Chapter THE TENTH: Mr. Bishopriggs (11)

He waited once more, to make sure of his own composure--and turned again to the letter, to see what the writer had to say for himself, in the way of explanation and excuse.

Arnold had plenty to say--with the drawback of not knowing how to say it. It was hard to decide which quality in his letter was most marked--the total absence of arrangement, or the total absence of reserve. Without beginning, middle, or end, he told the story of his fatal connection with the troubles of Anne Silvester, from the memorable day when Geoffrey Delamayn sent him to Craig Fernie, to the equally memorable night when Sir Patrick had tried vainly to make him open his lips at Ham Farm.

“I own I have behaved like a fool,” the letter concluded, “in keeping Geoffrey Delamayn’s secret for him--as things have turned out. But how could I tell upon him without compromising Miss Silvester? Read her letter, and you will see what she says, and how generously she releases me. It’s no use saying I am sorry I wasn’t more cautious. The mischief is done. I’ll stick at nothing--as I have said before--to undo it. Only tell me what is the first step I am to take; and, as long as it don’t part me from Blanche, rely on my taking it. Waiting to hear from you, I remain, dear Sir Patrick, yours in great perplexity, Arnold Brinkworth.”

Sir Patrick folded the letter, and looked at the two inclosures lying on the table. His eye was hard, his brow was frowning, as he put his hand to take up Anne’s letter. The letter from Arnold’s agent in Edinburgh lay nearer to him. As it happened, he took that first.

It was short enough, and clearly enough written, to invite a reading before he put it down again. The lawyer reported that he had made the necessary inquiries at Glasgow, with this result. Anne had been traced to The Sheep’s Head Hotel. She had lain there utterly helpless, from illness, until the beginning of September. She had been advertised, without result, in the Glasgow newspapers. On the 5th of September she had sufficiently recovered to be able to leave the hotel. She had been seen at the railway station on the same day--but from that point all trace of her had been lost once more. The lawyer had accordingly stopped the proceedings, and now waited further instructions from his client.

This letter was not without its effect in encouraging Sir Patrick to suspend the harsh and hasty judgment of Anne, which any man, placed in his present situation, must have been inclined to form. Her illness claimed its small share of sympathy. Her friendless position--so plainly and so sadly revealed by the advertising in the newspapers--pleaded for merciful construction of faults committed, if faults there were. Gravely, but not angrily, Sir Patrick opened her letter--the letter that cast a doubt on his niece’s marriage.

Thus Anne Silvester wrote:

“GLASGOW, _September_ 5.

“DEAR MR. BRINKWORTH,--Nearly three weeks since I attempted to write to you from this place. I was seized by sudden illness while I was engaged over my letter; and from that time to this I have laid helpless in bed--very near, as they tell me, to death. I was strong enough to be dressed, and to sit up for a little while yesterday and the day before. To-day, I have made a better advance toward recovery. I can hold my pen and control my thoughts. The first use to which I put this improvement is to write these lines.

“I am going (so far as I know) to surprise--possibly to alarm--you. There is no escaping from it, for you or for me; it must be done.

“Thinking of how best to introduce what I am now obliged to say, I can find no better way than this. I must ask you to take your memory back to a day which we have both bitter reason to regret--the day when Geoffrey Delamayn sent you to see me at the inn at Craig Fernie.

“You may possibly not remember--it unhappily produced no impression on you at the time--that I felt, and expressed, more than once on that occasion, a very great dislike to your passing me off on the people of the inn as your wife. It was necessary to my being permitted to remain at Craig Fernie that you should do so. I knew this; but still I shrank from it. It was impossible for me to contradict you, without involving you in the painful consequences, and running the risk of making a scandal which might find its way to Blanche’s ears. I knew this also; but still my conscience reproached me. It was a vague feeling. I was quite unaware of the actual danger in which you were placing yourself, or I would have spoken out, no matter what came of it. I had what is called a presentiment that you were not acting discreetly--nothing more. As I love and honor my mother’s memory--as I trust in the mercy of God--this is the truth.

“You left the inn the next morning, and we have not met since.

“A few days after you went away my anxieties grew more than I could bear alone. I went secretly to Windygates, and had an interview with Blanche.

“She was absent for a few minutes from the room in which we had met. In that interval I saw Geoffrey Delamayn for the first time since I had left him at Lady Lundie’s lawn-party. He treated me as if I was a stranger. He told me that he had found out all that had passed between us at the inn. He said he had taken a lawyer’s opinion. Oh, Mr. Brinkworth! how can I break it to you? how can I write the words which repeat what he said to me next? It must be done. Cruel as it is, it must be done. He refused to my face to marr y me. He said I was married already. He said I was your wife.

“Now you know why I have referred you to what I felt (and confessed to feeling) when we were together at Craig Fernie. If you think hard thoughts, and say hard words of me, I can claim no right to blame you. I am innocent--and yet it is my fault.

“My head swims, and the foolish tears are rising in spite of me. I must leave off, and rest a little.

“I have been sitting at the window, and watching the people in the street as they go by. They are all strangers. But, somehow, the sight of them seems to rest my mind. The hum of the great city gives me heart, and helps me to go on.

