, inch by inch from the corner, following something
+along the empty wall, in the direction of the bed--stopped at the head
+of the bed, exactly above Geoffrey's sleeping face--stared, rigid and
+glittering, as if they saw a sight of horror close over it. He sighed
+faintly in his sleep. The sound, slight as it was, broke the spell that
+held her. She slowly lifted her withered hands, and wrung them above her
+head; fled back across the passage; and, rushing into her room, sank on
+her knees at the bedside.
+
+Now, in the dead of night, a strange thing happened. Now, in the silence
+and the darkness, a hideous secret was revealed.
+
+In the sanctuary of her own room--with all the other inmates of the
+house sleeping round her--the dumb woman threw off the mysterious and
+terrible disguise under which she deliberately isolated herself among
+her fellow-creatures in the hours of the day. Hester Dethridge spoke. In
+low, thick, smothered accents--in a wild litany of her own--she prayed.
+She called upon the mercy of God for deliverance from herself; for
+deliverance from the possession of the Devil; for blindness to fall on
+her, for death to strike her, so that she might never see that unnamed
+Horror more! Sobs shook the whole frame of the stony woman whom nothing
+human moved at other times. Tears poured over those clay-cold cheeks.
+One by one, the frantic words of her prayer died away on her lips.
+Fierce shuddering fits shook her from head to foot. She started up from
+her knees in the darkness. Light! light! light! The unnamed Horror was
+behind her in his room. The unnamed Horror was looking at her through
+his open door. She found the match-box, and lit the candle on her
+table--lit the two other candles set for ornament only on the mantle
+piece--and looked all round the brightly lighted little room. "Aha!"
+she said to herself, wiping the cold sweat of her agony from her face.
+"Candles to other people. God's light to _me._ Nothing to be seen!
+nothing to be seen!" Taking one of the candles in her hand, she crossed
+the passage, with her head down, turned her back on Geoffrey's open
+door, closed it quickly and softly, stretching out her hand behind her,
+and retreated again to her own room. She fastened the door, and took
+an ink-bottle and a pen from the mantle-piece. After considering for a
+moment, she hung a handkerchief over the keyhole, and laid an old shawl
+longwise at the bottom of the door, so as to hide the light in her room
+from the observation of any one in the house who might wake and come
+that way. This done, she opened the upper part of her dress, and,
+slipping her fingers into a secret pocket hidden in the inner side of
+her stays, produced from it some neatly folded leaves of thin paper.
+Spread out on the table, the leaves revealed themselves--all but the
+last--as closely covered with writing, in her own hand.
+
+The first leaf was headed by this inscription: "My Confession. To be put
+into my coffin, and to be buried with me when I die."
+
+She turned the manuscript over, so as to get at the last page. The
+greater part of it was left blank. A few lines of writing, at the top,
+bore the date of the day of the week and month on which Lady Lundie had
+dismissed her from her situation at Windygates. The entry was expressed
+in these terms:
+
+"I have seen IT again to-day. The first time for two months past. In
+the kitchen-garden. Standing behind the young gentleman whose name is
+Delamayn. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. I have resisted.
+By prayer. By meditation in solitude. By reading good books. I have left
+my place. I have lost sight of the young gentleman for good. Who will
+IT stand behind? and point to next? Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have
+mercy upon me!"
+
+Under this she now added the following lines, first carefully prefixing
+the date:
+
+"I have seen IT again to-night. I notice one awful change. IT has
+appeared twice behind the same person. This has never happened before.
+This makes the temptation more terrible than ever. To-night, in his
+bedroom, between the bed-head and the wall, I have seen IT behind
+young Mr. Delamayn again. The head just above his face, and the finger
+pointing downward at his throat. Twice behind this one man. And never
+twice behind any other living creature till now. If I see IT a third
+time behind him--Lord deliver me! Christ deliver me! I daren't think of
+it. He shall leave my cottage to-morrow. I would fain have drawn back
+from the bargain, when the stranger took the lodgings for his friend,
+and the friend proved to be Mr. Delamayn. I didn't like it, even then.
+After the warning to-night, my mind is made up. He shall go. He may
+have his money back, if he likes. He shall go. (Memorandum: Felt the
+temptation whispering this time, and the terror tearing at me all the
+while, as I have never felt them yet. Resisted, as before, by prayer.
+Am now going down stairs to meditate against it in solitude--to fortify
+myself against it by good books. Lord be merciful to me a sinner!)"
+
+In those words she closed the entry, and put the manuscript back in the
+secret pocket in her stays.
+
+She went down to the little room looking on the garden, which had once
+been her brother's study. There she lit a lamp, and took some books from
+a shelf that hung against the wall. The books were the Bible, a volume
+of Methodist sermons, and a set of collected Memoirs of Methodist
+saints. Ranging these last carefully round her, in an order of her own,
+Hester Dethridge sat down with the Bible on her lap to watch out the
+night.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-THIRD.
+
+WHAT had happened in the hours of darkness?
+
+This was Anne's first thought, when the sunlight poured in at her
+window, and woke her the next morning.
+
+She made immediate inquiry of the servant. The girl could only speak for
+herself. Nothing had occurred to disturb her after she had gone to bed.
+Her master was still, she believed, in his room. Mrs. Dethridge was at
+her work in the kitchen.
+
+Anne went to the kitchen. Hester Dethridge was at her usual occupation
+at that time--preparing the breakfast. The slight signs of animation
+which Anne had noticed in her when they last met appeared no more.
+The dull look was back again in her stony eyes; the lifeless torpor
+possessed all her movements. Asked if any thing had happened in the
+night, she slowly shook her stolid head, slowly made the sign with her
+hand which signified, "Nothing."
+
+Leaving the kitchen, Anne saw Julius in the front garden. She went out
+and joined him.
+
+"I believe I have to thank your consideration for me for some hours of
+rest," he said. "It was five in the morning when I woke. I hope you
+had no reason to regret having left me to sleep? I went into Geoffrey's
+room, and found him stirring. A second dose of the mixture composed
+him again. The fever has gone. He looks weaker and paler, but in other
+respects like himself. We will return directly to the question of his
+health. I have something to say to you, first, about a change which may
+be coming in your life here."
+
+"Has he consented to the separation?"
+
+"No. He is as obstinate about it as ever. I have placed the matter
+before him in every possible light. He still refuses, positively
+refuses, a provision which would make him an independent man for life."
+
+"Is it the provision he might have had, Lord Holchester, if--?"
+
+"If he had married Mrs. Glenarm? No. It is impossible, consistently with
+my duty to my mother, and with what I owe to the position in which my
+father's death has placed me, that I can offer him such a fortune as
+Mrs. Glenarm's. Still, it is a handsome income which he is mad enough
+to refuse. I shall persist in pressing it on him. He must and shall take
+it."
+
+Anne felt no reviving hope roused in her by his last words. She turned
+to another subject.
+
+"You had something to tell me," she said. "You spoke of a change."
+
+"True. The landlady here is a very strange person; and she has done
+a very strange thing. She has given Geoffrey notice to quit these
+lodgings."
+
+"Notice to quit?" Anne repeated, in amazement.
+
+"Yes. In a formal letter. She handed it to me open, as soon as I was
+up this morning. It was impossible to get any explanation from her. The
+poor dumb creature simply wrote on her slate: 'He may have his money
+back, if he likes: he shall go!' Greatly to my surprise (for the woman
+inspires him with the strongest aversion) Geoffrey refuses to go until
+his term is up. I have made the peace between them for to-day. Mrs.
+Dethridge very reluctantly, consents to give him four-and-twenty hours.
+And there the matter rests at present."
+
+"What can her motive be?" said Anne.
+
+"It's useless to inquire. Her mind is evidently off its balance. One
+thing is clear, Geoffrey shall not keep you here much longer. The
+coming change will remove you from this dismal place--which is one thing
+gained. And it is quite possible that new scenes and new surroundings
+may have their influence on Geoffrey for good. His conduct--otherwise
+quite incomprehensible--may be the result of some latent nervous
+irritation which medical help might reach. I don't attempt to disguise
+from myself or from you, that your position here is a most deplorable
+one. But before we despair of the future, let us at least inquire
+whether there is any explanation of my brother's present behavior to
+be found in the present state of my brother's health. I have been
+considering what the doctor said to me last night. The first thing to do
+is to get the best medical advice on Geoffrey's case which is to be had.
+What do you think?"
+
+"I daren't tell you what I think, Lord Holchester. I will try--it is
+a very small return to make for your kindness--I will try to see my
+position with your eyes, not with mine. The best medical advice that you
+can obtain is the advice of Mr. Speedwell. It was he who first made the
+discovery that your brother was in broken health."
+
+"The very man for our purpose! I will send him here to-day or to-morrow.
+Is there any thing else I can do for you? I shall see Sir Patrick as
+soon as I get to town. Have you any message for him?"
+
+Anne hesitated. Looking attentively at her, Julius noticed that she
+changed color when he mentioned Sir Patrick's name.
+
+"Will you say that I gratefully thank him for the letter which Lady
+Holchester was so good us to give me last night," she replied. "And will
+you entreat him, from me, not to expose himself, on my account,
+to--" she hesitated, and finished the sentence with her eyes on the
+ground--"to what might happen, if he came here and insisted on seeing
+me."
+
+"Does he propose to do that?"
+
+She hesitated again. The little nervous contraction of her lips at one
+side of the mouth became more marked than usual. "He writes that his
+anxiety is unendurable, and that he is resolved to see me," she answered
+softly.
+
+"He is likely to hold to his resolution, I think," said Julius. "When I
+saw him yesterday, Sir Patrick spoke of you in terms of admiration--"
+
+He stopped. The bright tears were glittering on Anne's eyelashes; one
+of her hands was toying nervously with something hidden (possibly Sir
+Patrick's letter) in the bosom of her dress. "I thank him with my whole
+heart," she said, in low, faltering tones. "But it is best that he
+should not come here."
+
+"Would you like to write to him?"
+
+"I think I should prefer your giving him my message."
+
+Julius understood that the subject was to proceed no further. Sir
+Patrick's letter had produced some impression on her, which the
+sensitive nature of the woman seemed to shrink from acknowledging, even
+to herself. They turned back to enter the cottage. At the door they were
+met by a surprise. Hester Dethridge, with her bonnet on--dressed, at
+that hour of the morning, to go out!
+
+"Are you going to market already?" Anne asked.
+
+Hester shook her head.
+
+"When are you coming back?"
+
+Hester wrote on her slate: "Not till the night-time."
+
+Without another word of explanation she pulled her veil down over her
+face, and made for the gate. The key had been left in the dining-room by
+Julius, after he had let the doctor out. Hester had it in her hand. She
+opened he gate and closed the door after her, leaving the key in the
+lock. At the moment when the door banged to Geoffrey appeared in the
+passage.
+
+"Where's the key?" he asked. "Who's gone out?"
+
+His brother answered the question. He looked backward and forward
+suspiciously between Julius and Anne. "What does she go out for at his
+time?" he said. "Has she left the house to avoid Me?"
+
+Julius thought this the likely explanation. Geoffrey went down sulkily
+to the gate to lock it, and returned to them, with the key in his
+pocket.
+
+"I'm obliged to be careful of the gate," he said. "The neighborhood
+swarms with beggars and tramps. If you want to go out," he added,
+turning pointedly to Anne, "I'm at your service, as a good husband ought
+to be."
+
+After a hurried breakfast Julius took his departure. "I don't accept
+your refusal," he said to his brother, before Anne. "You will see me
+here again." Geoffrey obstinately repeated the refusal. "If you come
+here every day of your life," he said, "it will be just the same."
+
+The gate closed on Julius. Anne returned again to the solitude of her
+own chamber. Geoffrey entered the drawing-room, placed the volumes of
+the Newgate Calendar on the table before him, and resumed the reading
+which he had been unable to continue on the evening before.
+
+Hour after hour he doggedly plodded through one case of murder after
+another. He had read one good half of the horrid chronicle of crime
+before his power of fixing his attention began to fail him. Then he
+lit his pipe, and went out to think over it in the garden. However the
+atrocities of which he had been reading might differ in other
+respects, there was one terrible point of resemblance, which he had
+not anticipated, and in which every one of the cases agreed. Sooner
+or later, there was the dead body always certain to be found; always
+bearing its dumb witness, in the traces of poison or in the marks of
+violence, to the crime committed on it.
+
+He walked to and fro slowly, still pondering over the problem which
+had first found its way into his mind when he had stopped in the front
+garden and had looked up at Anne's window in the dark. "How?" That had
+been the one question before him, from the time when the lawyer had
+annihilated his hopes of a divorce. It remained the one question still.
+There was no answer to it in his own brain; there was no answer to it in
+the book which he had been consulting. Every thing was in his favor if
+he could only find out "how." He had got his hated wife up stairs at his
+mercy--thanks to his refusal of the money which Julius had offered
+to him. He was living in a place absolutely secluded from public
+observation on all sides of it--thanks to his resolution to remain at
+the cottage, even after his landlady had insulted him by sending him
+a notice to quit. Every thing had been prepared, every thing had been
+sacrificed, to the fulfillment of one purpose--and how to attain that
+purpose was still the same impenetrable mystery to him which it had been
+from the first!
+
+What was the other alternative? To accept the proposal which Julius had
+made. In other words, to give up his vengeance on Anne, and to turn his
+back on the splendid future which Mrs. Glenarm's devotion still offered
+to him.
+
+Never! He would go back to the books. He was not at the end of them. The
+slightest hint in the pages which were still to be read might set his
+sluggish brain working in the right direction. The way to be rid of her,
+without exciting the suspicion of any living creature, in the house or
+out of it, was a way that might be found yet.
+
+
+
+Could a man, in his position of life, reason in this brutal manner?
+could he act in this merciless way? Surely the thought of what he was
+about to do must have troubled him this time!
+
+Pause for a moment--and look back at him in the past.
+
+Did he feel any remorse when he was plotting the betrayal of Arnold in
+the garden at Windygates? The sense which feels remorse had not been put
+into him. What he is now is the legitimate consequence of what he was
+then. A far more serious temptation is now urging him to commit a far
+more serious crime. How is he to resist? Will his skill in rowing
+(as Sir Patrick once put it), his swiftness in running, his admirable
+capacity and endurance in other physical exercises, help him to win a
+purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his own cruelty? No!
+The moral and mental neglect of himself, which the material tone of
+public feeling about him has tacitly encouraged, has left him at the
+mercy of the worst instincts in his nature--of all that is most vile
+and of all that is most dangerous in the composition of the natural
+man. With the mass of his fellows, no harm out of the common has come of
+this, because no temptation out of the common has passed their way. But
+with _him,_ the case is reversed. A temptation out of the common has
+passed _his_ way. How does it find him prepared to meet it? It finds
+him, literally and exactly, what his training has left him, in the
+presence of any temptation small or great--a defenseless man.
+
+
+
+Geoffrey returned to the cottage. The servant stopped him in the
+passage, to ask at what time he wished to dine. Instead of answering, he
+inquired angrily for Mrs. Dethridge. Mrs. Dethridge not come back.
+
+It was now late in the afternoon, and she had been out since the early
+morning. This had never happened before. Vague suspicions of her, one
+more monstrous than another, began to rise in Geoffrey's mind. Between
+the drink and the fever, he had been (as Julius had told him) wandering
+in his mind during a part of the night. Had he let any thing out in that
+condition? Had Hester heard it? And was it, by any chance, at the bottom
+of her long absence and her notice to quit? He determined--without
+letting her see that he suspected her--to clear up that doubt as soon as
+his landlady returned to the house.
+
+The evening came. It was past nine o'clock before there was a ring at
+the bell. The servant came to ask for the key. Geoffrey rose to go to
+the gate himself--and changed his mind before he left the room. _Her_
+suspicions might be roused (supposing it to be Hester who was waiting
+for admission) if he opened the gate to her when the servant was there
+to do it. He gave the girl the key, and kept out of sight.
+
+* * * * *
+
+"Dead tired!"--the servant said to herself, seeing her mistress by the
+light of the lamp over the gate.
+
+"Dead tired!"--Geoffrey said to himself, observing Hester suspiciously
+as she passed him in the passage on her way up stairs to take off her
+bonnet in her own room.
+
+"Dead tired!"--Anne said to herself, meeting Hester on the upper floor,
+and receiving from her a letter in Blanche's handwriting, delivered to
+the mistress of the cottage by the postman, who had met her at her own
+gate.
+
+Having given the letter to Anne, Hester Dethridge withdrew to her
+bedroom.
+
+Geoffrey closed the door of the drawing-room, in which the candles were
+burning, and went into the dining-room, in which there was no light.
+Leaving the door ajar, he waited to intercept his landlady on her way
+back to her supper in the kitchen.
+
+Hester wearily secured her door, wearily lit the candles, wearily
+put the pen and ink on the table. For some minutes after this she was
+compelled to sit down, and rally her strength and fetch her breath.
+After a little she was able to remove her upper clothing. This done she
+took the manuscript inscribed, "My Confession," out of the secret pocket
+of her stays--turned to the last leaf as before--and wrote another
+entry, under the entry made on the previous night.
+
+"This morning I gave him notice to quit, and offered him his money back
+if he wanted it. He refuses to go. He shall go to-morrow, or I will
+burn the place over his head. All through to-day I have avoided him by
+keeping out of the house. No rest to ease my mind, and no sleep to close
+my eyes. I humbly bear my cross as long as my strength will let me."
+
+At those words the pen dropped from her fingers. Her head nodded on
+her breast. She roused herself with a start. Sleep was the enemy she
+dreaded: sleep brought dreams.
+
+She unfastened the window-shutters and looked out at the night. The
+peaceful moonlight was shining over the garden. The clear depths of the
+night sky were soothing and beautiful to look at. What! Fading already?
+clouds? darkness? No! Nearly asleep once more. She roused herself again,
+with a start. There was the moonlight, and there was the garden as
+bright under it as ever.
+
+Dreams or no dreams, it was useless to fight longer against the
+weariness that overpowered her. She closed the shutters, and went back
+to the bed; and put her Confession in its customary place at night,
+under her pillow.
+
+She looked round the room--and shuddered. Every corner of it was filled
+with the terrible memories of the past night. She might wake from the
+torture of the dreams to find the terror of the Apparition watching at
+her bedside. Was there no remedy? no blessed safeguard under which she
+might tranquilly resign herself to sleep? A thought crossed her mind.
+The good book--the Bible. If she slept with the Bible under her pillow,
+there was hope in the good book--the hope of sleeping in peace.
+
+It was not worth while to put on the gown and the stays which she had
+taken off. Her shawl would cover her. It was equally needless to take
+the candle. The lower shutters would not be closed at that hour; and
+if they were, she could lay her hand on the Bible, in its place on the
+parlor book-shelf, in the dark.
+
+She removed the Confession from under the pillow. Not even for a minute
+could she prevail on herself to leave it in one room while she was away
+from it in another. With the manuscript folded up, and hidden in her
+hand, she slowly descended the stairs again. Her knees trembled under
+her. She was obliged to hold by the banister, with the hand that was
+free.
+
+Geoffrey observed her from the dining-room, on her way down the stairs.
+He waited to see what she did, before he showed himself, and spoke
+to her. Instead of going on into the kitchen, she stopped short, and
+entered the parlor. Another suspicious circumstance! What did she want
+in the parlor, without a candle, at that time of night?
+
+She went to the book-case--her dark figure plainly visible in the
+moonlight that flooded the little room. She staggered and put her
+hand to her head; giddy, to all appearance, from extreme fatigue. She
+recovered herself, and took a book from the shelf. She leaned against
+the wall after she had possessed herself of the book. Too weary, as it
+seemed, to get up stairs again without a little rest. Her arm-chair was
+near her. Better rest, for a moment or two, to be had in that than could
+be got by leaning against the wall. She sat down heavily in the chair,
+with the book on her lap. One of her arms hung over the arm of the
+chair, with the hand closed, apparently holding something.
+
+Her head nodded on her breast--recovered itself--and sank gently on the
+cushion at the back of the chair. Asleep? Fast asleep.
+
+In less than a minute the muscles of the closed hand that hung over
+the arm of the chair slowly relaxed. Something white slipped out of her
+hand, and lay in the moonlight on the floor.
+
+Geoffrey took off his heavy shoes, and entered the room noiselessly in
+his stockings. He picked up the white thing on the floor. It proved to
+be a collection of several sheets of thin paper, neatly folded together,
+and closely covered with writing.
+
+Writing? As long as she was awake she had kept it hidden in her hand.
+Why hide it?
+
+Had he let out any thing to compromise himself when he was light-headed
+with the fever the night before? and had she taken it down in writing to
+produce against him? Possessed by guilty distrust, even that monstrous
+doubt assumed a look of probability to Geoffrey's mind. He left
+the parlor as noiselessly as he had entered it, and made for the
+candle-light in the drawing-room, determined to examine the manuscript
+in his hand.
+
+After carefully smoothing out the folded leaves on the table, he turned
+to the first page, and read these lines.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FOURTH.
+
+THE MANUSCRIPT.
+
+1.
+
+"MY Confession: To be put into my coffin; and to be buried with me when
+I die.
+
+"This is the history of what I did in the time of my married life.
+Here--known to no other mortal creature, confessed to my Creator
+alone--is the truth.
+
+"At the great day of the Resurrection, we shall all rise again in our
+bodies as we have lived. When I am called before the Judgment Seat I
+shall have this in my hand.
+
+"Oh, just and merciful Judge, Thou knowest what I have suffered. My
+trust is in Thee."
+
+2.
+
+"I am the eldest of a large family, born of pious parents. We belonged
+to the congregation of the Primitive Methodists.
+
+"My sisters were all married before me. I remained for some years the
+only one at home. At the latter part of the time my mother's health
+failed; and I managed the house in her place. Our spiritual pastor,
+good Mr. Bapchild, used often to dine with us, on Sundays, between the
+services. He approved of my management of the house, and, in particular,
+of my cooking. This was not pleasant to my mother, who felt a jealousy
+of my being, as it were, set over her in her place. My unhappiness at
+home began in this way. My mother's temper got worse as her health got
+worse. My father was much away from us, traveling for his business. I
+had to bear it all. About this time I began to think it would be well
+for me if I could marry as my sisters had done; and have good Mr.
+Bapchild to dinner, between the services, in a house of my own.
+
+"In this frame of mind I made acquaintance with a young man who attended
+service at our chapel.
+
+"His name was Joel Dethridge. He had a beautiful voice. When we
+sang hymns, he sang off the same book with me. By trade he was a
+paper-hanger. We had much serious talk together. I walked with him on
+Sundays. He was a good ten years younger than I was; and, being only a
+journeyman, his worldly station was below mine. My mother found out the
+liking that had grown up between us. She told my father the next time
+he was at home. Also my married sisters and my brothers. They all
+joined together to stop things from going further between me and Joel
+Dethridge. I had a hard time of it. Mr. Bapchild expressed himself as
+feeling much grieved at the turn things were taking. He introduced me
+into a sermon--not by name, but I knew who it was meant for. Perhaps I
+might have given way if they had not done one thing. They made inquiries
+of my young man's enemies, and brought wicked stories of him to me
+behind his back. This, after we had sung off the same hymn-book, and
+walked together, and agreed one with the other on religious subjects,
+was too much to bear. I was of age to judge for myself. And I married
+Joel Dethridge."
+
+3.
+
+"My relations all turned their backs on me. Not one of them was present
+at my marriage; my brother Reuben, in particular, who led the rest,
+saying that they had done with me from that time forth. Mr. Bapchild was
+much moved; shed tears, and said he would pray for me.
+
+"I was married in London by a pastor who was a stranger; and we settled
+in London with fair prospects. I had a little fortune of my own--my
+share of some money left to us girls by our aunt Hester, whom I was
+named after. It was three hundred pounds. Nearly one hundred of this I
+spent in buying furniture to fit up the little house we took to live in.
+The rest I gave to my husband to put into the bank against the time when
+he wanted it to set up in business for himself.
+
+"For three months, more or less, we got on nicely--except in one
+particular. My husband never stirred in the matter of starting in
+business for himself.
+
+"He was once or twice cross with me when I said it seemed a pity to be
+spending the money in the bank (which might be afterward wanted) instead
+of earning more in business. Good Mr. Bapchild, happening about this
+time to be in London, staid over Sunday, and came to dine with
+us between the services. He had tried to make my peace with my
+relations--but he had not succeeded. At my request he spoke to my
+husband about the necessity of exerting himself. My husband took it
+ill. I then saw him seriously out of temper for the first time. Good Mr.
+Bapchild said no more. He appeared to be alarmed at what had happened,
+and he took his leave early.
+
+"Shortly afterward my husband went out. I got tea ready for him--but he
+never came back. I got supper ready for him--but he never came back.
+It was past twelve at night before I saw him again. I was very much
+startled by the state he came home in. He didn't speak like himself, or
+look like himself: he didn't seem to know me--wandered in his mind, and
+fell all in a lump like on our bed. I ran out and fetched the doctor to
+him.
+
+"The doctor pulled him up to the light, and looked at him; smelled his
+breath, and dropped him down again on the bed; turned about, and stared
+at me. 'What's the matter, Sir?' I says. 'Do you mean to tell me you
+don't know?' says the doctor. 'No, Sir,' says I. 'Why what sort of a
+woman are you,' says he, 'not to know a drunken man when you see him!'
+With that he went away, and left me standing by the bedside, all in a
+tremble from head to foot.
+
+"This was how I first found out that I was the wife of a drunken man."
+
+4.
+
+"I have omitted to say any thing about my husband's family.
+
+"While we were keeping company together he told me he was an
+orphan--with an uncle and aunt in Canada, and an only brother settled in
+Scotland. Before we were married he gave me a letter from this brother.
+It was to say that he was sorry he was not able to come to England, and
+be present at my marriage, and to wish me joy and the rest of it. Good
+Mr. Bapchild (to whom, in my distress, I wrote word privately of what
+had happened) wrote back in return, telling me to wait a little, and see
+whether my husband did it again.
+
+"I had not long to wait. He was in liquor again the next day, and the
+next. Hearing this, Mr. Bapchild instructed me to send him the letter
+from my husband's brother. He reminded me of some of the stories about
+my husband which I had refused to believe in the time before I was
+married; and he said it might be well to make inquiries.
+
+"The end of the inquiries was this. The brother, at that very time,
+was placed privately (by his own request) under a doctor's care to get
+broken of habits of drinking. The craving for strong liquor (the doctor
+wrote) was in the family. They would be sober sometimes for months
+together, drinking nothing stronger than tea. Then the fit would seize
+them; and they would drink, drink, drink, for days together, like the
+mad and miserable wretches that they were.
+
+"This was the husband I was married to. And I had offended all my
+relations, and estranged them from me, for his sake. Here was surely a
+sad prospect for a woman after only a few months of wedded life!
+
+"In a year's time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out
+of employment. He always got work--being a first-rate hand when he was
+sober--and always lost it again when the drinking-fit seized him. I was
+loth to leave our nice little house, and part with my pretty furniture;
+and I proposed to him to let me try for employment, by the day, as cook,
+and so keep things going while he was looking out again for work. He was
+sober and penitent at the time; and he agreed to what I proposed. And,
+more than that, he took the Total Abstinence Pledge, and promised to
+turn over a new leaf. Matters, as I thought, began to look fairly again.
+We had nobody but our two selves to think of. I had borne no child,
+and had no prospect of bearing one. Unlike most women, I thought this a
+mercy instead of a misfortune. In my situation (as I soon grew to know)
+my becoming a mother would only have proved to be an aggravation of my
+hard lot.
+
+"The sort of employment I wanted was not to be got in a day. Good Mr.
+Bapchild gave me a character; and our landlord, a worthy man (belonging,
+I am sorry to say, to the Popish Church), spoke for me to the steward of
+a club. Still, it took time to persuade people that I was the thorough
+good cook I claimed to be. Nigh on a fortnight had passed before I got
+the chance I had been looking out for. I went home in good spirits (for
+me) to report what had happened, and found the brokers in the house
+carrying off the furniture which I had bought with my own money for sale
+by auction. I asked them how they dared touch it without my leave. They
+answered, civilly enough I must own, that they were acting under my
+husband's orders; and they went on removing it before my own eyes, to
+the cart outside. I ran up stairs, and found my husband on the landing.
+He was in liquor again. It is useless to say what passed between us. I
+shall only mention that this was the first occasion on which he lifted
+his fist, and struck me."
+
+5.
+
+"Having a spirit of my own, I was resolved not to endure it. I ran out
+to the Police Court, hard by.
+
+"My money had not only bought the furniture--it had kept the house going
+as well; paying the taxes which the Queen and the Parliament asked for
+among other things. I now went to the magistrate to see what the Queen
+and the Parliament, in return for the taxes, would do for _me._
+
+"'Is your furniture settled on yourself?' he says, when I told him what
+had happened.
+
+"I didn't understand what he meant. He turned to some person who was
+sitting on the bench with him. 'This is a hard case,' he says. 'Poor
+people in this condition of life don't even know what a marriage
+settlement means. And, if they did, how many of them could afford to
+pay the lawyer's charges?' Upon that he turned to me. 'Yours is a common
+case,' he said. 'In the present state of the law I can do nothing for
+you.'
+
+"It was impossible to believe that. Common or not, I put my case to him
+over again.
+
+"'I have bought the furniture with my own money, Sir,' I says. 'It's
+mine, honestly come by, with bill and receipt to prove it. They are
+taking it away from me by force, to sell it against my will. Don't tell
+me that's the law. This is a Christian country. It can't be.'
+
+"'My good creature,' says he, 'you are a married woman. The law
+doesn't allow a married woman to call any thing her own--unless she has
+previously (with a lawyer's help) made a bargain to that effect with her
+husband before marrying him. You have made no bargain. Your husband has
+a right to sell your furniture if he likes. I am sorry for you; I can't
+hinder him.'
+
+"I was obstinate about it. 'Please to answer me this, Sir,' I says.
+'I've been told by wiser heads than mine that we all pay our taxes to
+keep the Queen and the Parliament going; and that the Queen and the
+Parliament make laws to protect us in return. I have paid my taxes. Why,
+if you please, is there no law to protect me in return?'
+
+"'I can't enter into that,' says he. 'I must take the law as I find it;
+and so must you. I see a mark there on the side of your face. Has your
+husband been beating you? If he has, summon him here I can punish him
+for _that._'
+
+"'How can you punish him, Sir?' says I.
+
+"'I can fine him,' says he. 'Or I can send him to prison.'
+
+"'As to the fine,' says I, 'he can pay that out of the money he gets
+by selling my furniture. As to the prison, while he's in it, what's to
+become of me, with my money spent by him, and my possessions gone; and
+when he's _out_ of it, what's to become of me again, with a husband
+whom I have been the means of punishing, and who comes home to his wife
+knowing it? It's bad enough as it is, Sir,' says I. 'There's more that's
+bruised in me than what shows in my face. I wish you good-morning.'"
+
+6.
+
+"When I got back the furniture was gone, and my husband was gone. There
+was nobody but the landlord in the empty house. He said all that could
+be said--kindly enough toward me, so far as I was concerned. When he was
+gone I locked my trunk, and got away in a cab after dark, and found a
+lodging to lay my head in. If ever there was a lonely, broken-hearted
+creature in the world, I was that creature that night.
+
+"There was but one chance of earning my bread--to go to the employment
+offered me (under a man cook, at a club). And there was but one
+hope--the hope that I had lost sight of my husband forever.
+
+"I went to my work--and prospered in it--and earned my first quarter's
+wages. But it's not good for a woman to be situated as I was; friendless
+and alone, with her things that she took a pride in sold away from her,
+and with nothing to look forward to in her life to come. I was regular
+in my attendance at chapel; but I think my heart began to get hardened,
+and my mind to be overcast in secret with its own thoughts about this
+time. There was a change coming. Two or three days after I had earned
+the wages just mentioned my husband found me out. The furniture-money
+was all spent. He made a disturbance at the club, I was only able
+to quiet him by giving him all the money I could spare from my own
+necessities. The scandal was brought before the committee. They said, if
+the circumstance occurred again, they should be obliged to part with me.
+In a fortnight the circumstance occurred again. It's useless to dwell on
+it. They all said they were sorry for me. I lost the place. My husband
+went back with me to my lodgings. The next morning I caught him taking
+my purse, with the few shillings I had in it, out of my trunk, which
+he had broken open. We quarreled. And he struck me again--this time
+knocking me down.
+
+"I went once more to the police court, and told my story--to another
+magistrate this time. My only petition was to have my husband kept away
+from me. 'I don't want to be a burden on others' (I says) 'I don't want
+to do any thing but what's right. I don't even complain of having been
+very cruelly used. All I ask is to be let to earn an honest living. Will
+the law protect me in the effort to do that?'
+
+"The answer, in substance, was that the law might protect me, provided I
+had money to spend in asking some higher court to grant me a separation.
