er into telling his friend what his friend had better not know. Sad
(isn't it?) for me to be instilling these lessons of duplicity into the
youthful mind. A wise person once said, 'The older a man gets the
worse he gets.' That wise person, my dear, had me in his eye, and was
perfectly right."

He mitigated the pain of that confession with a pinch of snuff, and went
to the whist table to wait until the end of the rubber gave him a place
at the game.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.

FORWARD.

BLANCHE found her lover as attentive as usual to her slightest wish, but
not in his customary good spirits. He pleaded fatigue, after his long
watch at the cross-roads, as an excuse for his depression. As long as
there was any hope of a reconciliation with Geoffrey, he was unwilling
to tell Blanche what had happened that afternoon. The hope grew fainter
and fainter as the evening advanced. Arnold purposely suggested a
visit to the billiard-room, and joined the game, with Blanche, to give
Geoffrey an opportunity of saying the few gracious words which would
have made them friends again. Geoffrey never spoke the words; he
obstinately ignored Arnold's presence in the room.

At the card-table the whist went on interminably. Lady Lundie, Sir
Patrick, and the surgeon, were all inveterate players, evenly matched.
Smith and Jones (joining the game alternately) were aids to whist,
exactly as they were aids to conversation. The same safe and modest
mediocrity of style distinguished the proceedings of these two gentlemen
in all the affairs of life.

The time wore on to midnight. They went to bed late and they rose late
at Windygates House. Under that hospitable roof, no intrusive hints, in
the shape of flat candlesticks exhibiting themselves with ostentatious
virtue on side-tables, hurried the guest to his room; no vile bell
rang him ruthlessly out of bed the next morning, and insisted on his
breakfasting at a given hour. Life has surely hardships enough that
are inevitable without gratuitously adding the hardship of absolute
government, administered by a clock?

It was a quarter past twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the
whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of
going to bed. Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a
last rubber. Blanche vanished while her stepmother's eye was on her;
and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the
hands of her maid. Nobody fo