tation by making mistakes?
You're one of the new generation, Master Arnold. You can all of you
stare at a famous man; but you haven't an atom of respect for his fame.
If Shakspeare came to life again, and talked of playwriting, the first
pretentious nobody who sat opposite at dinner would differ with him as
composedly as he might differ with you and me. Veneration is dead among
us; the present age has buried it, without a stone to mark the place. So
much for that! Let's get back to Blanche. I suppose you can guess what
the painful subject is that's dwelling on her mind? Miss Silvester has
baffled me, and baffled the Edinburgh police. Blanche discovered that we
had failed last night and Blanche received that letter this morning."

He pushed Anne's letter across the breakfast-table.

Arnold read it, and handed it back without a word. Viewed by the new
light in which he saw Geoffrey's character after the quarrel on the
heath, the letter conveyed but one conclusion to his mind. Geoffrey had
deserted her.

"Well?" said Sir Patrick. "Do you understand what it means?"

"I understand Blanche's wretchedness when she read it."

He said no more than that. It was plain that no information which he
could afford--even if he had considered himself at liberty to give
it--would be of the slightest use in assisting Sir Patrick to trace
Miss Silvester, under present circumstances, There was--unhappily--no
temptation to induce him to break the honorable silence which he
had maintained thus far. And--more unfortunately still--assuming the
temptation to present itself, Arnold's capacity to resist it had never
been so strong a capacity as it was now.

To the two powerful motives which had hitherto tied his tongue--respect
for Anne's reputation, and reluctance to reveal to Blanche the deception
which he had been compelled to practice on her at the inn--to these
two motives there was now added a third. The meanness of betraying the
confidence which Geoffrey had reposed in him would be doubled meanness
if he proved false to his trust after Geoffrey had personally insulted
him. The paltry revenge which that false friend had unhesitatingly
suspected him of taking was a revenge of which Arnold's nature was
simply incapable. Never had his lips been more effectually sealed
than at this moment--when his whole future depended on Sir Patrick's
discovering the part that he had played in past events at Craig Fernie.

"Yes! yes!" resumed Sir Patrick