“I can not trust myself to write of the man who has betrayed us both. Disgraced and broken as I am, there is something still left in me which lifts me above _him._ If he came repentant, at this moment, and offered me all that rank and wealth and worldly consideration can give, I would rather be what I am now than be his wife.

“Let me speak of you; and (for Blanche’s sake) let me speak of myself.

“I ought, no doubt, to have waited to see you at Windygates, and to have told you at once of what had happened. But I was weak and ill and the shock of hearing what I heard fell so heavily on me that I fainted. After I came to myself I was so horrified, when I thought of you and Blanche that a sort of madness possessed me. I had but one idea--the idea of running away and hiding myself.

“My mind got clearer and quieter on the way to this place; and, arrived here, I did what I hope and believe was the best thing I could do. I consulted two lawyers. They differed in opinion as to whether we were married or not--according to the law which decides on such things in Scotland. The first said Yes. The second said No--but advised me to write immediately and tell you the position in which you stood. I attempted to write the same day, and fell ill as you know.

“Thank God, the delay that has happened is of no consequence. I asked Blanche, at Windygates, when you were to be married--and she told me not until the end of the autumn. It is only the fifth of September now. You have plenty of time before you. For all our sakes, make good use of it.

“What are you to do?

“Go at once to Sir Patrick Lundie, and show him this letter. Follow his advice--no matter how it may affect _me._ I should ill requite your kindness, I should be false indeed to the love I bear to Blanche, if I hesitated to brave any exposure that may now be necessary in your interests and in hers. You have been all that is generous, all that is delicate, all that is kind in this matter. You have kept my disgraceful secret--I am quite sure of it--with the fidelity of an honorable man who has had a woman’s reputation placed in his charge. I release you, with my whole heart, dear Mr. Brinkworth, from your pledge. I entreat you, on my knees, to consider yourself free to reveal the truth. I will make any acknowledgment, on my side, that is needful under the circumstances--no matter how public it may be. Release yourself at any price; and then, and not till then, give back your regard to the miserable woman who has laden you with the burden of her sorrow, and darkened your life for a moment with the shadow of her shame.

“Pray don’t think there is any painful sacrifice involved in this. The quieting of my own mind is involved in it--and that is all.

“What has life left for _me?_ Nothing but the barren necessity of living. When I think of the future now, my mind passes over the years that may be left to me in this world. Sometimes I dare to hope that the Divine Mercy of Christ--which once pleaded on earth for a woman like me--may plead, when death has taken me, for my spirit in Heaven. Sometimes I dare to hope that I may see my mother, and Blanche’s mother, in the better world. Their hearts were bound together as the hearts of sisters while they were here; and they left to their children the legacy of their love. Oh, help me to say, if we meet again, that not in vain I promised to be a sister to Blanche! The debt I owe to her is the hereditary debt of my mother’s gratitude. And what am I now? An obstacle in the way of the happiness of her life. Sacrifice me to that happiness, for God’s sake! It is the one thing I have left to live for. Again and again I say it--I care nothing for myself. I have no right to be considered; I have no wish to be considered. Tell the whole truth about me, and call me to bear witness to it as publicly as you please!

“I have waited a little, once more, trying to think, before I close my letter, what there may be still left to write.

“I can not think of any thing left but the duty of informing you how you may find me if you wish to write--or if it is thought necessary that we should meet again.

“One word before I tell you this.

“It is impossible for me to guess what you will do, or what you will be advised to do by others, when you get my letter. I don’t even know that you may not already have heard of what your position is from Geoffrey Delamayn himself. In this event, or in the event of your thinking it desirable to take Blanche into your confidence, I venture to suggest that you should appoint some person whom you can trust to see me on your behalf--or, if you can not do this that you should see me in the presence of a third person. The man who has not hesitated to betray us both, will not hesitate to misrepresent us in the vilest way, if he can do it in the future. For your own sake, let us be careful to give lying tongues no opportunity of assailing your place in Blanche’s estimation. Don’t act so as to risk putting yourself in a false position _again!_ Don’t let it be possible that a feeling unworthy of her should be roused in the loving and generous nature of your future wife!

“This written, I may now tell you how to communicate with me after I have left this place.

“You will find on the slip of paper inclosed the name and address of the second of the two lawyers whom I consulted in Glasgow. It is arranged between us that I am to inform him, by letter, of the next place to which I remove, and that he is to communicate the information either to you or to Sir Patrick Lundie, on your applying for it personally or by writing. I don’t yet know myself where I may find refuge. Nothing is certain but that I can not, in my present state of weakness, travel far.

“If you wonder why I move at all until I am stronger, I can only give a reason which may appear fanciful and overstrained.

“I have been informed that I was advertised in the Glasgow newspapers during the time when I lay at this hotel, a stranger at the point of death. Trouble has perhaps made me morbidly suspicious. I am afraid of what may happen if I stay here, after my place of residence has been made publicly known. So, as soon as I can move, I go away in secret. It will be enough for me, if I can find rest and peace in some quiet place, in the country round Glasgow. You need feel no anxiety about my means of living. I have money enough for all that I need--and, if I get well again, I know how to earn my bread.

“I send no message to Blanche--I dare not till this is over. Wait till she is your happy wife; and then give her a kiss, and say it comes from Anne.

“Try and forgive me, dear Mr. Brinkworth. I have said all. Yours gratefully,

“ANNE SILVESTER.”

Sir Patrick put the letter down with unfeigned respect for the woman who had written it.

Something of the personal influence which Anne exercised more or less over all the men with whom she came in contact seemed to communicate itself to the old lawyer through the medium of her letter. His thoughts perversely wandered away from the serious and pressing question of his niece’s position into a region of purely speculative inquiry relating to Anne. What infatuation (he asked himself) had placed that noble creature at the mercy of such a man as Geoffrey Delamayn?

We have all, at one time or another in our lives, been perplexed as Sir Patrick was perplexed now.

If we know any thing by experience, we know that women cast themselves away impulsively on unworthy men, and that men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy w omen. We have the institution of Divorce actually among us, existing mainly because the two sexes are perpetually placing themselves in these anomalous relations toward each other. And yet, at every fresh instance which comes before us, we persist in being astonished to find that the man and the woman have not chosen each other on rational and producible grounds! We expect human passion to act on logical principles; and human fallibility--with love for its guide--to be above all danger of making a mistake! Ask the wisest among Anne Silvester’s sex what they saw to rationally justify them in choosing the men to whom they have given their hearts and their lives, and you will be putting a question to those wise women which they never once thought of putting to themselves. Nay, more still. Look into your own experience, and say frankly, Could you justify your own excellent choice at the time when you irrevocably made it? Could you have put your reasons on paper when you first owned to yourself that you loved him? And would the reasons have borne critical inspection if you had?

Sir Patrick gave it up in despair. The interests of his niece were at stake. He wisely determined to rouse his mind by occupying himself with the practical necessities of the moment. It was essential to send an apology to the rector, in the first place, so as to leave the evening at his disposal for considering what preliminary course of conduct he should advise Arnold to pursue.

After writing a few lines of apology to his partner at Piquet--assigning family business as the excuse for breaking his engagement--Sir Patrick rang the bell. The faithful Duncan appeared, and saw at once in his master s face that something had happened.

“Send a man with this to the Rectory,” said Sir Patrick. “I can’t dine out to-day. I must have a chop at home.”

“I am afraid, Sir Patrick--if I may be excused for remarking it--you have had some bad news?”

“The worst possible news, Duncan. I can’t tell you about it now. Wait within hearing of the bell. In the mean time let nobody interrupt me. If the steward himself comes I can’t see him.”

After thinking it over carefully, Sir Patrick decided that there was no alternative but to send a message to Arnold and Blanche, summoning them back to England in the first place. The necessity of questioning Arnold, in the minutest detail, as to every thing that had happened between Anne Silvester and himself at the Craig Fernie inn, was the first and foremost necessity of the case.

At the same time it appeared to be desirable, for Blanche’s sake, to keep her in ignorance, for the present at least, of what had happened. Sir Patrick met this difficulty with characteristic ingenuity and readiness of resource.

He wrote a telegram to Arnold, expressed in the following terms:

“Your letter and inclosures received. Return to Ham Farm as soon as you conveniently can. Keep the thing still a secret from Blanche. Tell her, as the reason for coming back, that the lost trace of Anne Silvester has been recovered, and that there may be reasons for her returning to England before any thing further can be done.”

Duncan having been dispatched to the station with this message, Duncan’s master proceeded to calculate the question of time.

Arnold would in all probability receive the telegram at Baden, on the next day, September the seventeenth. In three days more he and Blanche might be expected to reach Ham Farm. During the interval thus placed at his disposal Sir Patrick would have ample time in which to recover himself, and to see his way to acting for the best in the alarming emergency that now confronted him.

On the nineteenth Sir Patrick received a telegram informing him that he might expect to see the young couple late in the evening on the twentieth.

Late in the evening the sound of carriage-wheels was audible on the drive; and Sir Patrick, opening the door of his room, heard the familiar voices in the hall.

“Well!” cried Blanche, catching sight of him at the door, “is Anne found?”

“Not just yet, my dear.”

“Is there news of her?”

“Yes.”

“Am I in time to be of use?”

“In excellent time. You shall hear all about it to-morrow. Go and take off your traveling-things, and come down again to supper as soon as you can.”

Blanche kissed him, and went on up stairs. She had, as her uncle thought in the glimpse he had caught of her, been improved by her marriage. It had quieted and steadied her. There were graces in her look and manner which Sir Patrick had not noticed before. Arnold, on his side, appeared to less advantage. He was restless and anxious; his position with Miss Silvester seemed to be preying on his mind. As soon as his young wife’s back was turned, he appealed to Sir Patrick in an eager whisper.

“I hardly dare ask you what I have got it on my mind to say,” he began. “I must bear it if you are angry with me, Sir Patrick. But--only tell me one thing. Is there a way out of it for us? Have you thought of that?”

“I can not trust myself to speak of it clearly and composedly to-night,” said Sir Patrick. “Be satisfied if I tell you that I have thought it all out--and wait for the rest till to-morrow.”

