e
taken off the blister. Sir Patrick pressed it harder than ever.

"You quite mistake me," he replied. "I meant that Blanche was afraid to
tell you the true cause of her illness. The true cause is anxiety about
Miss Silvester."

Lady Lundie emitted another scream--a loud scream this time--and closed
her eyes in horror.

"I can run out of the house," cried her ladyship, wildly. "I can fly to
the uttermost corners of the earth; but I can _not_ hear that person's
name mentioned! No, Sir Patrick! not in my presence! not in my room!
not while I am mistress at Windygates House!"

"I am sorry to say any thing that is disagreeable to you, Lady Lundie.
But the nature of my errand here obliges me to touch--as lightly as
possible--on something which has happened in your house without your
knowledge."

Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes, and became the picture of
attention. A casual observer might have supposed her ladyship to be not
wholly inaccessible to the vulgar emotion of curiosity.

"A visitor came to Windygates yesterday, while we were all at lunch,"
proceeded Sir Patrick. "She--"

Lady Lundie seized the scarlet memorandum-book, and stopped her
brother-in-law, before he could get any further. Her ladyship's next
words escaped her lips spasmodically, like words let at intervals out of
a trap.

"I undertake--as a woman accustomed to self-restraint, Sir Patrick--I
undertake to control myself, on one condition. I won't have the name
mentioned. I won't have the sex mentioned. Say, 'The Person,' if
you please. 'The Person,'" continued Lady Lundie, opening her
memorandum-book and taking up her pen, "committed an audacious invasion
of my premises yesterday?"

Sir Patrick bowed. Her ladyship made a note--a fiercely-penned note
that scratched the paper viciously--and then proceeded to examine her
brother-in-law, in the capacity of witness.

"What part of my house did 'The Person' invade? Be very careful, Sir
Patrick! I propose to place myself under the protection of a justice of
the peace; and this is a memorandum of my statement. The library--did I
understand you to say? Just so--the library."

"Add," said Sir Patrick, with another pressure on the blister, "that The
Person had an interview with Blanche in the library."

Lady Lundie's pen suddenly stuck in the paper, and scattered a little
shower of ink-drops all round it. "The library," repeated her ladyship,
in a voice suggestive of approaching suffocation. "I und