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 Silv