Other persons concerned in the coming drama had had past difficulties to think out, and future movements to consider, during the interval occupied by Arnold and Blanche on their return journey to England. Between the seventeenth and the twentieth of September Geoffrey Delamayn had left Swanhaven, on the way to his new training quarters in the neighborhood in which the Foot-Race at Fulham was to be run. Between the same dates, also, Captain Newenden had taken the opportunity, while passing through London on his way south, to consult his solicitors. The object of the conference was to find means of discovering an anonymous letter-writer in Scotland, who had presumed to cause serious annoyance to Mrs. Glenarm.

Thus, by ones and twos, converging from widely distant quarters, they were now beginning to draw together, in the near neighborhood of the great city which was soon destined to assemble them all, for the first and the last time in this world, face to face.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.

THE WAY OUT.

BREAKFAST was just over. Blanche, seeing a pleasantly-idle morning before her, proposed to Arnold to take a stroll in the grounds.

The garden was blight with sunshine, and the bride was bright with good-humor. She caught her uncle’s eye, looking at her admiringly, and paid him a little compliment in return. “You have no idea,” she said, “how nice it is to be back at Ham Farm!”

“I am to understand then,” rejoined Sir Patrick, “that I am forgiven for interrupting the honey-moon?”

“You are more than forgiven for interrupting it,” said Blanche--“you are thanked. As a married woman,” she proceeded, with the air of a matron of at least twenty years’ standing, “I have been thinking the subject over; and I have arrived at the conclusion that a honey-moon which takes the form of a tour on the Continent, is one of our national abuses which stands in need of reform. When you are in love with each other (consider a marriage without love to be no marriage at all), what do you want with the excitement of seeing strange places? Isn’t it excitement enough, and isn’t it strange enough, to a newly-married woman to see such a total novelty as a husband? What is the most interesting object on the face of creation to a man in Arnold’s position? The Alps? Certainly not! The most interesting object is the wife. And the proper time for a bridal tour is the time--say ten or a dozen years later--when you are beginning (not to get tired of each other, that’s out of the question) but to get a little too well used to each other. Then take your tour to Switzerland--and you give the Alps a chance. A succession of honey-moon trips, in the autumn of married life--there is my proposal for an improvement on the present state of things! Come into the garden, Arnold; and let us calculate how long it will be before we get weary of each other, and want the beauties of nature to keep us company.”

Arnold looked appealingly to Sir Patrick. Not a word had passed between them, as yet, on the serious subject of Anne Silvester’s letter. Sir Patrick undertook the responsibility of making the necessary excuses to Blanche.

“Forgive me,” he said, “if I ask leave to interfere with your monopoly of Arnold for a little while. I have something to say to him about his property in Scotland. Will you leave him with me, if I promise to release him as soon as possible?”

Blanche smiled graciously. “You shall have him as long as you like, uncle. There’s your hat,” she added, tossing it to her husband, gayly. “I brought it in for you when I got my own. You will find me on the lawn.”

She nodded, and went out.

“Let me hear the worst at once, Sir Patrick,” Arnold began. “Is it serious? Do you think I am to blame?”

“I will answer your last question first,” said Sir Patrick. “Do I think you are to blame? Yes--in this way. You committed an act of unpardonable rashness when you consented to go, as Geoffrey Delamayn’s messenger, to Miss Silvester at the inn. Having once placed yourself in that false position, you could hardly have acted, afterward, otherwise than you did. You could not be expected to know the Scotch law. And, as an honorable man, you were bound to keep a secret confided to you, in which the reputation of a woman was concerned. Your first and last error in this matter, was the fatal error of involving yourself in responsibilities which belonged exclusively to another man.”

“The man had saved my life.” pleaded Arnold--“and I believed I was giving service for service to my dearest friend.”

“As to your other question,” proceeded Sir Patrick. “Do I consider your position to be a serious one? Most assuredly, I do! So long as we are not absolutely certain that Blanche is your lawful wife, the position is more than serious: it is unendurable. I maintain the opinion, mind, out of which (thanks to your honorable silence) that scoundrel Delamayn contrived to cheat me. I told him, what I now tell you--that your sayings and doings at Craig Fernie, do _not_ constitute a marriage, according to Scottish law. But,” pursued Sir Patrick, holding up a warning forefinger at Arnold, “you have read it in Miss Silvester’s letter, and you may now take it also as a result of my experience, that no individual opinion, in a matter of this kind, is to be relied on. Of two lawyers, consulted by Miss Silvester at Glasgow, one draws a directly opposite conclusion to mine, and decides that you and she are married. I believe him to be wrong, but in our situation, we have no other choice than to boldly encounter the view of the case which he represents. In plain English, we must begin by looking the worst in the face.”

Arnold twisted the traveling hat which Blanche had thrown to him, nervously, in both hands. “Supposing the worst comes to the worst,” he asked, “what will happen?”

Sir Patrick shook his head.

“It is not easy to tell you,” he said, “without entering into the legal aspect of the case. I shall only puzzle you if I do that. Suppose we look at the matter in its social bearings--I mean, as it may possibly affect you and Blanche, and your unborn children?”

Arnold gave the hat a tighter twist than ever. “I never thought of the children,” he said, with a look of consternation.

“The children may present themselves,” returned Sir Patrick, dryly, “for all that. Now listen. It may have occurred to your mind that the plain way out of our present dilemma is for you and Miss Silvester, respectively, to affirm what we know to be the truth--namely, that you never had the slightest intention of marrying each other. Beware of founding any hopes on any such remedy as that! If you reckon on it, you reckon without Geoffrey Delamayn. He is interested, remember, in proving you and Miss Silvester to be man and wife. Circumstances may arise--I won’t waste time in guessing at what they may be--which will enable a third person to produce the landlady and the waiter at Craig Fernie in evidence against you--and to assert that your declaration and Miss Silvester’s declaration are the result of collusion between you two. Don’t start! Such things have happened before now. Miss Silvester is poor; and Blanche is rich. You may be made to stand in the awkward position of a man who is denying his marriage with a poor woman, in order to establish his marriage with an heiress: Miss Silvester presumably aiding the fraud, with two strong interests of her own as inducements--the interest of asserting the claim to be the wife of a man of rank, and the interest of earning her reward in money for resigning you to Blanche. There is a case which a scoundrel might set up--and with some appearance of truth too--in a court of justice!”

“Surely, the law wouldn’t allow him to do that?”

“The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time. Let that view of the matter alone now. Delamayn can set the case going, if he likes, without applying to any lawyer to help him. He has only to cause a report to reach Blanche’s ears which publicly asserts that she is not your lawful wife. With her temper, do you suppose she would leave us a minute’s peace till the matter was cleared up? Or take it the other way. Comfort yourself, if you will, with the idea that this affair will trouble nobody in the present. How are we to know it may not turn up in the future under circumstances which may place the legitimacy of your children in doubt? We have a man to deal with who sticks at nothing. We have a state of the law which can only be described as one scandalous uncertainty from beginning to end. And we have two people (Bishopriggs and Mrs. Inchbare) who can, and will, speak to what took place between you and Anne Silvester at the inn. For Blanche’s sake, and for the sake of your unborn children, we must face this matter on the spot--and settle it at once and forever. The question before us now is this. Shall we open the proceedings by communicating with Miss Silvester or not?”

At that important point in the conversation they were interrupted by the reappearance of Blanche. Had she, by any accident, heard what they had been saying?

No; it was the old story of most interruptions. Idleness that considers nothing, had come to look at Industry that bears every thing. It is a law of nature, apparently, that the people in this world who have nothing to do can not support the sight of an uninterrupted occupation in the hands of their neighbors. Blanche produced a new specimen from Arnold’s collection of hats. “I have been thinking about it in the garden,” she said, quite seriously. “Here is the brown one with the high crown. You look better in this than in the white one with the low crown. I have come to change them, that’s all.” She changed the hats with Arnold, and went on, without the faintest suspicion that she was in the way. “Wear the brown one when you come out--and come soon, dear. I won’t stay an instant longer, uncle--I wouldn’t interrupt you for the world.” She kissed her hand to Sir Patrick, and smiled at her husband, and went out.

“What were we saying?” asked Arnold. “It’s awkward to be interrupted in this way, isn’t it?”

“If I know any thing of female human nature,” returned Sir Patrick, composedly, “your wife will be in and out of the room, in that way, the whole morning. I give her ten minutes, Arnold, before she changes her mind again on the serious and weighty subject of the white hat and the brown. These little interruptions--otherwise quite charming--raised a doubt in my mind. Wouldn’t it be wise (I ask myself), if we made a virtue of necessity, and took Blanche into the conversation? What do you say to calling her back and telling her the truth?”

Arnold started, and changed color.

“There are difficulties in the way,” he said.

“My good fellow! at every step of this business there are difficulties in the way. Sooner or later, your wife must know what has happened. The time for telling her is, no doubt, a matter for your decision, not mine. All I say is this. Consider whether the disclosure won’t come from you with a better grace, if you make it before you are fairly driven to the wall, and obliged to open your lips.”

Arnold rose to his fee t--took a turn in the room--sat down again--and looked at Sir Patrick, with the expression of a thoroughly bewildered and thoroughly helpless man.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “It beats me altogether. The truth is, Sir Patrick, I was fairly forced, at Craig Fernie, into deceiving Blanche--in what might seem to her a very unfeeling, and a very unpardonable way.”

“That sounds awkward! What do you mean?”

“I’ll try and tell you. You remember when you went to the inn to see Miss Silvester? Well, being there privately at the time, of course I was obliged to keep out of your way.”

“I see! And, when Blanche came afterward, you were obliged to hide from Blanche, exactly as you had hidden from me?”

“Worse even than that! A day or two later, Blanche took me into her confidence. She spoke to me of her visit to the inn, as if I was a perfect stranger to the circumstances. She told me to my face, Sir Patrick, of the invisible man who had kept so strangely out of her way--without the faintest suspicion that I was the man. And I never opened my lips to set her right! I was obliged to be silent, or I must have betrayed Miss Silvester. What will Blanche think of me, if I tell her now? That’s the question!”

Blanche’s name had barely passed her husband’s lips before Blanche herself verified Sir Patrick’s prediction, by reappearing at the open French window, with the superseded white hat in her hand.

“Haven’t you done yet!” she exclaimed. “I am shocked, uncle, to interrupt you again--but these horrid hats of Arnold’s are beginning to weigh upon my mind. On reconsideration, I think the white hat with the low crown is the most becoming of the two. Change again, dear. Yes! the brown hat is hideous. There’s a beggar at the gate. Before I go quite distracted, I shall give him the brown hat, and have done with the difficulty in that manner. Am I very much in the way of business? I’m afraid I must appear restless? Indeed, I _am_ restless. I can’t imagine what is the matter with me this morning.”

“I can tell you,” said Sir Patrick, in his gravest and dryest manner. “You are suffering, Blanche, from a malady which is exceedingly common among the young ladies of England. As a disease it is quite incurable--and the name of it is Nothing-to-Do.”

Blanche dropped her uncle a smart little courtesy. “You might have told me I was in the way in fewer words than that.” She whisked round, kicked the disgraced brown hat out into the veranda before her, and left the two gentlemen alone once more.

“Your position with your wife, Arnold,” resumed Sir Patrick, returning gravely to the matter in hand, “is certainly a difficult one.” He paused, thinking of the evening when he and Blanche had illustrated the vagueness of Mrs. Inchbare’s description of the man at the inn, by citing Arnold himself as being one of the hundreds of innocent people who answered to it! “Perhaps,” he added, “the situation is even more difficult than you suppose. It would have been certainly easier for _you_--and it would have looked more honorable in _her_ estimation--if you had made the inevitable confession before your marriage. I am, in some degree, answerable for your not having done this--as well as for the far more serious dilemma with Miss Silvester in which you now stand. If I had not innocently hastened your marriage with Blanche, Miss Silvester’s admirable letter would have reached us in ample time to prevent mischief. It’s useless to dwell on that now. Cheer up, Arnold! I am bound to show you the way out of the labyrinth, no matter what the difficulties may be--and, please God, I will do it!”

He pointed to a table at the other end of the room, on which writing materials were placed. “I hate moving the moment I have had my breakfast,” he said. “We won’t go into the library. Bring me the pen and ink here.”

“Are you going to write to Miss Silvester?”

“That is the question before us which we have not settled yet. Before I decide, I want to be in possession of the facts--down to the smallest detail of what took place between you and Miss Silvester at the inn. There is only one way of getting at those facts. I am going to examine you as if I had you before me in the witness-box in court.”

With that preface, and with Arnold’s letter from Baden in his hand as a brief to speak from, Sir Patrick put his questions in clear and endless succession; and Arnold patiently and faithfully answered them all.

The examination proceeded uninterruptedly until it had reached that point in the progress of events at which Anne had crushed Geoffrey Delamayn’s letter in her hand, and had thrown it from her indignantly to the other end of the room. There, for the first time, Sir Patrick dipped his pen in the ink, apparently intending to take a note. “Be very careful here,” he said; “I want to know every thing that you can tell me about that letter.”

“The letter is lost,” said Arnold.

“The letter has been stolen by Bishopriggs,” returned Sir Patrick, “and is in the possession of Bishopriggs at this moment.”

“Why, you know more about it than I do!” exclaimed Arnold.

“I sincerely hope not. I don’t know what was inside the letter. Do you?”

“Yes. Part of it at least.”

“Part of it?”

“There were two letters written, on the same sheet of paper,” said Arnold. “One of them was written by Geoffrey Delamayn--and that is the one I know about.”

Sir Patrick started. His face brightened; he made a hasty note. “Go on,” he said, eagerly. “How came the letters to be written on the same sheet? Explain that!”

Arnold explained that Geoffrey, in the absence of any thing else to write his excuses on to Anne, had written to her on the fourth or blank page of a letter which had been addressed to him by Anne herself.

“Did you read that letter?” asked Sir Patrick.

“I might have read it if I had liked.”

“And you didn’t read it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Out of delicacy.”

Even Sir Patrick’s carefully trained temper was not proof against this. “That is the most misplaced act of delicacy I ever heard of in my life!” cried the old gentleman, warmly. “Never mind! it’s useless to regret it now. At any rate, you read Delamayn’s answer to Miss Silvester’s letter?”

“Yes--I did.”

“Repeat it--as nearly as you can remember at this distance of time.”

“It was so short,” said Arnold, “that there is hardly any thing to repeat. As well as I remember, Geoffrey said he was called away to London by his father’s illness. He told Miss Silvester to stop where she was; and he referred her to me, as messenger. That’s all I recollect of it now.”

“Cudgel your brains, my good fellow! this is very important. Did he make no allusion to his engagement to marry Miss Silvester at Craig Fernie? Didn’t he try to pacify her by an apology of some sort?”

The question roused Arnold’s memory to make another effort.

“Yes,” he answered. “Geoffrey said something about being true to his engagement, or keeping his promise or words to that effect.”

“You’re sure of what you say now?”

“I am certain of it.”

Sir Patrick made another note.

“Was the letter signed?” he asked, when he had done.

“Yes.”

“And dated?”

“Yes.” Arnold’s memory made a second effort, after he had given his second affirmative answer. “Wait a little,” he said. “I remember something else about the letter. It was not only dated. The time of day at which it was written was put as well.”

“How came he to do that?”

“I suggested it. The letter was so short I felt ashamed to deliver it as it stood. I told him to put the time--so as to show her that he was obliged to write in a hurry. He put the time when the train started; and (I think) the time when the letter was written as well.”