+After allowing my husband to rob me openly of the only property I
+possessed--namely, my furniture--the law turned round on me when I
+called upon it in my distress, and held out its hand to be paid. I had
+just three and sixpence left in the world--and the prospect, if I earned
+more, of my husband coming (with permission of the law) and taking it
+away from me. There was only one chance--namely, to get time to turn
+round in, and to escape him again. I got a month's freedom from him,
+by charging him with knocking me down. The magistrate (happening to be
+young, and new to his business) sent him to prison, instead of fining
+him. This gave me time to get a character from the club, as well as a
+special testimonial from good Mr. Bapchild. With the help of these, I
+obtained a place in a private family--a place in the country, this time.
+
+"I found myself now in a haven of peace. I was among worthy kind-hearted
+people, who felt for my distresses, and treated me most indulgently.
+Indeed, through all my troubles, I must say I have found one thing hold
+good. In my experience, I have observed that people are oftener quick
+than not to feel a human compassion for others in distress. Also, that
+they mostly see plain enough what's hard and cruel and unfair on them in
+the governing of the country which they help to keep going. But once ask
+them to get on from sitting down and grumbling about it, to rising up
+and setting it right, and what do you find them? As helpless as a flock
+of sheep--that's what you find them.
+
+"More than six months passed, and I saved a little money again.
+
+"One night, just as we were going to bed, there was a loud ring at the
+bell. The footman answered the door--and I heard my husband's voice
+in the hall. He had traced me, with the help of a man he knew in the
+police; and he had come to claim his rights. I offered him all the
+little money I had, to let me be. My good master spoke to him. It was
+all useless. He was obstinate and savage. If--instead of my running
+off from him--it had been all the other way and he had run off from me,
+something might have been done (as I understood) to protect me. But he
+stuck to his wife. As long as I could make a farthing, he stuck to his
+wife. Being married to him, I had no right to have left him; I was bound
+to go with my husband; there was no escape for me. I bade them good-by.
+And I have never forgotten their kindness to me from that day to this.
+
+"My husband took me back to London.
+
+"As long as the money lasted, the drinking went on. When it was gone, I
+was beaten again. Where was the remedy? There was no remedy, but to try
+and escape him once more. Why didn't I have him locked up? What was the
+good of having him locked up? In a few weeks he would be out of prison;
+sober and penitent, and promising amendment--and then when the fit took
+him, there he would be, the same furious savage that he had been often
+and often before. My heart got hard under the hopelessness of it; and
+dark thoughts beset me, mostly at night. About this time I began to say
+to myself, 'There's no deliverance from this, but in death--his death or
+mine.'
+
+"Once or twice I went down to the bridges after dark and looked over at
+the river. No. I wasn't the sort of woman who ends her own wretchedness
+in that way. Your blood must be in a fever, and your head in a flame--at
+least I fancy so--you must be hurried into it, like, to go and make away
+with yourself. My troubles never took that effect on me. I always turned
+cold under them instead of hot. Bad for me, I dare say; but what you
+are--you are. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
+spots?
+
+"I got away from him once more, and found good employment once more. It
+don't matter how, and it don't matter where. My story is always the same
+thing, over and over again. Best get to the end.
+
+"There was one change, however, this time. My employment was not in a
+private family. I was also allowed to teach cookery to young women, in
+my leisure hours. What with this, and what with a longer time passing
+on the present occasion before my husband found me out, I was as
+comfortably off as in my position I could hope to be. When my work was
+done, I went away at night to sleep in a lodging of my own. It was only
+a bedroom; and I furnished it myself--partly for the sake of economy
+(the rent being not half as much as for a furnished room); and partly
+for the sake of cleanliness. Through all my troubles I always liked
+things neat about me--neat and shapely and good.
+
+"Well, it's needless to say how it ended. He found me out again--this
+time by a chance meeting with me in the street.
+
+"He was in rags, and half starved. But that didn't matter now. All he
+had to do was to put his hand into my pocket and take what he wanted.
+There is no limit, in England, to what a bad husband may do--as long as
+he sticks to his wife. On the present occasion, he was cunning enough to
+see that he would be the loser if he disturbed me in my employment. For
+a while things went on as smoothly as they could. I made a pretense that
+the work was harder than usual; and I got leave (loathing the sight of
+him, I honestly own) to sleep at the place where I was employed. This
+was not for long. The fit took him again, in due course; and he came
+and made a disturbance. As before, this was not to be borne by decent
+people. As before, they were sorry to part with me. As before, I lost my
+place.
+
+"Another woman would have gone mad under it. I fancy it just missed, by
+a hair's breadth, maddening Me.
+
+"When I looked at him that night, deep in his drunken sleep, I thought
+of Jael and Sisera (see the book of Judges; chapter 4th; verses 17 to
+21). It says, she 'took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her
+hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples,
+and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he
+died.' She did this deed to deliver her nation from Sisera. If there had
+been a hammer and a nail in the room that night, I think I should have
+been Jael--with this difference, that I should have done it to deliver
+myself.
+
+"With the morning this passed off, for the time. I went and spoke to a
+lawyer.
+
+"Most people, in my place, would have had enough of the law already. But
+I was one of the sort who drain the cup to the dregs. What I said to him
+was, in substance, this. 'I come to ask your advice about a madman. Mad
+people, as I understand it, are people who have lost control over their
+own minds. Sometimes this leads them to entertaining delusions; and
+sometimes it leads them to committing actions hurtful to others or to
+themselves. My husband has lost all control over his own craving for
+strong drink. He requires to be kept from liquor, as other madmen
+require to be kept from attempting their own lives, or the lives of
+those about them. It's a frenzy beyond his own control, with _him_--just
+as it's a frenzy beyond their own control, with _them._ There are
+Asylums for mad people, all over the country, at the public disposal, on
+certain conditions. If I fulfill those conditions, will the law deliver
+me from the misery of being married to a madman, whose madness is
+drink?'--'No,' says the lawyer. 'The law of England declines to consider
+an incurable drunkard as a fit object for restraint, the law of England
+leaves the husbands and wives of such people in a perfectly helpless
+situation, to deal with their own misery as they best can.'
+
+"I made my acknowledgments to the gentleman and left him. The last
+chance was this chance--and this had failed me."
+
+7.
+
+"The thought that had once found its way into my mind already, now found
+its way back again, and never altogether left me from that time forth.
+No deliverance for me but in death--his death, or mine.
+
+"I had it before me night and day; in chapel and out of chapel just the
+same. I read the story of Jael and Sisera so often that the Bible got to
+open of itself at that place.
+
+"The laws of my country, which ought to have protected me as an honest
+woman, left me helpless. In place of the laws I had no friend near to
+open my heart to. I was shut up in myself. And I was married to that
+man. Consider me as a human creature, and say, Was this not trying my
+humanity very hardly?
+
+"I wrote to good Mr. Bapchild. Not going into particulars; only telling
+him I was beset by temptation, and begging him to come and help me. He
+was confined to his bed by illness; he could only write me a letter
+of good advice. To profit by good advice people must have a glimpse
+of happiness to look forward to as a reward for exerting themselves.
+Religion itself is obliged to hold out a reward, and to say to us
+poor mortals, Be good, and you shall go to Heaven. I had no glimpse
+of happiness. I was thankful (in a dull sort of way) to good Mr.
+Bapchild--and there it ended.
+
+"The time had been when a word from my old pastor would have put me in
+the right way again. I began to feel scared by myself. If the next ill
+usage I received from Joel Dethridge found me an unchanged woman, it was
+borne in strongly on my mind that I should be as likely as not to get my
+deliverance from him by my own hand.
+
+"Goaded to it, by the fear of this, I humbled myself before my relations
+for the first time. I wrote to beg their pardon; to own that they had
+proved to be right in their opinion of my husband; and to entreat them
+to be friends with me again, so far as to let me visit them from time
+to time. My notion was, that it might soften my heart if I could see the
+old place, and talk the old talk, and look again at the well-remembered
+faces. I am almost ashamed to own it--but, if I had had any thing to
+give, I would have parted with it all, to be allowed to go back into
+mother's kitchen and cook the Sunday dinner for them once more.
+
+"But this was not to be. Not long before my letter was received mother
+had died. They laid it all at my door. She had been ailing for years
+past, and the doctors had said it was hopeless from the first--but they
+laid it all at my door. One of my sisters wrote to say that much, in
+as few words as could possibly suffice for saying it. My father never
+answered my letter at all."
+
+8.
+
+"Magistrates and lawyers; relations and friends; endurance of injuries,
+patience, hope, and honest work--I had tried all these, and tried them
+vainly. Look round me where I might, the prospect was closed on all
+sides.
+
+"At this time my husband had got a little work to do. He came home out
+of temper one night, and I gave him a warning. 'Don't try me too far,
+Joel, for your own sake,' was all I said. It was one of his sober days;
+and, for the first time, a word from me seemed to have an effect on him.
+He looked hard at me for a minute or so. And then he went and sat down
+in a corner, and held his peace.
+
+"This was on a Tuesday in the week. On the Saturday he got paid, and the
+drinking fit took him again.
+
+"On Friday in the next week I happened to come back late--having had
+a good stroke of work to do that day, in the way of cooking a public
+dinner for a tavern-keeper who knew me. I found my husband gone, and
+the bedroom stripped of the furniture which I had put into it. For the
+second time he had robbed me of my own property, and had turned it into
+money to be spent in drink.
+
+"I didn't say a word. I stood and looked round the empty room. What was
+going on in me I hardly knew myself at the time, and can't describe now.
+All I remember is, that, after a little, I turned about to leave the
+house. I knew the places where thy husband was likely to be found; and
+the devil possessed me to go and find him. The landlady came out into
+the passage and tried to stop me. She was a bigger and a stronger woman
+than I was. But I shook her off like a child. Thinking over it now, I
+believe she was in no condition to put out her strength. The sight of me
+frightened her.
+
+"I found him. I said--well, I said what a woman beside herself with fury
+would be likely to say. It's needless to tell how it ended. He knocked
+me down.
+
+"After that, there is a spot of darkness like in my memory. The next
+thing I can call to mind, is coming back to my senses after some days.
+Three of my teeth were knocked out--but that was not the worst of it.
+My head had struck against something in falling, and some part of me
+(a nerve, I think they said) was injured in such a way as to affect my
+speech. I don't mean that I was downright dumb--I only mean that, all
+of a sudden, it had become a labor to me to speak. A long word was
+as serious an obstacle as if I was a child again. They took me to the
+hospital. When the medical gentlemen heard what it was, the medical
+gentlemen came crowding round me. I appeared to lay hold of their
+interest, just as a story-book lays hold of the interest of other
+people. The upshot of it was, that I might end in being dumb, or I might
+get my speech again--the chances were about equal. Only two things were
+needful. One of them was that I should live on good nourishing diet. The
+other was, that I should keep my mind easy.
+
+"About the diet it was not possible to decide. My getting good
+nourishing food and drink depended on my getting money to buy the same.
+As to my mind, there was no difficulty about _that._ If my husband came
+back to me, my mind was made up to kill him.
+
+"Horrid--I am well aware this is horrid. Nobody else, in my place, would
+have ended as wickedly as that. All the other women in the world, tried
+as I was, would have risen superior to the trial."
+
+9.
+
+"I have said that people (excepting my husband and my relations) were
+almost always good to me.
+
+"The landlord of the house which we had taken when we were married heard
+of my sad case. He gave me one of his empty houses to look after, and a
+little weekly allowance for doing it. Some of the furniture in the upper
+rooms, not being wanted by the last tenant, was left to be taken at a
+valuation if the next tenant needed it. Two of the servants' bedrooms
+(in the attics), one next to the other, had all that was wanted in them.
+So I had a roof to cover me, and a choice of beds to lie on, and money
+to get me food. All well again--but all too late. If that house could
+speak, what tales that house would have to tell of me!
+
+"I had been told by the doctors to exercise my speech. Being all alone,
+with nobody to speak to, except when the landlord dropped in, or when
+the servant next door said, 'Nice day, ain't it?' or, 'Don't you feel
+lonely?' or such like, I bought the newspaper, and read it out loud
+to myself to exercise my speech in that way. One day I came upon a bit
+about the wives of drunken husbands. It was a report of something said
+on that subject by a London coroner, who had held inquests on dead
+husbands (in the lower ranks of life), and who had his reasons for
+suspecting the wives. Examination of the body (he said) didn't prove it;
+and witnesses didn't prove it; but he thought it, nevertheless, quite
+possible, in some cases, that, when the woman could bear it no longer,
+she sometimes took a damp towel, and waited till the husband (drugged
+with his own liquor) was sunk in his sleep, and then put the towel over
+his nose and mouth, and ended it that way without any body being the
+wiser. I laid down the newspaper; and fell into thinking. My mind was,
+by this time, in a prophetic way. I said to myself 'I haven't happened
+on this for nothing: this means that I shall see my husband again.'
+
+"It was then just after my dinner-time--two o'clock. That same night,
+at the moment when I had put out my candle, and laid me down in bed, I
+heard a knock at the street door. Before I had lit my candle I says to
+myself, 'Here he is.'
+
+"I huddled on a few things, and struck a light, and went down stairs. I
+called out through the door, 'Who's there?' And his voice answered, 'Let
+me in.'
+
+"I sat down on a chair in the passage, and shook all over like a person
+struck with palsy. Not from the fear of him--but from my mind being in
+the prophetic way. I knew I was going to be driven to it at last. Try as
+I might to keep from doing it, my mind told me I was to do it now. I sat
+shaking on the chair in the passage; I on one side of the door, and he
+on the other.
+
+"He knocked again, and again, and again. I knew it was useless to
+try--and yet I resolved to try. I determined not to let him in till I
+was forced to it. I determined to let him alarm the neighborhood, and
+to see if the neighborhood would step between us. I went up stairs and
+waited at the open staircase window over the door.
+
+"The policeman came up, and the neighbors came out. They were all for
+giving him into custody. The policeman laid hands on him. He had but one
+word to say; he had only to point up to me at the window, and to tell
+them I was his wife. The neighbors went indoors again. The policeman
+dropped hold of his arm. It was I who was in the wrong, and not he. I
+was bound to let my husband in. I went down stairs again, and let him
+in.
+
+"Nothing passed between us that night. I threw open the door of the
+bedroom next to mine, and went and locked myself into my own room. He
+was dead beat with roaming the streets, without a penny in his pocket,
+all day long. The bed to lie on was all he wanted for that night.
+
+"The next morning I tried again--tried to turn back on the way that
+I was doomed to go; knowing beforehand that it would be of no use. I
+offered him three parts of my poor weekly earnings, to be paid to him
+regularly at the landlord's office, if he would only keep away from me,
+and from the house. He laughed in my face. As my husband, he could take
+all my earnings if he chose. And as for leaving the house, the house
+offered him free quarters to live in as long as I was employed to look
+after it. The landlord couldn't part man and wife.
+
+"I said no more. Later in the day the landlord came. He said if we could
+make it out to live together peaceably he had neither the right nor
+the wish to interfere. If we made any disturbances, then he should
+be obliged to provide himself with some other woman to look after the
+house. I had nowhere else to go, and no other employment to undertake.
+If, in spite of that, I had put on my bonnet and walked out, my husband
+would have walked out after me. And all decent people would have patted
+him on the back, and said, 'Quite right, good man--quite right.'
+
+"So there he was by his own act, and with the approval of others, in the
+same house with me.
+
+"I made no remark to him or to the landlord. Nothing roused me now.
+I knew what was coming; I waited for the end. There was some change
+visible in me to others, as I suppose, though not noticeable by myself,
+which first surprised my husband and then daunted him. When the next
+night came I heard him lock the door softly in his own room. It didn't
+matter to me. When the time was ripe ten thousand locks wouldn't lock
+out what was to come.
+
+"The next day, bringing my weekly payment, brought me a step nearer on
+the way to the end. Getting the money, he could get the drink. This
+time he began cunningly--in other words, he began his drinking by slow
+degrees. The landlord (bent, honest man, on trying to keep the peace
+between us) had given him some odd jobs to do, in the way of small
+repairs, here and there about the house. 'You owe this,' he says, 'to
+my desire to do a good turn to your poor wife. I am helping you for her
+sake. Show yourself worthy to be helped, if you can.'
+
+"He said, as usual, that he was going to turn over a new leaf. Too late!
+The time had gone by. He was doomed, and I was doomed. It didn't matter
+what he said now. It didn't matter when he locked his door again the
+last thing at night.
+
+"The next day was Sunday. Nothing happened. I went to chapel. Mere
+habit. It did me no good. He got on a little with the drinking--but
+still cunningly, by slow degrees. I knew by experience that this meant a
+long fit, and a bad one, to come.
+
+"Monday, there were the odd jobs about the house to be begun. He was
+by this time just sober enough to do his work, and just tipsy enough to
+take a spiteful pleasure in persecuting his wife. He went out and got
+the things he wanted, and came back and called for me. A skilled workman
+like he was (he said) wanted a journeyman under him. There were things
+which it was beneath a skilled workman to do for himself. He was not
+going to call in a man or a boy, and then have to pay them. He was going
+to get it done for nothing, and he meant to make a journeyman of _me._
+Half tipsy and half sober, he went on talking like that, and laying out
+his things, all quite right, as he wanted them. When they were ready he
+straightened himself up, and he gave me his orders what I was to do.
+
+"I obeyed him to the best of my ability. Whatever he said, and whatever
+he did, I knew he was going as straight as man could go to his own death
+by my hands.
+
+"The rats and mice were all over the house, and the place generally was
+out of repair. He ought to have begun on the kitchen-floor; but (having
+sentence pronounced against him) he began in the empty parlors on the
+ground-floor.
+
+"These parlors were separated by what is called a 'lath-and-plaster
+wall.' The rats had damaged it. At one part they had gnawed through
+and spoiled the paper, at another part they had not got so far. The
+landlord's orders were to spare the paper, because he had some by him to
+match it. My husband began at a place where the paper was whole. Under
+his directions I mixed up--I won't say what. With the help of it he got
+the paper loose from the wall, without injuring it in any way, in a long
+hanging strip. Under it was the plaster and the laths, gnawed away in
+places by the rats. Though strictly a paperhanger by trade, he could be
+plasterer too when he liked. I saw how he cut away the rotten laths and
+ripped off the plaster; and (under his directions again) I mixed up the
+new plaster he wanted, and handed him the new laths, and saw how he set
+them. I won't say a word about how this was done either.
+
+"I have a reason for keeping silence here, which is, to my mind, a very
+dreadful one. In every thing that my husband made me do that day he was
+showing me (blindfold) the way to kill him, so that no living soul, in
+the police or out of it, could suspect me of the deed.
+
+"We finished the job on the wall just before dark. I went to my cup of
+tea, and he went to his bottle of gin.
+
+"I left him, drinking hard, to put our two bedrooms tidy for the night.
+The place that his bed happened to be set in (which I had never remarked
+particularly before) seemed, in a manner of speaking, to force itself on
+my notice now.
+
+"The head of the bedstead was set against the wall which divided his
+room from mine. From looking at the bedstead I got to looking at the
+wall next. Then to wondering what it was made of. Then to rapping
+against it with my knuckles. The sound told me there was nothing but
+lath and plaster under the paper. It was the same as the wall we had
+been at work on down stairs. We had cleared our way so far through this
+last--in certain places where the repairs were most needed--that we had
+to be careful not to burst through the paper in the room on the other
+side. I found myself calling to mind the caution my husband had given me
+while we were at this part of the work, word for word as he had spoken
+it. _'Take care you don't find your hands in the next room.'_ That
+was what he had said down in the parlor. Up in his bedroom I kept on
+repeating it in my own mind--with my eyes all the while on the key,
+which he had moved to the inner side of the door to lock himself
+in--till the knowledge of what it meant burst on me like a flash of
+light. I looked at the wall, at the bedhead, at my own two hands--and I
+shivered as if it was winter time.
+
+"Hours must have passed like minutes while I was up stairs that night.
+I lost all count of time. When my husband came up from his drinking, he
+found me in his room."
+
+10.
+
+"I leave the rest untold, and pass on purposely to the next morning.
+
+"No mortal eyes but mine will ever see these lines. Still, there are
+things a woman can't write of even to herself. I shall only say this.
+I suffered the last and worst of many indignities at my husband's
+hands--at the very time when I first saw, set plainly before me, the
+way to take his life. He went out toward noon next day, to go his rounds
+among the public houses; my mind being then strung up to deliver myself
+from him, for good and all, when he came back at night.
+
+"The things we had used on the previous day were left in the parlor. I
+was all by myself in the house, free to put in practice the lesson he
+had taught me. I proved myself an apt scholar. Before the lamps were lit
+in the street I had my own way prepared (in my bedroom and in his)
+for laying my own hands on him--after he had locked himself up for the
+night.
+
+"I don't remember feeling either fear or doubt through all those hours.
+I sat down to my bit of supper with no better and no worse an appetite
+than usual. The only change in me that I can call to mind was that I
+felt a singular longing to have somebody with me to keep me company.
+Having no friend to ask in, I went to the street door and stood looking
+at the people passing this way and that.
+
+"A stray dog, sniffing about, came up to me. Generally I dislike dogs
+and beasts of all kinds. I called this one in and gave him his supper.
+He had been taught (I suppose) to sit up on his hind-legs and beg for
+food; at any rate, that was his way of asking me for more. I laughed--it
+seems impossible when I look back at it now, but for all that it's
+true--I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, at the little beast
+on his haunches, with his ears pricked up and his head on one side and
+his mouth watering for the victuals. I wonder whether I was in my right
+senses? I don't know.
+
+"When the dog had got all he could get he whined to be let out to roam
+the streets again.
+
+"As I opened the door to let the creature go his ways, I saw my husband
+crossing the road to come in. 'Keep out' (I says to him); 'to-night, of
+all nights, keep out.' He was too drunk to heed me; he passed by, and
+blundered his way up stairs. I followed and listened. I heard him open
+his door, and bang it to, and lock it. I waited a bit, and went up
+another stair or two. I heard him drop down on to his bed. In a minute
+more he was fast asleep and snoring.
+
+"It had all happened as it was wanted to happen. In two minutes--without
+doing one single thing to bring suspicion on myself--I could have
+smothered him. I went into my own room. I took up the towel that I
+had laid ready. I was within an inch of it--when there came a rush of
+something up into my head. I can't say what it was. I can only say the
+horrors laid hold of me and hunted me then and there out of the house.
+
+"I put on my bonnet, and slipped the key of the street door into my
+pocket. It was only half past nine--or maybe a quarter to ten. If I had
+any one clear notion in my head, it was the notion of running away, and
+never allowing myself to set eyes on the house or the husband more.
+
+"I went up the street--and came back. I went down the street--and came
+back. I tried it a third time, and went round and round and round--and
+came back. It was not to be done The house held me chained to it like a
+dog to his kennel. I couldn't keep away from it. For the life of me, I
+couldn't keep away from it.
+
+"A company of gay young men and women passed me, just as I was going to
+let myself in again. They were in a great hurry. 'Step out,' says one of
+the men; 'the theatre's close by, and we shall be just in time for the
+farce.' I turned about and followed them. Having been piously brought
+up, I had never been inside a theatre in my life. It struck me that I
+might get taken, as it were, out of myself, if I saw something that was
+quite strange to me, and heard something which would put new thoughts
+into my mind.
+
+"They went in to the pit; and I went in after them.
+
+"The thing they called the farce had begun. Men and women came on to the
+stage, turn and turn about, and talked, and went off again. Before long
+all the people about me in the pit were laughing and clapping their
+hands. The noise they made angered me. I don't know how to describe the
+state I was in. My eyes wouldn't serve me, and my ears wouldn't serve
+me, to see and to hear what the rest of them were seeing and hearing.
+There must have been something, I fancy, in my mind that got itself
+between me and what was going on upon the stage. The play looked fair
+enough on the surface; but there was danger and death at the bottom of
+it. The players were talking and laughing to deceive the people--with
+murder in their minds all the time. And nobody knew it but me--and my
+tongue was tied when I tried to tell the others. I got up, and ran out.
+The moment I was in the street my steps turned back of themselves on the
+way to the house. I called a cab, and told the man to drive (as far as
+a shilling would take me) the opposite way. He put me down--I don't know
+where. Across the street I saw an inscription in letters of flame over
+an open door. The man said it was a dancing-place. Dancing was as new to
+me as play-going. I had one more shilling left; and I paid to go in,
+and see what a sight of the dancing would do for me. The light from the
+ceiling poured down in this place as if it was all on fire. The crashing
+of the music was dreadful. The whirling round and round of men and
+women in each other's arms was quite maddening to see. I don't know what
+happened to me here. The great blaze of light from the ceiling turned
+blood-red on a sudden. The man standing in front of the musicians waving
+a stick took the likeness of Satan, as seen in the picture in our family
+Bible at home. The whirling men and women went round and round,
+with white faces like the faces of the dead, and bodies robed in
+winding-sheets. I screamed out with the terror of it; and some person
+took me by the arm and put me outside the door. The darkness did me
+good: it was comforting and delicious--like a cool hand laid on a hot
+head. I went walking on through it, without knowing where; composing
+my mind with the belief that I had lost my way, and that I should find
+myself miles distant from home when morning dawned. After some time
+I got too weary to go on; and I sat me down to rest on a door-step.
+I dozed a bit, and woke up. When I got on my feet to go on again, I
+happened to turn my head toward the door of the house. The number on it
+was the same number an as ours. I looked again. And behold, it was our
+steps I had been resting on. The door was our door.
+
+"All my doubts and all my struggles dropped out of my mind when I made
+that discovery. There was no mistaking what this perpetual coming back
+to the house meant. Resist it as I might, it was to be.
+
+"I opened the street door and went up stairs, and heard him sleeping his
+heavy sleep, exactly as I had heard him when I went out. I sat down on
+my bed and took off my bonnet, quite quiet in myself, because I knew it
+was to be. I damped the towel, and put it ready, and took a turn in the
+room.
+
+"It was just the dawn of day. The sparrows were chirping among the trees
+in the square hard by.
+
+"I drew up my blind; the faint light spoke to me as if in words, 'Do it
+now, before I get brighter, and show too much.'
+
+"I listened. The friendly silence had a word for me too: 'Do it now, and
+trust the secret to Me.'
+
+"I waited till the church clock chimed before striking the hour. At the
+first stroke--without touching the lock of his door, without setting
+foot in his room--I had the towel over his face. Before the last stroke
+he had ceased struggling. When the hum of the bell through the morning
+silence was still and dead, _he_ was still and dead with it."
+
+11.
+
+"The rest of this history is counted in my mind by four days--Wednesday,
+Thursday, Friday, Saturday. After that it all fades off like, and the
+new years come with a strange look, being the years of a new life.
+
+"What about the old life first? What did I feel, in the horrid quiet of
+the morning, when I had done it?
+
+"I don't know what I felt. I can't remember it, or I can't tell it, I
+don't know which. I can write the history of the four days, and that's
+all.
+
+"Wednesday.--I gave the alarm toward noon. Hours before, I had put
+things straight and fit to be seen. I had only to call for help, and to
+leave the people to do as they pleased. The neighbors came in, and then
+the police. They knocked, uselessly, at his door. Then they broke it
+open, and found him dead in his bed.
+
+"Not the ghost of a suspicion of me entered the mind of any one. There
+was no fear of human justice finding me out: my one unutterable dread
+was dread of an Avenging Providence.
+
+"I had a short sleep that night, and a dream, in which I did the deed
+over again. For a time my mind was busy with thoughts of confessing
+to the police, and of giving myself up. If I had not belonged to a
+respectable family, I should have done it. From generation to generation
+there had been no stain on our good name. It would be death to my
+father, and disgrace to all my family, if I owned what I had done, and
+suffered for it on the public scaffold. I prayed to be guided; and I had
+a revelation, toward morning, of what to do.
+
+"I was commanded, in a vision, to open the Bible, and vow on it to set
+my guilty self apart among my innocent fellow-creatures from that day
+forth; to live among them a separate and silent life, to dedicate the
+use of my speech to the language of prayer only, offered up in the
+solitude of my own chamber when no human ear could hear me. Alone, in
+the morning, I saw the vision, and vowed the vow. No human ear _has_
+heard me from that time. No human ear _will_ hear me, to the day of my
+death.
+
+"Thursday.--The people came to speak to me, as usual. They found me
+dumb.
+
+"What had happened to me in the past, when my head had been hurt, and my
+speech affected by it, gave a likelier look to my dumbness than it might
+have borne in the case of another person. They took me back again to the
+hospital. The doctors were divided in opinion. Some said the shock
+of what had taken place in the house, coming on the back of the other
+shock, might, for all they knew, have done the mischief. And others
+said, 'She got her speech again after the accident; there has been no
+new injury since that time; the woman is shamming dumb, for some purpose
+of her own.' I let them dispute it as they liked. All human talk was
+nothing now to me. I had set myself apart among my fellow-creatures; I
+had begun my separate and silent life.
+
+"Through all this time the sense of a coming punishment hanging over
+me never left my mind. I had nothing to dread from human justice. The
+judgment of an Avenging Providence--there was what I was waiting for.
+
+"Friday--They held the inquest. He had been known for years past as an
+inveterate drunkard, he had been seen overnight going home in liquor; he
+had been found locked up in his room, with the key inside the door, and
+the latch of the window bolted also. No fire-place was in this garret;
+nothing was disturbed or altered: nobody by human possibility could have
+got in. The doctor reported that he had died of congestion of the lungs;
+and the jury gave their verdict accordingly."
+
+12.
+
+"Saturday.--Marked forever in my calendar as the memorable day on which
+the judgment descended on me. Toward three o'clock in the afternoon--in
+the broad sunlight, under the cloudless sky, with hundreds of innocent
+human creatures all around me--I, Hester Dethridge, saw, for the first
+time, the Appearance which is appointed to haunt me for the rest of my
+life.
+
+"I had had a terrible night. My mind felt much as it had felt on the
+evening when I had gone to the play. I went out to see what the air and
+the sunshine and the cool green of trees and grass would do for me. The
+nearest place in which I could find what I wanted was the Regent's Park.
+I went into one of the quiet walks in the middle of the park, where the
+horses and carriages are not allowed to go, and where old people can sun
+themselves, and children play, without danger.
+
+"I sat me down to rest on a bench. Among the children near me was a
+beautiful little boy, playing with a brand-new toy--a horse and wagon.
+While I was watching him busily plucking up the blades of grass and
+loading his wagon with them, I felt for the first time--what I have
+often and often felt since--a creeping chill come slowly over my flesh,
+and then a suspicion of something hidden near me, which would steal out
+and show itself if I looked that way.
+
+"There was a big tree hard by. I looked toward the tree, and waited to
+see the something hidden appear from behind it.
+
+"The Thing stole out, dark and shadowy in the pleasant sunlight. At
+first I saw only the dim figure of a woman. After a little it began to
+get plainer, brightening from within outward--brightening, brightening,
+brightening, till it set before me the vision of MY OWN SELF, repeated
+as if I was standing before a glass--the double of myself, looking at me
+with my own eyes. I saw it move over the grass. I saw it stop behind
+the beautiful little boy. I saw it stand and listen, as I had stood and
+listened at the dawn of morning, for the chiming of the bell before the
+clock struck the hour. When it heard the stroke it pointed down to the
+boy with my own hand; and it said to me, with my own voice, 'Kill him.'
+
+"A time passed. I don't know whether it was a minute or an hour. The
+heavens and the earth disappeared from before me. I saw nothing but the
+double of myself, with the pointing hand. I felt nothing but the longing
+to kill the boy.
+
+"Then, as it seemed, the heavens and the earth rushed back upon me. I
+saw the people near staring in surprise at me, and wondering if I was in
+my right mind.
+
+"I got, by main force, to my feet; I looked, by main force, away from
+the beautiful boy; I escaped, by main force, from the sight of the
+Thing, back into the streets. I can only describe the overpowering
+strength of the temptation that tried me in one way. It was like tearing
+the life out of me to tear myself from killing the boy. And what it was
+on this occasion it has been ever since. No remedy against it but in
+that torturing effort, and no quenching the after-agony but by solitude
+and prayer.
+
+"The sense of a coming punishment had hung over me. And the punishment
+had come. I had waited for the judgment of an Avenging Providence.
+And the judgment was pronounced. With pious David I could now say, Thy
+fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off."
+
+                          *****
+
+Arrived at that point in the narrative, Geoffrey looked up from the
+manuscript for the first time. Some sound outside the room had disturbed
+him. Was it a sound in the passage?
+
+He listened. There was an interval of silence. He looked back again at
+the Confession, turning over the last leaves to count how much was left
+of it before it came to an end.
+
+After relating the circumstances under which the writer had returned to
+domestic service, the narrative was resumed no more. Its few remaining
+pages were occupied by a fragmentary journal. The brief entries referred
+to the various occasions on which Hester Dethridge had again and
+again seen the terrible apparition of herself, and had again and again
+resisted the homicidal frenzy roused in her by the hideous creation of
+her own distempered brain. In the effort which that resistance cost her
+lay the secret of her obstinate determination to insist on being freed
+from her work at certain times, and to make it a condition with any
+mistress who employed her that she should be privileged to sleep in a
+room of her own at night. Having counted the pages thus filled,
+Geoffrey turned back to the place at which he had left off, to read the
+manuscript through to the end.
