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Man and Wife

by Wilkie Collins

January, 1999  [Etext #1586]


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[Italics are indicatedby underscores
James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp.net.]





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 n 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?"  cri ed 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 r eceived (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
y ounger 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 shou lders. 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 W
indygates?"

"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
excitem ent 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 he lpless 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 c ommand 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; snatchi ng 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 g uardian, 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
s ome 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 _Ecart&#233;_ 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 f irst. 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 i tself, the
alternative, either way, was plain enough. If my lord
lived--Geoffrey would he 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 H
olchester 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 mandlin 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 conte mpt.

"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 smugled 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 lit  erature
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 li ttle
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 g esture, 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 coul d 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 inquiri es 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
_Piqu&#233;_--"

"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 whispe red 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 un derstand 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 B&#233;chamel
sauce at lunch? Pooh! a young man who smokes cigars doesn't know
the difference between B&#233;chamel 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 Scotla nd. 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 co nsulted 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 any thing of the so rt, 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
familiari ty 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 pre
sence! 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 re quite * * * 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 tha t," 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!" whispere d 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, conta ined, 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 Silv ester." 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 se rious 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 lit tle!" 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 compr omised 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 accomplis hment, 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 t riumph, 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?" be 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 a m 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 hare 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 be 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 enthus iasm,
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 s tep-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 positi on 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 h appen 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 i n 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 Hous e 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 prove d 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 th is 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 inclinati
ons. 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 th rough 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 repe ated 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 be 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 shal l 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 Conf ession 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 e ncourage 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 xexperience. 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 Etext of Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins