s; 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be superseded by machinery.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,