+
+As his eyes rested on the first line the noise in the
+passage--intermitted for a moment only--disturbed him again.
+
+This time there was no doubt of what the sound implied. He heard her
+hurried footsteps; he heard her dreadful cry. Hester Dethridge had woke
+in her chair in the pallor, and had discovered that the Confession was
+no longer in her own hands.
+
+He put the manuscript into the breast-pocket of his coat. On _this_
+occasion his reading had been of some use to him. Needless to go on
+further with it. Needless to return to the Newgate Calendar. The problem
+was solved.
+
+As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a terrible
+smile. While the woman's Confession was in his pocket the woman herself
+was in his power. "If she wants it back," he said, "she must get it
+on my terms." With that resolution, he opened the door, and met Hester
+Dethridge, face to face, in the passage.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIFTH.
+
+THE SIGNS OF THE END.
+
+THE servant, appearing the next morning in Anne's room with the
+breakfast tray, closed the door with an air of mystery, and announced
+that strange things were going on in the house.
+
+"Did you hear nothing last night, ma'am," she asked, "down stairs in the
+passage?"
+
+"I thought I heard some voices whispering outside my room," Anne
+replied. "Has any thing happened?"
+
+Extricated from the confusion in which she involved it, the girl's
+narrative amounted in substance to this. She had been startled by the
+sudden appearance of her mistress in the passage, staring about her
+wildly, like a woman who had gone out of her senses. Almost at the same
+moment "the master" had flung open the drawing-room door. He had caught
+Mrs. Dethridge by the arm, had dragged her into the room, and had closed
+the door again. After the two had remained shut up together for more
+than half an hour, Mrs. Dethridge had come out, as pale as ashes, and
+had gone up stairs trembling like a person in great terror. Some time
+later, when the servant was in bed, but not asleep, she had seen a light
+under her door, in the narrow wooden passage which separated Anne's
+bedroom from Hester's bedroom, and by which she obtained access to her
+own little sleeping-chamber beyond. She had got out of bed; had looked
+through the keyhole; and had seen "the master" and Mrs. Dethridge
+standing together examining the walls of the passage. "The master" had
+laid his hand upon the wall, on the side of his wife's room, and had
+looked at Mrs. Dethridge. And Mrs. Dethridge had looked back at him, and
+had shaken her head. Upon that he had said in a whisper (still with his
+hand on the wooden wall), "Not to be done here?" And Mrs. Dethridge had
+shaken her head. He had considered a moment, and had whispered again,
+"The other room will do! won't it?" And Mrs. Dethridge had nodded her
+head--and so they had parted. That was the story of the night. Early in
+the morning, more strange things had happened. The master had gone out,
+with a large sealed packet in his hand, covered with many stamps; taking
+his own letter to the post, instead of sending the servant with it as
+usual. On his return, Mrs. Dethridge had gone out next, and had
+come back with something in a jar which she had locked up in her own
+sitting-room. Shortly afterward, a working-man had brought a bundle of
+laths, and some mortar and plaster of Paris, which had been carefully
+placed together in a corner of the scullery. Last, and most remarkable
+in the series of domestic events, the girl had received permission to go
+home and see her friends in the country, on that very day; having been
+previously informed, when she entered Mrs. Dethridge's service, that
+she was not to expect to have a holiday granted to her until after
+Christmas. Such were the strange things which had happened in the house
+since the previous night. What was the interpretation to be placed on
+them?
+
+The right interpretation was not easy to discover.
+
+Some of the events pointed apparently toward coming repairs or
+alterations in the cottage. But what Geoffrey could have to do with
+them (being at the time served with a notice to quit), and why Hester
+Dethridge should have shown the violent agitation which had been
+described, were mysteries which it was impossible to penetrate.
+
+Anne dismissed the girl with a little present and a few kind words.
+Under other circumstances, the incomprehensible proceedings in the house
+might have made her seriously uneasy. But her mind was now occupied by
+more pressing anxieties. Blanche's second letter (received from Hester
+Dethridge on the previous evening) informed her that Sir Patrick
+persisted in his resolution, and that he and his niece might be
+expected, come what might of it, to present themselves at the cottage on
+that day.
+
+Anne opened the letter, and looked at it for the second time. The
+passages relating to Sir Patrick were expressed in these terms:
+
+"I don't think, darling, you have any idea of the interest that you have
+roused in my uncle. Although he has not to reproach himself, as I have,
+with being the miserable cause of the sacrifice that you have made, he
+is quite as wretched and quite as anxious about you as I am. We talk of
+nobody else. He said last night that he did not believe there was your
+equal in the world. Think of that from a man who has such terribly
+sharp eyes for the faults of women in general, and such a terribly sharp
+tongue in talking of them! I am pledged to secrecy; but I must tell you
+one other thing, between ourselves. Lord Holchester's announcement
+that his brother refuses to consent to a separation put my uncle almost
+beside himself. If there is not some change for the better in your life
+in a few days' time, Sir Patrick will find out a way of his own--lawful
+or not, he doesn't care--for rescuing you from the dreadful position in
+which you are placed, and Arnold (with my full approval) will help him.
+As we understand it, you are, under one pretense or another, kept a
+close prisoner. Sir Patrick has already secured a post of observation
+near you. He and Arnold went all round the cottage last night, and
+examined a door in your back garden wall, with a locksmith to help them.
+You will no doubt hear further about this from Sir Patrick himself. Pray
+don't appear to know any thing of it when you see him! I am not in his
+confidence--but Arnold is, which comes to the same thing exactly. You
+will see us (I mean you will see my uncle and me) to-morrow, in spite
+of the brute who keeps you under lock and key. Arnold will not accompany
+us; he is not to be trusted (he owns it himself) to control his
+indignation. Courage, dearest! There are two people in the world to whom
+you are inestimably precious, and who are determined not to let your
+happiness be sacrificed. I am one of them, and (for Heaven's sake keep
+this a secret also!) Sir Patrick is the other."
+
+Absorbed in the letter, and in the conflict of opposite feelings which
+it roused--her color rising when it turned her thoughts inward on
+herself, and fading again when she was reminded by it of the coming
+visit--Anne was called back to a sense of present events by the
+reappearance of the servant, charged with a message. Mr. Speedwell had
+been for some time in the cottage, and he was now waiting to see her
+down stairs.
+
+Anne found the surgeon alone in the drawing-room. He apologized for
+disturbing her at that early hour.
+
+"It was impossible for me to get to Fulham yesterday," he said, "and
+I could only make sure of complying with Lord Holchester's request by
+coming here before the time at which I receive patients at home. I have
+seen Mr. Delamayn, and I have requested permission to say a word to you
+on the subject of his health."
+
+Anne looked through the window, and saw Geoffrey smoking his pipe--not
+in the back garden, as usual, but in front of the cottage, where he
+could keep his eye on the gate.
+
+"Is he ill?" she asked.
+
+"He is seriously ill," answered Mr. Speedwell. "I should not otherwise
+have troubled you with this interview. It is a matter of professional
+duty to warn you, as his wife, that he is in danger. He may be seized at
+any moment by a paralytic stroke. The only chance for him--a very poor
+one, I am bound to say--is to make him alter his present mode of life
+without loss of time."
+
+"In one way he will be obliged to alter it," said Anne. "He has received
+notice from the landlady to quit this cottage."
+
+Mr. Speedwell looked surprised.
+
+"I think you will find that the notice has been withdrawn," he said.
+"I can only assure you that Mr. Delamayn distinctly informed me, when I
+advised change of air, that he had decided, for reasons of his own, on
+remaining here."
+
+(Another in the series of incomprehensible domestic events! Hester
+Dethridge--on all other occasions the most immovable of women--had
+changed her mind!)
+
+"Setting that aside," proceeded the surgeon, "there are two preventive
+measures which I feel bound to suggest. Mr. Delamayn is evidently
+suffering (though he declines to admit it himself) from mental anxiety.
+If he is to have a chance for his life, that anxiety must be set at
+rest. Is it in your power to relieve it?"
+
+"It is not even in my power, Mr. Speedwell, to tell you what it is."
+
+The surgeon bowed, and went on:
+
+"The second caution that I have to give you," he said, "is to keep him
+from drinking spirits. He admits having committed an excess in that way
+the night before last. In his state of health, drinking means literally
+death. If he goes back to the brandy-bottle--forgive me for saying it
+plainly; the matter is too serious to be trifled with--if he goes
+back to the brandy-bottle, his life, in my opinion, is not worth five
+minutes' purchase. Can you keep him from drinking?"
+
+Anne answered sadly and plainly:
+
+"I have no influence over him. The terms we are living on here--"
+
+Mr. Speedwell considerately stopped her.
+
+"I understand," he said. "I will see his brother on my way home."
+He looked for a moment at Anne. "You are far from well yourself," he
+resumed. "Can I do any thing for you?"
+
+"While I am living my present life, Mr. Speedwell, not even your skill
+can help me."
+
+The surgeon took his leave. Anne hurried back up stairs, before Geoffrey
+could re-enter the cottage. To see the man who had laid her life
+waste--to meet the vindictive hatred that looked furtively at her out
+of his eyes--at the moment when sentence of death had been pronounced on
+him, was an ordeal from which every finer instinct in her nature shrank
+in horror.
+
+Hour by hour, the morning wore on, and he made no attempt to communicate
+with her, Stranger still, Hester Dethridge never appeared. The servant
+came up stairs to say goodby; and went away for her holiday. Shortly
+afterward, certain sounds reached Anne's ears from the opposite side of
+the passage. She heard the strokes of a hammer, and then a noise as of
+some heavy piece of furniture being moved. The mysterious repairs were
+apparently being begun in the spare room.
+
+She went to the window. The hour was approaching at which Sir Patrick
+and Blanche might be expected to make the attempt to see her.
+
+For the third time, she looked at the letter.
+
+It suggested, on this occasion, a new consideration to her. Did the
+strong measures which Sir Patrick had taken in secret indicate alarm
+as well as sympathy? Did he believe she was in a position in which
+the protection of the law was powerless to reach her? It seemed just
+possible. Suppose she were free to consult a magistrate, and to own to
+him (if words could express it) the vague presentiment of danger which
+was then present in her mind--what proof could she produce to satisfy
+the mind of a stranger? The proofs were all in her husband's favor.
+Witnesses could testify to the conciliatory words which he had spoken to
+her in their presence. The evidence of his mother and brother would show
+that he had preferred to sacrifice his own pecuniary interests rather
+than consent to part with her. She could furnish nobody with the
+smallest excuse, in her case, for interfering between man and wife.
+Did Sir Patrick see this? And did Blanche's description of what he and
+Arnold Brinkworth were doing point to the conclusion that they were
+taking the law into their own hands in despair? The more she thought of
+it, the more likely it seemed.
+
+She was still pursuing the train of thought thus suggested, when the
+gate-bell rang.
+
+The noises in the spare room suddenly stopped.
+
+Anne looked out. The roof of a carriage was visible on the other side of
+the wall. Sir Patrick and Blanche had arrived. After an interval Hester
+Dethridge appeared in the garden, and went to the grating in the gate.
+Anne heard Sir Patrick's voice, clear and resolute. Every word he said
+reached her ears through the open window.
+
+"Be so good as to give my card to Mr. Delamayn. Say that I bring him
+a message from Holchester House, and that I can only deliver it at a
+personal interview."
+
+Hester Dethridge returned to the cottage. Another, and a longer interval
+elapsed. At the end of the time, Geoffrey himself appeared in the front
+garden, with the key in his hand. Anne's heart throbbed fast as she saw
+him unlock the gate, and asked herself what was to follow.
+
+To her unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey admitted Sir Patrick without
+the slightest hesitation--and, more still, he invited Blanche to leave
+the carriage and come in!
+
+"Let by-gones be by-gones," Anne heard him say to Sir Patrick. "I only
+want to do the right thing. If it's the right thing for visitors to come
+here, so soon after my father's death, come, and welcome. My own notion
+was, when you proposed it before, that it was wrong. I am not much
+versed in these things. I leave it to you."
+
+"A visitor who brings you messages from your mother and your brother,"
+Sir Patrick answered gravely, "is a person whom it is your duty to
+admit, Mr. Delamayn, under any circumstances."
+
+"And he ought to be none the less welcome," added Blanche, "when he is
+accompanied by your wife's oldest and dearest friend."
+
+Geoffrey looked, in stolid submission, from one to the other.
+
+"I am not much versed in these things," he repeated. "I have said
+already, I leave it to you."
+
+They were by this time close under Anne's window. She showed herself.
+Sir Patrick took off his hat. Blanche kissed her hand with a cry of joy,
+and attempted to enter the cottage. Geoffrey stopped her--and called to
+his wife to come down.
+
+"No! no!" said Blanche. "Let me go up to her in her room."
+
+She attempted for the second time to gain the stairs. For the second
+time Geoffrey stopped her. "Don't trouble yourself," he said; "she is
+coming down."
+
+Anne joined them in the front garden. Blanche flew into her arms and
+devoured her with kisses. Sir Patrick took her hand in silence. For
+the first time in Anne's experience of him, the bright, resolute,
+self-reliant old man was, for the moment, at a loss what to say, at a
+loss what to do. His eyes, resting on her in mute sympathy and interest,
+said plainly, "In your husband's presence I must not trust myself to
+speak."
+
+Geoffrey broke the silence.
+
+"Will you go into the drawing-room?" he asked, looking with steady
+attention at his wife and Blanche.
+
+Geoffrey's voice appeared to rouse Sir Patrick. He raised his head--he
+looked like himself again.
+
+"Why go indoors this lovely weather?" he said. "Suppose we take a turn
+in the garden?"
+
+Blanche pressed Anne's hand significantly. The proposal was evidently
+made for a purpose. They turned the corner of the cottage and gained the
+large garden at the back--the two ladies walking together, arm in arm;
+Sir Patrick and Geoffrey following them. Little by little, Blanche
+quickened her pace. "I have got my instructions," she whispered to Anne.
+"Let's get out of his hearing."
+
+It was more easily said than done. Geoffrey kept close behind them.
+
+"Consider my lameness, Mr. Delamayn," said Sir Patrick. "Not quite so
+fast."
+
+It was well intended. But Geoffrey's cunning had taken the alarm.
+Instead of dropping behind with Sir Patrick, he called to his wife.
+
+"Consider Sir Patrick's lameness," he repeated. "Not quite so fast."
+
+Sir Patrick met that check with characteristic readiness. When
+Anne slackened her pace, he addressed himself to Geoffrey, stopping
+deliberately in the middle of the path. "Let me give you my message from
+Holchester House," he said. The two ladies were still slowly walking on.
+Geoffrey was placed between the alternatives of staying with Sir Patrick
+and leaving them by themselves--or of following them and leaving Sir
+Patrick. Deliberately, on his side, he followed the ladies.
+
+Sir Patrick called him back. "I told you I wished to speak to you," he
+said, sharply.
+
+Driven to bay, Geoffrey openly revealed his resolution to give Blanche
+no opportunity of speaking in private to Anne. He called to Anne to
+stop.
+
+"I have no secrets from my wife," he said. "And I expect my wife to have
+no secrets from me. Give me the message in her hearing."
+
+Sir Patrick's eyes brightened with indignation. He controlled himself,
+and looked for an instant significantly at his niece before he spoke to
+Geoffrey.
+
+"As you please," he said. "Your brother requests me to tell you that
+the duties of the new position in which he is placed occupy the whole
+of his time, and will prevent him from returning to Fulham, as he had
+proposed, for some days to come. Lady Holchester, hearing that I was
+likely to see you, has charged me with another message, from herself.
+She is not well enough to leave home; and she wishes to see you at
+Holchester House to-morrow--accompanied (as she specially desires) by
+Mrs. Delamayn."
+
+In giving the two messages, he gradually raised his voice to a louder
+tone than usual. While he was speaking, Blanche (warned to follow her
+instructions by the glance her uncle had cast at her) lowered her voice,
+and said to Anne:
+
+"He won't consent to the separation as long as he has got you here. He
+is trying for higher terms. Leave him, and he must submit. Put a candle
+in your window, if you can get into the garden to-night. If not, any
+other night. Make for the back gate in the wall. Sir Patrick and Arnold
+will manage the rest."
+
+She slipped those words into Anne's ears--swinging her parasol to
+and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her
+lips--with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called
+on to assist a deception in which her own interests are concerned.
+Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey's inveterate distrust
+was stirred into action by it. Blanche had got to her last sentence
+before he was able to turn his attention from what Sir Patrick was
+saying to what his niece was saying. A quicker man would have heard
+more. Geoffrey had only distinctly heard the first half of the last
+sentence.
+
+"What's that," he asked, "about Sir Patrick and Arnold?"
+
+"Nothing very interesting to you," Blanche answered, readily. "I will
+repeat it if you like. I was telling Anne about my step-mother,
+Lady Lundie. After what happened that day in Portland Place, she has
+requested Sir Patrick and Arnold to consider themselves, for the future,
+as total strangers to her. That's all."
+
+"Oh!" said Geoffrey, eying her narrowly.
+
+"Ask my uncle," returned Blanche, "if you don't believe that I have
+reported her correctly. She gave us all our dismissal, in her most
+magnificent manner, and in those very words. Didn't she, Sir Patrick?"
+
+It was perfectly true. Blanche's readiness of resource had met the
+emergency of the moment by describing something, in connection with Sir
+Patrick and Arnold, which had really happened. Silenced on one side, in
+spite of himself, Geoffrey was at the same moment pressed on the other
+for an answer to his mother's message.
+
+"I must take your reply to Lady Holchester," said Sir Patrick. "What is
+it to be?"
+
+Geoffrey looked hard at him, without making any reply.
+
+Sir Patrick repeated the message--with a special emphasis on that part
+of it which related to Anne. The emphasis roused Geoffrey's temper.
+
+"You and my mother have made that message up between you, to try me!" he
+burst out. "Damn all underhand work is what _I_ say!"
+
+"I am waiting for your answer," persisted Sir Patrick, steadily ignoring
+the words which had just been addressed to him.
+
+Geoffrey glanced at Anne, and suddenly recovered himself.
+
+"My love to my mother," he said. "I'll go to her to-morrow--and take
+my wife with me, with the greatest pleasure. Do you hear that? With the
+greatest pleasure." He stopped to observe the effect of his reply. Sir
+Patrick waited impenetrably to hear more--if he had more to say. "I'm
+sorry I lost my temper just now," he resumed "I am badly treated--I'm
+distrusted without a cause. I ask you to bear witness," he added, his
+voice getting louder again, while his eyes moved uneasily backward and
+forward between Sir Patrick and Anne, "that I treat my wife as becomes a
+lady. Her friend calls on her--and she's free to receive her friend. My
+mother wants to see her--and I promise to take her to my mother's. At
+two o'clock to-morrow. Where am I to blame? You stand there looking at
+me, and saying nothing. Where am I to blame?"
+
+"If a man's own conscience justifies him, Mr. Delamayn," said Sir
+Patrick, "the opinions of others are of very little importance. My
+errand here is performed."
+
+As he turned to bid Anne farewell, the uneasiness that he felt at
+leaving her forced its way to view. The color faded out of his face. His
+hand trembled as it closed tenderly and firmly on hers. "I shall see you
+to-morrow, at Holchester House," he said; giving his arm while he spoke
+to Blanche. He took leave of Geoffrey, without looking at him again, and
+without seeing his offered hand. In another minute they were gone.
+
+Anne waited on the lower floor of the cottage while Geoffrey closed
+and locked the gate. She had no wish to appear to avoid him, after the
+answer that he had sent to his mother's message. He returned slowly
+half-way across the front garden, looked toward the passage in which she
+was standing, passed before the door, and disappeared round the corner
+of the cottage on his way to the back garden. The inference was not to
+be mistaken. It was Geoffrey who was avoiding _her._ Had he lied to Sir
+Patrick? When the next day came would he find reasons of his own for
+refusing to take her to Holchester House?
+
+She went up stairs. At the same moment Hester Dethridge opened her
+bedroom door to come out. Observing Anne, she closed it again and
+remained invisible in her room. Once more the inference was not to be
+mistaken. Hester Dethridge, also, had her reasons for avoiding Anne.
+
+What did it mean? What object could there be in common between Hester
+and Geoffrey?
+
+There was no fathoming the meaning of it. Anne's thoughts reverted to
+the communication which had been secretly made to her by Blanche. It
+was not in womanhood to be insensible to such devotion as Sir Patrick's
+conduct implied. Terrible as her position had become in its ever-growing
+uncertainty, in its never-ending suspense, the oppression of it yielded
+for the moment to the glow of pride and gratitude which warmed her
+heart, as she thought of the sacrifices that had been made, of the
+perils that were still to be encountered, solely for her sake. To
+shorten the period of suspense seemed to be a duty which she owed to Sir
+Patrick, as well as to herself. Why, in her situation, wait for what the
+next day might bring forth? If the opportunity offered, she determined
+to put the signal in the window that night.
+
+Toward evening she heard once more the noises which appeared to indicate
+that repairs of some sort were going on in the house. This time the
+sounds were fainter; and they came, as she fancied, not from the spare
+room, as before, but from Geoffrey's room, next to it.
+
+The dinner was later than usual that day. Hester Dethridge did not
+appear with the tray till dusk. Anne spoke to her, and received a mute
+sign in answer. Determined to see the woman's face plainly, she put
+a question which required a written answer on the slate; and, telling
+Hester to wait, went to the mantle-piece to light her candle. When she
+turned round with the lighted candle in her hand, Hester was gone.
+
+Night came. She rang her bell to have the tray taken away. The fall of
+a strange footstep startled her outside her door. She called out, "Who's
+there?" The voice of the lad whom Geoffrey employed to go on errands for
+him answered her.
+
+"What do you want here?" she asked, through the door.
+
+"Mr. Delamayn sent me up, ma'am. He wishes to speak to you directly."
+
+Anne found Geoffrey in the dining-room. His object in wishing to speak
+to her was, on the surface of it, trivial enough. He wanted to know
+how she would prefer going to Holchester House on the next day--by the
+railway, or in a carriage. "If you prefer driving," he said, "the boy
+has come here for orders, and he can tell them to send a carriage from
+the livery-stables, as he goes home."
+
+"The railway will do perfectly well for me," Anne replied.
+
+Instead of accepting the answer, and dropping the subject, he asked her
+to reconsider her decision. There was an absent, uneasy expression in
+his eye as he begged her not to consult economy at the expense of her
+own comfort. He appeared to have some reason of his own for preventing
+her from leaving the room. "Sit d own a minute, and think before you
+decide," he said. Having forced her to take a chair, he put his head
+outside the door and directed the lad to go up stairs, and see if he had
+left his pipe in his bedroom. "I want you to go in comfort, as a lady
+should," he repeated, with the uneasy look more marked than ever. Before
+Anne could reply, the lad's voice reached them from the bedroom floor,
+raised in shrill alarm, and screaming "Fire!"
+
+Geoffrey ran up stairs. Anne followed him. The lad met them at the
+top of the stairs. He pointed to the open door of Anne's room. She was
+absolutely certain of having left her lighted candle, when she went down
+to Geoffrey, at a safe distance from the bed-curtains. The bed-curtains,
+nevertheless, were in a blaze of fire.
+
+There was a supply of water to the cottage, on the upper floor. The
+bedroom jugs and cans usually in their places at an earlier hour, were
+standing that night at the cistern. An empty pail was left near them.
+Directing the lad to bring him water from these resources, Geoffrey tore
+down the curtains in a flaming heap, partly on the bed and partly on the
+sofa near it. Using the can and the pail alternately, as the boy brought
+them, he drenched the bed and the sofa. It was all over in little
+more than a minute. The cottage was saved. But the bed-furniture
+was destroyed; and the room, as a matter of course, was rendered
+uninhabitable, for that night at least, and probably for more nights to
+come.
+
+Geoffrey set down the empty pail; and, turning to Anne, pointed across
+the passage.
+
+"You won't be much inconvenienced by this," he said. "You have only to
+shift your quarters to the spare room."
+
+With the assistance of the lad, he moved Anne's boxes, and the chest of
+drawers, which had escaped damage, into the opposite room. This done,
+he cautioned her to be careful with her candles for the future--and went
+down stairs, without waiting to hear what she said in reply. The lad
+followed him, and was dismissed for the night.
+
+Even in the confusion which attended the extinguishing of the fire, the
+conduct of Hester Dethridge had been remarkable enough to force itself
+on the attention of Anne.
+
+She had come out from her bedroom, when the alarm was given; had looked
+at the flaming curtains; and had drawn back, stolidly submissive, into
+a corner to wait the event. There she had stood--to all appearance,
+utterly indifferent to the possible destruction of her own cottage. The
+fire extinguished, she still waited impenetrably in her corner, while
+the chest of drawers and the boxes were being moved--then locked the
+door, without even a passing glance at the scorched ceiling and the
+burned bed-furniture--put the key into her pocket--and went back to her
+room.
+
+Anne had hitherto not shared the conviction felt by most other persons
+who were brought into contact with Hester Dethridge, that the woman's
+mind was deranged. After what she had just seen, however, the general
+impression became her impression too. She had thought of putting certain
+questions to Hester, when they were left together, as to the origin of
+the fire. Reflection decided her on saying nothing, for that night at
+least. She crossed the passage, and entered the spare room--the room
+which she had declined to occupy on her arrival at the cottage, and
+which she was obliged to sleep in now.
+
+She was instantly struck by a change in the disposition of the furniture
+of the room.
+
+The bed had been moved. The head--set, when she had last seen it,
+against the side wall of the cottage--was placed now against the
+partition wall which separated the room from Geoffrey's room. This new
+arrangement had evidently been effected with a settled purpose of some
+sort. The hook in the ceiling which supported the curtains (the bed,
+unlike the bed in the other room, having no canopy attached to it) had
+been moved so as to adapt itself to the change that had been made. The
+chairs and the washhand-stand, formerly placed against the partition
+wall, were now, as a matter of necessity, shifted over to the vacant
+space against the side wall of the cottage. For the rest, no other
+alteration was visible in any part of the room.
+
+In Anne's situation, any event not immediately intelligible on the face
+of it, was an event to be distrusted. Was there a motive for the change
+in the position of the bed? And was it, by any chance, a motive in which
+she was concerned?
+
+The doubt had barely occurred to her, before a startling suspicion
+succeeded it. Was there some secret purpose to be answered by making her
+sleep in the spare room? Did the question which the servant had heard
+Geoffrey put to Hester, on the previous night, refer to this? Had the
+fire which had so unaccountably caught the curtains in her own room,
+been, by any possibility, a fire purposely kindled, to force her out?
+
+She dropped into the nearest chair, faint with horror, as those three
+questions forced themselves in rapid succession on her mind.
+
+After waiting a little, she recovered self-possession enough to
+recognize the first plain necessity of putting her suspicions to the
+test. It was possible that her excited fancy had filled her with a
+purely visionary alarm. For all she knew to the contrary, there might be
+some undeniably sufficient reason for changing the position of the bed.
+She went out, and knocked at the door of Hester Dethridge's room.
+
+"I want to speak to you," she said.
+
+Hester came out. Anne pointed to the spare room, and led the way to it.
+Hester followed her.
+
+"Why have you changed the place of the bed," she asked, "from the wall
+there, to the wall here?"
+
+Stolidly submissive to the question, as she had been stolidly submissive
+to the fire, Hester Dethridge wrote her reply. On all other occasions
+she was accustomed to look the persons to whom she offered her slate
+steadily in the face. Now, for the first time, she handed it to Anne
+with her eyes on the floor. The one line written contained no direct
+answer: the words were these:
+
+"I have meant to move it, for some time past."
+
+"I ask you why you have moved it."
+
+She wrote these four words on the slate: "The wall is damp."
+
+Anne looked at the wall. There was no sign of damp on the paper. She
+passed her hand over it. Feel where she might, the wall was dry.
+
+"That is not your reason," she said.
+
+Hester stood immovable.
+
+"There is no dampness in the wall."
+
+Hester pointed persistently with her pencil to the four words, still
+without looking up--waited a moment for Anne to read them again--and
+left the room.
+
+It was plainly useless to call her back. Anne's first impulse when she
+was alone again was to secure the door. She not only locked it, but
+bolted it at top and bottom. The mortise of the lock and the staples
+of the bolts, when she tried them, were firm. The lurking
+treachery--wherever else it might be--was not in the fastenings of the
+door.
+
+She looked all round the room; examining the fire place, the window and
+its shutters, the interior of the wardrobe, the hidden space under the
+bed. Nothing was any where to be discovered which could justify the most
+timid person living in feeling suspicion or alarm.
+
+Appearances, fair as they were, failed to convince her. The presentiment
+of some hidden treachery, steadily getting nearer and nearer to her in
+the dark, had rooted itself firmly in her mind. She sat down, and tried
+to trace her way back to the clew, through the earlier events of the
+day.
+
+The effort was fruitless: nothing definite, nothing tangible, rewarded
+it. Worse still, a new doubt grew out of it--a doubt whether the motive
+which Sir Patrick had avowed (through Blanche) was the motive for
+helping her which was really in his mind.
+
+Did he sincerely believe Geoffrey's conduct to be animated by no worse
+object than a mercenary object? and was his only purpose in planning to
+remove her out of her husband's reach, to force Geoffrey's consent to
+their separation on the terms which Julius had proposed? Was this really
+the sole end that he had in view? or was he secretly convinced (knowing
+Anne's position as he knew it) that she was in personal danger at the
+cottage? and had he considerately kept that conviction concealed, in
+the fear that he might otherwise encourage her to feel alarmed about
+herself? She looked round the strange room, in the silence of the
+night, and she felt that the latter interpretation was the likeliest
+interpretation of the two.
+
+The sounds caused by the closing of the doors and windows reached her
+from the ground-floor. What was to be done?
+
+It was impossible, to show the signal which had been agreed on to Sir
+Patrick and Arnold. The window in which they expected to see it was
+the window of the room in which the fire had broken out--the room which
+Hester Dethridge had locked up for the night.
+
+It was equally hopeless to wait until the policeman passed on his beat,
+and to call for help. Even if she could prevail upon herself to make
+that open acknowledgment of distrust under her husband's roof, and even
+if help was near, what valid reason could she give for raising an alarm?
+There was not the shadow of a reason to justify any one in placing her
+under the protection of the law.
+
+As a last resource, impelled by her blind distrust of the change in the
+position of the bed, she attempted to move it. The utmost exertion of
+her strength did not suffice to stir the heavy piece of furniture out of
+its place, by so much as a hair's breadth.
+
+There was no alternative but to trust to the security of the locked
+and bolted door, and to keep watch through the night--certain that Sir
+Patrick and Arnold were, on their part, also keeping watch in the near
+neighborhood of the cottage. She took out her work and her books; and
+returned to her chair, placing it near the table, in the middle of the
+room.
+
+The last noises which told of life and movement about her died away. The
+breathless stillness of the night closed round her.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SIXTH.
+
+THE MEANS.
+
+THE new day dawned; the sun rose; the household was astir again. Inside
+the spare room, and outside the spare room, nothing had happened.
+
+At the hour appointed for leaving the cottage to pay the promised visit
+to Holchester House, Hester Dethridge and Geoffrey were alone together
+in the bedroom in which Anne had passed the night.
+
+"She's dressed, and waiting for me in the front garden," said Geoffrey.
+"You wanted to see me here alone. What is it?"
+
+Hester pointed to the bed.
+
+"You want it moved from the wall?"
+
+Hester nodded her head.
+
+They moved the bed some feet away from the partition wall. After a
+momentary pause, Geoffrey spoke again.
+
+"It must be done to-night," he said. "Her friends may interfere; the
+girl may come back. It must be done to-night."
+
+Hester bowed her head slowly.
+
+"How long do you want to be left by yourself in the house?"
+
+She held up three of her fingers.
+
+"Does that mean three hours?"
+
+She nodded her head.
+
+"Will it be done in that time?"
+
+She made the affirmative sign once more.
+
+Thus far, she had never lifted her eyes to his. In her manner of
+listening to him when he spoke, in the slightest movement that she made
+when necessity required it, the same lifeless submission to him, the
+same mute horror of him, was expressed. He had, thus far, silently
+resented this, on his side. On the point of leaving the room the
+restraint which he had laid on himself gave way. For the first time, he
+resented it in words.
+
+"Why the devil can't you look at me?" he asked
+
+She let the question pass, without a sign to show that she had heard
+him. He angrily repeated it. She wrote on her slate, and held it out to
+him--still without raising her eyes to his face.
+
+"You know you can speak," he said. "You know I have found you out.
+What's the use of playing the fool with _me?_"
+
+She persisted in holding the slate before him. He read these words:
+
+"I am dumb to you, and blind to you. Let me be."
+
+"Let you be!" he repeated. "It's a little late in the day to be
+scrupulous, after what you have done. Do you want your Confession back,
+or not?"
+
+As the reference to the Confession passed his lips, she raised her head.
