ollow 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, steadi