t
toward the open heath, he noticed another foot-passenger--apparently a
man--far away in the empty distance. Was the person coming toward him?

He advanced a little. The stranger was doubtless advancing too, so
rapidly did his figure now reveal itself, beyond all doubt, as the
figure of a man. A few minutes more and Arnold fancied he recognized it.
Yet a little longer, and he was quite sure. There was no mistaking the
lithe strength and grace of _that_ man, and the smooth easy swiftness
with which he covered his ground. It was the hero of the coming
foot-race. It was Geoffrey on his way back to Windygates House.

Arnold hurried forward to meet him. Geoffrey stood still, poising
himself on his stick, and let the other come up.

"Have you heard what has happened at the house?" asked Arnold.

He instinctively checked the next question as it rose to his lips.
There was a settled defiance in the expression of Geoffrey's face, which
Arnold was quite at a loss to understand. He looked like a man who
had made up his mind to confront any thing that could happen, and to
contradict any body who spoke to him.

"Something seems to have annoyed you?" said Arnold.

"What's up at the house?" returned Geoffrey, with his loudest voice and
his hardest look.

"Miss Silvester has been at the house."

"Who saw her?"

"Nobody but Blanche."

"Well?"

"Well, she was miserably weak and ill, so ill that she fainted, poor
thing, in the library. Blanche brought her to."

"And what then?"

"We were all at lunch at the time. Blanche left the library, to speak
privately to her uncle. When she went back Miss Silvester was gone, and
nothing has been seen of her since."

"A row at the house?"

"Nobody knows of it at the house, except Blanche--"

"And you? And how many besides?"

"And Sir Patrick. Nobody else."

"Nobody else? Any thing more?"

Arnold remembered his promise to keep the investigation then on foot
a secret from every body. Geoffrey's manner made him--unconsciously to
himself--readier than he might otherwise have been to consider Geoffrey
as included in the general prohibition.

"Nothing more," he answered.

Geoffrey dug the point of his stick deep into the soft, sandy ground.
He looked at the stick, then suddenly pulled it out of the ground and
looked at Arnold. "Good-afternoon!" he said, and went on his way again
by himself.

Arnold followed, and stopped him. For a moment the two men looked at
each other with