“And you delivered that letter to Miss Silvester, with your own hand, as soon as you saw her at the inn?”

“I did.”

Sir Patrick made a third note, and pushed the paper away from him with an air of supreme satisfaction.

“I always suspected that lost letter to be an important document,” he said--“or Bishopriggs would never have stolen it. We must get possession of it, Arnold, at any sacrifice. The first thing to be done (exactly as I anticipated), is to write to the Glasgow lawyer, and find Miss Silvester.”

“Wait a little!” cried a voice at the veranda. “Don’t forget that I have come back from Baden to help you!”

Sir Patrick and Arnold both looked up. This time Blanche had heard the last words that had passed between them. She sat down at the table by Sir Patrick’s side, and laid her hand caressingly on his shoulder.

“You are quite right, uncle,” she said. “I _am_ suffering this morning from the malady of having nothing to do. Are you going to write to Anne? Don’t. Let me write instead.”

Sir Patrick declined to resign the pen.

“The person who knows Miss Silvester’s address,” he said, “is a lawyer in Glasgow. I am going to write to the lawyer. When he sends us word where she is--then, Blanche, will be the time to employ your good offices in winning back your friend.”

He drew the writing materials once more with in his reach, and, suspending the remainder of Arnold’s examination for the present, began his letter to Mr. Crum.

Blanche pleaded hard for an occupation of some sort. “Can nobody give me something to do?” she asked. “Glasgow is such a long way off, and waiting is such weary work. Don’t sit there staring at me, Arnold! Can’t you suggest something?”

Arnold, for once, displayed an unexpected readiness of resource.

“If you want to write,” he said, “you owe Lady Lundie a letter. It’s three days since you heard from her--and you haven’t answered her yet.”

Sir Patrick paused, and looked up quickly from his writing-desk.

“Lady Lundie?” he muttered, inquiringly.

“Yes,” said Blanche. “It’s quite true; I owe her a letter. And of course I ought to tell her we have come back to England. She will be finely provoked when she hears why!”

The prospect of provoking Lady Lundie seemed to rouse Blanche s dormant energies. She took a sheet of her uncle’s note-paper, and began writing her answer then and there.

Sir Patrick completed his communication to the lawyer--after a look at Blanche, which expressed any thing rather than approval of her present employment. Having placed his completed note in the postbag, he silently signed to Arnold to follow him into the garden. They went out together, leaving Blanche absorbed over her letter to her step-mother.

“Is my wife doing any thing wrong?” asked Arnold, who had noticed the look which Sir Patrick had cast on Blanche.

“Your wife is making mischief as fast as her fingers can spread it.”

Arnold stared. “She must answer Lady Lundie’s letter,” he said.

“Unquestionably.”

“And she must tell Lady Lundie we have come back.”

“I don’t deny it.”

“Then what is the objection to her writing?”

Sir Patrick took a pinch of snuff--and pointed with his ivory cane to the bees humming busily about the flower-beds in the sunshine of the autumn morning.

“I’ll show you the objection,” he said. “Suppose Blanche told one of those inveterately intrusive insects that the honey in the flowers happens, through an unexpected accident, to have come to an end--do you think he would take the statement for granted? No. He would plunge head-foremost into the nearest flower, and investigate it for himself.”

“Well?” said Arnold.

“Well--there is Blanche in the breakfast-room telling Lady Lundie that the bridal tour happens, through an unexpected accident, to have come to an end. Do you think Lady Lundie is the sort of person to take the statement for granted? Nothing of the sort! Lady Lundie, like the bee, will insist on investigating for herself. How it will end, if she discovers the truth--and what new complications she may not introduce into a matter which, Heaven knows, is complicated enough already--I leave you to imagine. _My_ poor powers of prevision are not equal to it.”

Before Arnold could answer, Blanche joined them from the breakfast-room.

“I’ve done it,” she said. “It was an awkward letter to write--and it’s a comfort to have it over.”

“You have done it, my dear,” remarked Sir Patrick, quietly. “And it may be a comfort. But it’s not over.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think, Blanche, we shall hear from your step-mother by return of post.”

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-EIGHTH.

THE NEWS FROM GLASGOW.

THE letters to Lady Lundie and to Mr. Crum having been dispatched on Monday, the return of the post might be looked for on Wednesday afternoon at Ham Farm.

Sir Patrick and Arnold held more than one private consultation, during the interval, on the delicate and difficult subject of admitting Blanche to a knowledge of what had happened. The wise elder advised and the inexperienced junior listened. “Think of it,” said Sir Patrick; “and do it.” And Arnold thought of it--and left it undone.

Let those who feel inclined to blame him remember that he had only been married a fortnight. It is hard, surely, after but two weeks’ possession of your wife, to appear before her in the character of an offender on trial--and to find that an angel of retribution has been thrown into the bargain by the liberal destiny which bestowed on you the woman whom you adore!

They were all three at home on the Wednesday afternoon, looking out for the postman.

The correspondence delivered included (exactly as Sir Patrick had foreseen) a letter from Lady Lundie. Further investigation, on the far more interesting subject of the expected news from Glasgow, revealed--nothing. The lawyer had not answered Sir Patrick’s inquiry by return of post.