+A faint tinge of color showed itself on her livid cheeks; a momentary
+spasm of pain stirred her deathlike face. The one last interest left in
+the woman's life was the interest of recovering the manuscript which
+had been taken from her. To _that_ appeal the stunned intelligence still
+faintly answered--and to no other.
+
+"Remember the bargain on your side," Geoffrey went on, "and I'll
+remember the bargain on mine. This is how it stands, you know. I have
+read your Confession; and I find one thing wanting. You don't tell how
+it was done. I know you smothered him--but I don't know how. I want to
+know. You're dumb; and you can't tell me. You must do to the wall here
+what you did in the other house. You run no risks. There isn't a soul
+to see you. You have got the place to yourself. When I come back let me
+find this wall like the other wall--at that small hour of the morning
+you know, when you were waiting, with the towel in your hand, for the
+first stroke of the clock. Let me find that; and to-morrow you shall
+have your Confession back again."
+
+As the reference to the Confession passed his lips for the second time,
+the sinking energy in the woman leaped up in her once more. She snatched
+her slate from her side; and, writing on it rapidly, held it, with both
+hands, close under his eyes. He read these words:
+
+"I won't wait. I must have it to-night."
+
+"Do you think I keep your Confession about me?" said Geoffrey. "I
+haven't even got it in the house."
+
+She staggered back; and looked up for the first time.
+
+"Don't alarm yourself," he went on. "It's sealed up with my seal; and
+it's safe in my bankers' keeping. I posted it to them myself. You don't
+stick at a trifle, Mrs. Dethridge. If I had kept it locked up in the
+house, you might have forced the lock when my back was turned. If I had
+kept it about me--I might have had that towel over my face, in the
+small hours of the morning! The bankers will give you back your
+Confession--just as they have received it from me--on receipt of an
+order in my handwriting. Do what I have told you; and you shall have the
+order to-night."
+
+She passed her apron over her face, and drew a long breath of relief.
+Geoffrey turned to the door.
+
+"I will be back at six this evening," he said. "Shall I find it done?"
+
+She bowed her head.
+
+His first condition accepted, he proceeded to the second.
+
+"When the opportunity offers," he resumed, "I shall go up to my room. I
+shall ring the dining room bell first. You will go up before me when you
+hear that--and you will show me how you did it in the empty house?"
+
+She made the affirmative sign once more.
+
+At the same moment the door in the passage below was opened and closed
+again. Geoffrey instantly went down stairs. It was possible that Anne
+might have forgotten something; and it was necessary to prevent her from
+returning to her own room.
+
+They met in the passage.
+
+"Tired of waiting in the garden?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+She pointed to the dining-room.
+
+"The postman has just given me a letter for you, through the grating in
+the gate," she answered. "I have put it on the table in there."
+
+He went in. The handwriting on the address of the letter was the
+handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. He put it unread into his pocket, and went
+back to Anne.
+
+"Step out!" he said. "We shall lose the train."
+
+They started for their visit to Holchester House.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SEVENTH.
+
+THE END.
+
+AT a few minutes before six o'clock that evening, Lord Holchester's
+carriage brought Geoffrey and Anne back to the cottage.
+
+Geoffrey prevented the servant from ringing at the gate. He had taken
+the key with him, when he left home earlier in the day. Having admitted
+Anne, and having closed the gate again, he went on before her to the
+kitchen window, and called to Hester Dethridge.
+
+"Take some cold water into the drawing-room and fill the vase on the
+chimney-piece," he said. "The sooner you put those flowers into water,"
+he added, turning to his wife, "the longer they will last."
+
+He pointed, as he spoke, to a nosegay in Anne's hand, which Julius had
+gathered for her from the conservatory at Holchester House. Leaving her
+to arrange the flowers in the vase, he went up stairs. After waiting for
+a moment, he was joined by Hester Dethridge.
+
+"Done?" he asked, in a whisper.
+
+Hester made the affirmative sign. Geoffrey took off his boots and led
+the way into the spare room. They noiselessly moved the bed back to its
+place against the partition wall--and left the room again. When Anne
+entered it, some minutes afterward, not the slightest change of any kind
+was visible since she had last seen it in the middle of the day.
+
+She removed her bonnet and mantle, and sat down to rest.
+
+The whole course of events, since the previous night, had tended one
+way, and had exerted the same delusive influence over her mind. It was
+impossible for her any longer to resist the conviction that she had
+distrusted appearances without the slightest reason, and that she had
+permitted purely visionary suspicions to fill her with purely causeless
+alarm. In the firm belief that she was in danger, she had watched
+through the night--and nothing had happened. In the confident
+anticipation that Geoffrey had promised what he was resolved not to
+perform, she had waited to see what excuse he would find for keeping
+her at the cottage. And, when the time came for the visit, she found him
+ready to fulfill the engagement which he had made. At Holchester House,
+not the slightest interference had been attempted with her perfect
+liberty of action and speech. Resolved to inform Sir Patrick that she
+had changed her room, she had described the alarm of fire and the events
+which had succeeded it, in the fullest detail--and had not been once
+checked by Geoffrey from beginning to end. She had spoken in confidence
+to Blanche, and had never been interrupted. Walking round the
+conservatory, she had dropped behind the others with perfect impunity,
+to say a grateful word to Sir Patrick, and to ask if the interpretation
+that he placed on Geoffrey's conduct was really the interpretation which
+had been hinted at by Blanche. They had talked together for ten
+minutes or more. Sir Patrick had assured her that Blanche had correctly
+represented his opinion. He had declared his conviction that the rash
+way was, in her case, the right way; and that she would do well (with
+his assistance) to take the initiative, in the matter of the separation,
+on herself. "As long as he can keep you under the same roof with
+him"--Sir Patrick had said--"so long he will speculate on our anxiety to
+release you from the oppression of living with him; and so long he will
+hold out with his brother (in the character of a penitent husband)
+for higher terms. Put the signal in the window, and try the experiment
+to-night. Once find your way to the garden door, and I answer for
+keeping you safely out of his reach until he has submitted to the
+separation, and has signed the deed." In those words he had urged Anne
+to prompt action. He had received, in return, her promise to be guided
+by his advice. She had gone back to the drawing-room; and Geoffrey had
+made no remark on her absence. She had returned to Fulham, alone with
+him in his brother's carriage; and he had asked no questions. What was
+it natural, with her means of judging, to infer from all this? Could
+she see into Sir Patrick's mind and detect that he was deliberately
+concealing his own conviction, in the fear that he might paralyze her
+energies if he acknowledged the alarm for her that he really felt? No.
+She could only accept the false appearances that surrounded her in the
+disguise of truth. She could only adopt, in good faith, Sir Patrick's
+assumed point of view, and believe, on the evidence of her own
+observation, that Sir Patrick was right.
+
+
+
+Toward dusk, Anne began to feel the exhaustion which was the necessary
+result of a night passed without sleep. She rang her bell, and asked for
+some tea.
+
+Hester Dethridge answered the bell. Instead of making the usual sign,
+she stood considering--and then wrote on her slate. These were the
+words: "I have all the work to do, now the girl has gone. If you would
+have your tea in the drawing-room, you would save me another journey up
+stairs."
+
+Anne at once engaged to comply with the request.
+
+"Are you ill?" she asked; noticing, faint as the light now was,
+something strangely altered in Hester's manner.
+
+Without looking up, Hester shook her head.
+
+"Has any thing happened to vex you?"
+
+The negative sign was repeated.
+
+"Have I offended you?"
+
+She suddenly advanced a step, suddenly looked at Anne; checked herself
+with a dull moan, like a moan of pain; and hurried out of the room.
+
+Concluding that she had inadvertently said, or done, something to offend
+Hester Dethridge, Anne determined to return to the subject at the
+first favorable opportunity. In the mean time, she descended to the
+ground-floor. The dining-room door, standing wide open, showed her
+Geoffrey sitting at the table, writing a letter--with the fatal
+brandy-bottle at his side.
+
+After what Mr. Speedwell had told her, it was her duty to interfere. She
+performed her duty, without an instant's hesitation.
+
+"Pardon me for interrupting you," she said. "I think you have forgotten
+what Mr. Speedwell told you about that."
+
+She pointed to the bottle. Geoffrey looked at it; looked down again at
+his letter; and impatiently shook his head. She made a second attempt at
+remonstrance--again without effect. He only said, "All right!" in lower
+tones than were customary with him, and continued his occupation. It was
+useless to court a third repulse. Anne went into the drawing-room.
+
+The letter on which he was engaged was an answer to Mrs. Glenarm, who
+had written to tell him that she was leaving town. He had reached his
+two concluding sentences when Anne spoke to him. They ran as follows: "I
+may have news to bring you, before long, which you don't look for. Stay
+where you are through to-morrow, and wait to hear from me."
+
+After sealing the envelope, he emptied his glass of brandy and water;
+and waited, looking through the open door. When Hester Dethridge crossed
+the passage with the tea-tray, and entered the drawing-room, he gave the
+sign which had been agreed on. He rang his bell. Hester came out again,
+closing the drawing-room door behind her.
+
+"Is she safe at her tea?" he asked, removing his heavy boots, and
+putting on the slippers which were placed ready for him.
+
+Hester bowed her head.
+
+He pointed up the stairs. "You go first," he whispered. "No nonsense!
+and no noise!"
+
+She ascended the stairs. He followed slowly. Although he had only drunk
+one glass of brandy and water, his step was uncertain already. With one
+hand on the wall, and one hand on the banister, he made his way to the
+top; stopped, and listened for a moment; then joined Hester in his own
+room, and softly locked the door.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+She was standing motionless in the middle of the room--not like a living
+woman--like a machine waiting to be set in movement. Finding it useless
+to speak to her, he touched her (with a strange sensation of shrinking
+in him as he did it), and pointed to the partition wall.
+
+The touch roused her. With slow step and vacant face--moving as if she
+was walking in her sleep--she led the way to the papered wall; knelt
+down at the skirting-board; and, taking out two small sharp nails,
+lifted up a long strip of the paper which had been detached from the
+plaster beneath. Mounting on a chair, she turned back the strip and
+pinned it up, out of the way, using the two nails, which she had kept
+ready in her hand.
+
+By the last dim rays of twilight, Geoffrey looked at the wall.
+
+A hollow space met his view. At a distance of some three feet from the
+floor, the laths had been sawn away, and the plaster had been ripped
+out, piecemeal, so as to leave a cavity, sufficient in height and width
+to allow free power of working in any direction, to a man's arms. The
+cavity completely pierced the substance of the wall. Nothing but the
+paper on the other side prevented eye or hand from penetrating into the
+next room.
+
+Hester Dethridge got down from the chair, and made signs for a light.
+
+Geoffrey took a match from the box. The same strange uncertainty which
+had already possessed his feet, appeared now to possess his hands. He
+struck the match too heavily against the sandpaper, and broke it. He
+tried another, and struck it too lightly to kindle the flame. Hester
+took the box out of his hands. Having lit the candle, she hel d it low,
+and pointed to the skirting-board.
+
+Two little hooks were fixed into the floor, near the part of the wall
+from which the paper had been removed. Two lengths of fine and strong
+string were twisted once or twice round the hooks. The loose ends of the
+string extending to some length beyond the twisted parts, were neatly
+coiled away against the skirting-board. The other ends, drawn tight,
+disappeared in two small holes drilled through the wall, at a height of
+a foot from the floor.
+
+After first untwisting the strings from the hooks, Hester rose, and held
+the candle so as to light the cavity in the wall. Two more pieces of the
+fine string were seen here, resting loose upon the uneven surface which
+marked the lower boundary of the hollowed space. Lifting these higher
+strings, Hester lifted the loosened paper in the next room--the lower
+strings, which had previously held the strip firm and flat against the
+sound portion of the wall, working in their holes, and allowing the
+paper to move up freely. As it rose higher and higher, Geoffrey saw thin
+strips of cotton wool lightly attached, at intervals, to the back of
+the paper, so as effectually to prevent it from making a grating sound
+against the wall. Up and up it came slowly, till it could be pulled
+through the hollow space, and pinned up out of the way, as the strip
+previously lifted had been pinned before it. Hester drew back, and made
+way for Geoffrey to look through. There was Anne's room, visible through
+the wall! He softly parted the light curtains that hang over the bed.
+There was the pillow, on which her head would rest at night, within
+reach of his hands!
+
+The deadly dexterity of it struck him cold. His nerves gave way. He drew
+back with a start of guilty fear, and looked round the room. A pocket
+flask of brandy lay on the table at his bedside. He snatched it up, and
+emptied it at a draught--and felt like himself again.
+
+He beckoned to Hester to approach him.
+
+"Before we go any further," he said, "there's one thing I want to know.
+How is it all to be put right again? Suppose this room is examined?
+Those strings will show."
+
+Hester opened a cupboard and produced a jar. She took out the cork.
+There was a mixture inside which looked like glue. Partly by signs, and
+partly by help of the slate, she showed how the mixture could be applied
+to the back of the loosened strip of paper in the next room--how the
+paper could be glued to the sound lower part of the wall by tightening
+the strings--how the strings, having served that purpose, could be
+safely removed--how the same process could be followed in Geoffrey's
+room, after the hollowed place had been filled up again with the
+materials waiting in the scullery, or even without filling up the
+hollowed place if the time failed for doing it. In either case, the
+refastened paper would hide every thing, and the wall would tell no
+tales.
+
+Geoffrey was satisfied. He pointed next to the towels in his room.
+
+"Take one of them," he said, "and show me how you did it, with your own
+hands."
+
+As he said the words, Anne's voice reached his ear from below, calling
+for "Mrs. Dethridge."
+
+It was impossible to say what might happen next. In another minute, she
+might go up to her room, and discover every thing. Geoffrey pointed to
+the wall.
+
+"Put it right again," he said. "Instantly!"
+
+It was soon done. All that was necessary was to let the two strips of
+paper drop back into their places--to fasten the strip to the wall in
+Anne's room, by tightening the two lower strings--and then to replace
+the nails which held the loose strip on Geoffrey's side. In a minute,
+the wall had reassumed its customary aspect.
+
+They stole out, and looked over the stairs into the passage below. After
+calling uselessly for the second time, Anne appeared, crossed over to
+the kitchen; and, returning again with the kettle in her hand, closed
+the drawing-room door.
+
+Hester Dethridge waited impenetrably to receive her next directions.
+There were no further directions to give. The hideous dramatic
+representation of the woman's crime for which Geoffrey had asked was
+in no respect necessary: the means were all prepared, and the manner
+of using them was self-evident. Nothing but the opportunity, and the
+resolution to profit by it, were wanting to lead the way to the end.
+Geoffrey signed to Hester to go down stairs.
+
+"Get back into the kitchen," he said, "before she comes out again. I
+shall keep in the garden. When she goes up into her room for the night,
+show yourself at the back-door--and I shall know."
+
+Hester set her foot on the first stair--stopped--turned round--and
+looked slowly along the two walls of the passage, from end to
+end--shuddered--shook her head--and went slowly on down the stairs.
+
+"What were you looking for?" he whispered after her.
+
+She neither answered, nor looked back--she went her way into the
+kitchen.
+
+He waited a minute, and then followed her.
+
+On his way out to the garden, he went into the dining-room. The moon had
+risen; and the window-shutters were not closed. It was easy to find the
+brandy and the jug of water on the table. He mixed the two, and emptied
+the tumbler at a draught. "My head's queer," he whispered to himself.
+He passed his handkerchief over his face. "How infernally hot it is
+to-night!" He made for the door. It was open, and plainly visible--and
+yet, he failed to find his way to it. Twice, he found himself trying to
+walk through the wall, on either side. The third time, he got out, and
+reached the garden. A strange sensation possessed him, as he walked
+round and round. He had not drunk enough, or nearly enough, to
+intoxicate him. His mind, in a dull way, felt the same as usual; but his
+body was like the body of a drunken man.
+
+The night advanced; the clock of Putney Church struck ten.
+
+Anne appeared again from the drawing room, with her bedroom candle in
+her hand.
+
+"Put out the lights," she said to Hester, at the kitchen door; "I am
+going up stairs."
+
+She entered her room. The insupportable sense of weariness, after the
+sleepless night that she had passed, weighed more heavily on her than
+ever. She locked her door, but forbore, on this occasion, to fasten the
+bolts. The dread of danger was no longer present to her mind; and there
+was this positive objection to losing the bolts, that the unfastening of
+them would increase the difficulty of leaving the room noiselessly
+later in the night. She loosened her dress, and lifted her hair from her
+temples--and paced to and fro in the room wearily, thinking. Geoffrey's
+habits were irregular; Hester seldom went to bed early.
