life he had saved--at the man who had devotedly served him in return. A
hideous cunning leered at his mouth and peeped out of his eyes. "Arnold
Brinkworth pretended to be married to her at the inn. By the lord Harry!
that's a way out of it that never struck me before!" With that thought
in his heart he turned back again to his half-finished letter to Julius.
For once in his life he was strongly, fiercely agitated. For once in
his life he was daunted--and that by his Own Thought! He had written to
Julius under a strong sense of the necessity of gaining time to delude
Anne into leaving Scotland before he ventured on paying his addresses to
Mrs. Glenarm. His letter contained a string of clumsy excuses, intended
to delay his return to his brother's house. "No," he said to himself, as
he read it again. "Whatever else may do--_this_ won't!" He looked round
once more at Arnold, and slowly tore the letter into fragments as he
looked.)

In the mean time Blanche had not done yet. "No," she said, when Arnold
proposed an adjournment to the garden; "I have something more to say,
and you are interested in it, this time." Arnold resigned himself to
listen, and worse still to answer, if there was no help for it, in the
character of an innocent stranger who had never been near the Craig
Fernie inn.

"Well," Blanche resumed, "and what do you think has come of my letter to
Anne?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Nothing has come of it!"

"Indeed?"

"Absolutely nothing! I know she received the letter yesterday morning. I
ought to have had the answer to-day at breakfast."

"Perhaps she thought it didn't require an answer."

"She couldn't have thought that, for reasons that I know of. Besides, in
my letter yesterday I implored her to tell me (if it was one line only)
whether, in guessing at what her trouble was, Sir Patrick and I had not
guessed right. And here is the day getting on, and no answer! What am I
to conclude?"

"I really can't say!"

"Is it possible, Arnold, that we have _not_ guessed right, after all?
Is the wickedness of that man who blew the candles out wickedness beyond
our discovering? The doubt is so dreadful that I have made up my mind
not to bear it after to-day. I count on your sympathy and assistance
when to-morrow comes!"

Arnold's heart sank. Some new complication was evidently gathering round
him. He waited in silence to hear the worst. Blanche bent forward, and
whispered to him.

"This is a secret," she