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 v