“Is that a bad sign?” asked Blanche.

“It is a sign that something has happened,” answered her uncle. “Mr. Crum is possibly expecting to receive some special information, and is waiting on the chance of being able to communicate it. We must hope, my dear, in to-morrow’s post.”

“Open Lady Lundie’s letter in the mean time,” said Blanche. “Are you sure it is for you--and not for me?”

There was no doubt about it. Her ladyship’s reply was ominously addressed to her ladyship’s brother-in-law. “I know what that means.” said Blanche, eying her uncle eagerly while he was reading the letter. “If you mention Anne’s name you insult my step-mother. I have mentioned it freely. Lady Lundie is mortally offended with me.”

Rash judgment of youth! A lady who takes a dignified attitude, in a family emergency, is never mortally offended--she is only deeply grieved. Lady Lundie took a dignified attitude. “I well know,” wrote this estimable and Christian woman, “that I have been all along regarded in the light of an intruder by the family connections of my late beloved husband. But I was hardly prepared to find myself entirely shut out from all domestic confidence, at a time when some serious domestic catastrophe has but too evidently taken place. I have no desire, dear Sir Patrick, to intrude. Feeling it, however, to be quite inconsistent with a due regard for my own position--after what has happened--to correspond with Blanche, I address myself to the head of the family, purely in the interests of propriety. Permit me to ask whether--under circumstances which appear to be serious enough to require the recall of my step-daughter and her husband from their wedding tour--you think it DECENT to keep the widow of the late Sir Thomas Lundie entirely in the dark? Pray consider this--not at all out of regard for Me!--but out of regard for your own position with Society. Curiosity is, as you know, foreign to my nature. But when this dreadful scandal (whatever it may be) comes out--which, dear Sir Patrick, it can not fail to do--what will the world think, when it asks for Lady Lundie’s, opinion, and hears that Lady Lundie knew nothing about it? Whichever way you may decide I shall take no offense. I may possibly be wounded--but that won’t matter. My little round of duties will find me still earnest, still cheerful. And even if you shut me out, my best wishes will find their way, nevertheless, to Ham Farm. May I add--without encountering a sneer--that the prayers of a lonely woman are offered for the welfare of all?”

“Well?” said Blanche.

Sir Patrick folded up the letter, and put it in his pocket.

“You have your step-mother’s best wishes, my dear.” Having answered in those terms, he bowed to his niece with his best grace, and walked out of the room.

“Do I think it decent,” he repeated to himself, as he closed the door, “to leave the widow of the late Sir Thomas Lundie in the dark? When a lady’s temper is a little ruffled, I think it more than decent, I think it absolutely desirable, to let that lady have the last word.” He went into the library, and dropped his sister-in-law’s remonstrance into a box, labeled “Unanswered Letters.” Having got rid of it in that way, he hummed his favorite little Scotch air--and put on his hat, and went out to sun himself in the garden.

Meanwhile, Blanche was not quite satisfied with Sir Patrick’s reply. She appealed to her husband. “There is something wrong,” she said--“and my uncle is hiding it from me.”

Arnold could have desired no better opportunity than she had offered to him, in those words, for making the long-deferred disclosure to her of the truth. He lifted his eyes to Blanche’s face. By an unhappy fatality she was looking charmingly that morning. How would she look if he told her the story of the hiding at the inn? Arnold was still in love with her--and Arnold said nothing.

The next day’s post brought not only the anticipated letter from Mr. Crum, but an unexpected Glasgow newspaper as well.

This time Blanche had no reason to complain that her uncle kept his correspondence a secret from her. After reading the lawyer’s letter, with an interest and agitation which showed that the contents had taken him by surprise, he handed it to Arnold and his niece. “Bad news there,” he said. “We must share it together.”

After acknowledging the receipt of Sir Patrick’s letter of inquiry, Mr. Crum began by stating all that he knew of Miss Silvester’s movements--dating from the time when she had left the Sheep’s Head Hotel. About a fortnight since he had received a letter from her informing him that she had found a suitable place of residence in a village near Glasgow. Feeling a strong interest in Miss Silvester, Mr. Crum had visited her some few days afterward. He had satisfied himself that she was lodging with respectable people, and was as comfortably situated as circumstances would permit. For a week more he had heard nothing from the lady. At the expiration of that time he had received a letter from her, telling him that she had read something in a Glasgow newspaper, of that day’s date, which seriously concerned herself, and which would oblige her to travel northward immediately as fast as her strength would permit. At a later period, when she would be more certain of her own movements, she engaged to write again, and let Mr. Crum know where he might communicate with her if necessary. In the mean time, she could only thank him for his kindness, and beg him to take care of any letters or messages which might be left for her. Since the receipt of this communication the lawyer had heard nothing further. He had waited for the morning’s post in the hope of being able to report that he had received some further intelligence. The hope had not been realized. He had now stated all that he knew himself thus far--and he had forwarded a copy of the newspaper alluded to by Miss Silvester, on the chance that an examination of it by Sir Patrick might possibly lead to further discoveries. In conclusion, he pledged himself to write again the moment he had any information to send.

Blanche snatched up the newspaper, and opened it. “Let me look!” she said. “I can find what Anne saw here if any body can!”