+
+Two hours at least--more probably three--must pass, before it would
+be safe to communicate with Sir Patrick by means of the signal in the
+window. Her strength was fast failing her. If she persisted, for the
+next three hours, in denying herself the repose which she sorely
+needed, the chances were that her nerves might fail her, through sheer
+exhaustion, when the time came for facing the risk and making the effort
+to escape. Sleep was falling on her even now--and sleep she must have.
+She had no fear of failing to wake at the needful time. Falling asleep,
+with a special necessity for rising at a given hour present to her mind,
+Anne (like most other sensitively organized people) could trust herself
+to wake at that given hour, instinctively. She put her lighted candle
+in a safe position, and laid down on the bed. In less than five minutes,
+she was in a deep sleep.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The church clock struck the quarter to eleven. Hester Dethridge showed
+herself at the back garden door. Geoffrey crossed the lawn, and joined
+her. The light of the lamp in the passage fell on his face. She started
+back from the sight of it.
+
+"What's wrong?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head; and pointed through the dining-room door to the
+brandy-bottle on the table.
+
+"I'm as sober as you are, you fool!" he said. "Whatever else it is, it's
+not that."
+
+Hester looked at him again. He was right. However unsteady his gait
+might be, his speech was not the speech, his eyes were not the eyes, of
+a drunken man.
+
+"Is she in her room for the night?"
+
+Hester made the affirmative sign.
+
+Geoffrey ascended the st airs, swaying from side to side. He stopped at
+the top, and beckoned to Hester to join him. He went on into his room;
+and, signing to her to follow him, closed the door.
+
+He looked at the partition wall--without approaching it. Hester waited,
+behind him.
+
+"Is she asleep?" he asked.
+
+Hester went to the wall; listened at it; and made the affirmative reply.
+
+He sat down. "My head's queer," he said. "Give me a drink of water."
+He drank part of the water, and poured the rest over his head. Hester
+turned toward the door to leave him. He instantly stopped her. "_I_
+can't unwind the strings. _I_ can't lift up the paper. Do it."
+
+She sternly made the sign of refusal: she resolutely opened the door to
+leave him. "Do you want your Confession back?" he asked. She closed the
+door, stolidly submissive in an instant; and crossed to the partition
+wall.
+
+She lifted the loose strips of paper on either side of the wall--pointed
+through the hollowed place--and drew back again to the other end of the
+room.
+
+He rose and walked unsteadily from the chair to the foot of his bed.
+Holding by the wood-work of the bed; he waited a little. While he
+waited, he became conscious of a change in the strange sensations that
+possessed him. A feeling as of a breath of cold air passed over the
+right side of his head. He became steady again: he could calculate his
+distances: he could put his hands through the hollowed place, and draw
+aside the light curtains, hanging from the hook in the ceiling over the
+head of her bed. He could look at his sleeping wife.
+
+She was dimly visible, by the light of the candle placed at the other
+end of her room. The worn and weary look had disappeared from her face.
+All that had been purest and sweetest in it, in the by-gone time, seemed
+to be renewed by the deep sleep that held her gently. She was young
+again in the dim light: she was beautiful in her calm repose. Her head
+lay back on the pillow. Her upturned face was in a position which
+placed her completely at the mercy of the man under whose eyes she was
+sleeping--the man who was looking at her, with the merciless resolution
+in him to take her life.
+
+After waiting a while, he drew back. "She's more like a child than a
+woman to-night," he muttered to himself under his breath. He glanced
+across the room at Hester Dethridge. The lighted candle which she had
+brought up stairs with her was burning near the place where she stood.
+"Blow it out," he whispered. She never moved. He repeated the direction.
+There she stood, deaf to him.
+
+What was she doing? She was looking fixedly into one of the corners of
+the room.
+
+He turned his head again toward the hollowed place in the wall. He
+looked at the peaceful face on the pillow once more. He deliberately
+revived his own vindictive sense of the debt that he owed her. "But for
+you," he whispered to himself, "I should have won the race: but for you,
+I should have been friends with my father: but for you, I might marry
+Mrs. Glenarm." He turned back again into the room while the sense of it
+was at its fiercest in him. He looked round and round him. He took up a
+towel; considered for a moment; and threw it down again.
+
+A new idea struck him. In two steps he was at the side of his bed. He
+seized on one of the pillows, and looked suddenly at Hester. "It's not a
+drunken brute, this time," he said to her. "It's a woman who will fight
+for her life. The pillow's the safest of the two." She never answered
+him, and never looked toward him. He made once more for the place in
+the wall; and stopped midway between it and his bed--stopped, and cast a
+backward glance over his shoulder.
+
+Hester Dethridge was stirring at last.
+
+With no third person in the room, she was looking, and moving,
+nevertheless, as if she was following a third person along the wall,
+from the corner. Her lips were parted in horror; her eyes, opening wider
+and wider, stared rigid and glittering at the empty wall. Step by step
+she stole nearer and nearer to Geoffrey, still following some visionary
+Thing, which was stealing nearer and nearer, too. He asked himself what
+it meant. Was the terror of the deed that he was about to do more than
+the woman's brain could bear? Would she burst out screaming, and wake
+his wife?
+
+He hurried to the place in the wall--to seize the chance, while the
+chance was his.
+
+He steadied his strong hold on the pillow.
+
+He stooped to pass it through the opening.
+
+He poised it over Anne's sleeping face.
+
+At the same moment he felt Hester Dethridge's hand laid on him from
+behind. The touch ran through him, from head to foot, like a touch of
+ice. He drew back with a start, and faced her. Her eyes were staring
+straight over his shoulder at something behind him--looking as they had
+looked in the garden at Windygates.
+
+Before he could speak he felt the flash of her eyes in _his_ eyes. For
+the third time, she had seen the Apparition behind him. The homicidal
+frenzy possessed her. She flew at his throat like a wild beast. The
+feeble old woman attacked the athlete!
+
+He dropped the pillow, and lifted his terrible right arm to brush her
+from him, as he might have brushed an insect from him.
+
+Even as he raised the arm a frightful distortion seized on his face. As
+if with an invisible hand, it dragged down the brow and the eyelid on
+the right; it dragged down the mouth on the same side. His arm fell
+helpless; his whole body, on the side under the arm, gave way. He
+dropped on the floor, like a man shot dead.
+
+Hester Dethridge pounced on his prostrate body--knelt on his broad
+breast--and fastened her ten fingers on his throat.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The shock of the fall woke Anne on the instant. She started up--looked
+round--and saw a gap in the wall at the head of her bed, and the
+candle-light glimmering in the next room. Panic-stricken; doubting,
+for the moment, if she were in her right mind, she drew back,
+waiting--listening--looking. She saw nothing but the glimmering light
+in the room; she heard nothing but a hoarse gasping, as of some person
+laboring for breath. The sound ceased. There was an interval of silence.
+Then the head of Hester Dethridge rose slowly into sight through the gap
+in the wall--rose with the glittering light of madness in the eyes, and
+looked at her.
+
+She flew to the open window, and screamed for help.
+
+Sir Patrick's voice answered her, from the road in front of the cottage.
+
+"Wait for me, for God's sake!" she cried.
+
+She fled from the room, and rushed down the stairs. In another moment,
+she had opened the door, and was out in the front garden.
+
+As she ran to the gate, she heard the voice of a strange man on the
+other side of it. Sir Patrick called to her encouragingly. "The police
+man is with us," he said. "He patrols the garden at night--he has a
+key." As he spoke the gate was opened from the outside. She saw Sir
+Patrick, Arnold, and the policeman. She staggered toward them as they
+came in--she was just able to say, "Up stairs!" before her senses failed
+her. Sir Patrick saved her from falling. He placed her on the bench in
+the garden, and waited by her, while Arnold and the policeman hurried
+into the cottage.
+
+"Where first?" asked Arnold.
+
+"The room the lady called from," said the policeman
+
+They mounted the stairs, and entered Anne's room. The gap in the wall
+was instantly observed by both of them. They looked through it.
+
+Geoffrey Delamayn's dead body lay on the floor. Hester Dethridge was
+kneeling at his head, praying.
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+A MORNING CALL.
+
+I.
+
+THE newspapers have announced the return of Lord and Lady Holchester
+to their residence in London, after an absence on the continent of more
+than six months.
+
+It is the height of the season. All day long, within the canonical
+hours, the door of Holchester House is perpetually opening to receive
+visitors. The vast majority leave their cards, and go away again.
+Certain privileged individuals only, get out of their carriages, and
+enter the house.
+
+Among these last, arriving at an earlier hour than is customary, is a
+person of distinction who is positively bent on seeing either the master
+or the mistress of the house, and who will take no denial. While this
+person is parleying with the chief of the servants, Lord Holchester,
+passing from one room to another, happens to cross the inner end of
+the hall. The person instantly darts at him with a cry of "Dear Lord
+Holchester!" Julius turns, and sees--Lady Lundie!
+
+He is fairly caught, and he gives way with his best grace. As he opens
+the door of the nearest room for her ladyship, he furtively consults his
+watch, and says in his inmost soul, "How am I to get rid of her before
+the others come?"
+
+Lady Lundie settles down on a sofa in a whirlwind of silk and lace, and
+becomes, in her own majestic way, "perfectly charming." She makes the
+most affectionate inquiries about Lady Holchester, about the Dowager
+Lady Holchester, about Julius himself. Where have they been? what have
+they seen? have time and change helped them to recover the shock of that
+dreadful event, to which Lady Lundie dare not more particularly allude?
+Julius answers resignedly, and a little absently. He makes polite
+inquiries, on his side, as to her ladyship's plans and proceedings--with
+a mind uneasily conscious of the inexorable lapse of time, and of
+certain probabilities which that lapse may bring with it. Lady Lundie
+has very little to say about herself. She is only in town for a few
+weeks. Her life is a life of retirement. "My modest round of duties
+at Windygates, Lord Holchester; occasionally relieved, when my mind
+is overworked, by the society of a few earnest friends whose views
+harmonize with my own--my existence passes (not quite uselessly, I hope)
+in that way. I have no news; I see nothing--except, indeed, yesterday, a
+sight of the saddest kind." She pauses there. Julius observes that he is
+expected to make inquiries, and makes them accordingly.
+
+Lady Lundie hesitates; announces that her news refers to that painful
+past event which she has already touched on; acknowledges that she could
+not find herself in London without feeling an act of duty involved in
+making inquiries at the asylum in which Hester Dethridge is confined for
+life; announces that she has not only made the inquiries, but has seen
+the unhappy woman herself; has spoken to her, has found her unconscious
+of her dreadful position, incapable of the smallest exertion of memory,
+resigned to the existence that she leads, and likely (in the opinion
+of the medical superintendent) to live for some years to come. Having
+stated these facts, her ladyship is about to make a few of those
+"remarks appropriate to the occasion," in which she excels, when the
+door opens; and Lady Holchester, in search of her missing husband,
+enters the room.
+
+II.
+
+There is a new outburst of affectionate interest on Lady Lundie's
+part--met civilly, but not cordially, by Lady Holchester. Julius's wife
+seems, like Julius, to be uneasily conscious of the lapse of time. Like
+Julius again, she privately wonders how long Lady Lundie is going to
+stay.
+
+Lady Lundie shows no signs of leaving the sofa. She has evidently come
+to Holchester House to say something--and she has not said it yet. Is
+she going to say it? Yes. She is going to get, by a roundabout way, to
+the object in view. She has another inquiry of the affectionate sort
+to make. May she be permitted to resume the subject of Lord and Lady
+Holchester's travels? They have been at Rome. Can they confirm the
+shocking intelligence which has reached her of the "apostasy" of Mrs.
+Glenarm?
+
+Lady Holchester can confirm it, by personal experience. Mrs. Glenarm
+has renounced the world, and has taken refuge in the bosom of the Holy
+Catholic Church. Lady Holchester has seen her in a convent at Rome. She
+is passing through the period of her probation; and she is resolved to
+take the veil. Lady Lundie, as a good Protestant, lifts her hands in
+horror--declares the topic to be too painful to dwell on--and, by way of
+varying it, goes straight to the point at last. Has Lady I Holchester,
+in the course of her continental experience, happened to meet with, or
+to hear of--Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth?
+
+"I have ceased, as you know, to hold any communication with my
+relatives," Lady Lundie explains. "The course they took at the time of
+our family trial--the sympathy they felt with a Person whom I can not
+even now trust myself to name more particularly--alienated us from each
+other. I may be grieved, dear Lady Holchester; but I bear no malice. And
+I shall always feel a motherly interest in hearing of Blanche's welfare.
+I have been told that she and her husband were traveling, at the time
+when you and Lord Holchester were traveling. Did you meet with them?"
+
+Julius and his wife looked at each other. Lord Holchester is dumb. Lady
+Holchester replies:
+
+"We saw Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth at Florence, and afterward
+at Naples, Lady Lundie. They returned to England a week since, in
+anticipation of a certain happy event, which will possibly increase the
+members of your family circle. They are now in London. Indeed, I may
+tell you that we expect them here to lunch to-day."
+
+Having made this plain statement, Lady Holchester looks at Lady Lundie.
+(If _that_ doesn't hasten her departure, nothing will!)
+
+Quite useless! Lady Lundie holds her ground. Having heard absolutely
+nothing of her relatives for the last six months, she is burning with
+curiosity to hear more. There is a name she has not mentioned yet. She
+places a certain constraint upon herself, and mentions it now.
+
+"And Sir Patrick?" says her ladyship, subsiding into a gentle
+melancholy, suggestive of past injuries condoned by Christian
+forgiveness. "I only know what report tells me. Did you meet with Sir
+Patrick at Florence and Naples, also?"
+
+Julius and his wife look at each other again. The clock in the hall
+strikes. Julius shudders. Lady Holchester's patience begins to give way.
+There is an awkward pause. Somebody must say something. As before, Lady
+Holchester replies "Sir Patrick went abroad, Lady Lundie, with his niece
+and her husband; and Sir Patrick has come back with them."
+
+"In good health?" her ladyship inquires.
+
+"Younger than ever," Lady Holchester rejoins.
+
+Lady Lundie smiles satirically. Lady Holchester notices the smile;
+decides that mercy shown to _this_ woman is mercy misplaced; and
+announces (to her husband's horror) that she has news to tell of Sir
+Patrick, which will probably take his sister-in-law by surprise.
+
+Lady Lundie waits eagerly to hear what the news is.
+
+"It is no secret," Lady Holchester proceeds--"though it is only known,
+as yet to a few intimate friends. Sir Patrick has made an important
+change in his life."
+
+Lady Lundie's charming smile suddenly dies out.
+
+"Sir Patrick is not only a very clever and a very agreeable man," Lady
+Holchester resumes a little maliciously; "he is also, in all his habits
+and ways (as you well know), a man younger than his years--who still
+possesses many of the qualities which seldom fail to attract women."
+
+Lady Lundie starts to her feet.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me, Lady Holchester, that Sir Patrick is
+married?"
+
+"I do."
+
+Her ladyship drops back on the sofa; helpless really and truly helpless,
+under the double blow that has fallen on her. She is not only struck out
+of her place as the chief woman of the family, but (still on the right
+side of forty) she is socially superannuated, as The Dowager Lady
+Lundie, for the rest of her life!
+
+"At his age!" she exclaims, as soon as she can speak.
+
+"Pardon me for reminding you," Lady Holchester answers, "that plenty of
+men marry at Sir Patrick's age. In his case, it is only due to him to
+say that his motive raises him beyond the reach of ridicule or reproach.
+His marriage is a good action, in the highest sense of the word. It does
+honor to _him,_ as well as to the lady who shares his position and his
+name."
+
+"A young girl, of course!" is Lady Lundie's next remark.
+
+"No. A woman who has been tried by no common suffering, and who has
+borne her hard lot nobly. A woman who deserves the calmer and the
+happier life on which she is entering now."
+
+"May I ask who she is?"
+
+Before the question can be answered, a knock at the house door announces
+the arrival of visitors. For the third time, Julius and his wife look at
+each other. On this occasion, Julius interferes.
+
+"My wife has already told you, Lady Lundie, that we expect Mr. and Mrs.
+Brinkworth to lunch. Sir Patrick, and the new Lady Lundie, accompany
+them. If I am mistaken in supposing that it might not be quite agreeable
+to you to meet them, I can only ask your pardon. If I am right, I will
+leave Lady Holchester to receive our friends, and will do myself the
+honor of taking you into another room."
+
+He advances to the door of an inner room. He offers his arm to Lady
+Lundie. Her ladyship stands immovable; determined to see the woman who
+has supplanted her. In a moment more, the door of entrance from the hall
+is thrown open; and the servant announces, "Sir Patrick and Lady Lundie.
+Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth."
+
+Lady Lundie looks at the woman who has taken her place at the head of
+the family; and sees--ANNE SILVESTER!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins
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