r. And, better still, the lady's friend
looked as if she wanted it!

"Ay! ay!" he said, with all due appearance of carelessness. "Like
eneugh. From the mistress downward, they're a' kittle cattle at the inn
since I've left 'em. What may it ha' been that she lost?"

"She lost a letter."

The look of uneasy expectation reappeared in the eye of Mr. Bishopriggs.
It was a question--and a serious question, from his point of
view--whether any suspicion of theft was attached to the disappearance
of the letter.

"When ye say 'lost,'" he asked, "d'ye mean stolen?"

Blanche was quite quick enough to see the necessity of quieting his mind
on this point.

"Oh no!" she answered. "Not stolen. Only lost. Did you hear about it?"

"Wherefore suld _I_ ha' heard aboot it?" He looked hard at Blanche--and
detected a momentary hesitation in her face. "Tell me this, my young
leddy," he went on, advancing warily near to the point. "When ye're
speering for news o' your friend's lost letter--what sets ye on comin'
to _me?_"

Those words were decisive. It is hardly too much to say that Blanche's
future depended on Blanche's answer to that question.

If she could have produced the money; and if she had said, boldly, "You
have got the letter, Mr. Bishopriggs: I pledge my word that no questions
shall be asked, and I offer you ten pounds for it"--in all probability
the bargain would have been struck; and the whole course of coming
events would, in that case, have been altered. But she had no money
left; and there were no friends, in the circle at Swanhaven, to whom she
could apply, without being misinterpreted, for a loan of ten pounds,
to be privately intrusted to her on the spot. Under stress of sheer
necessity Blanche abandoned all hope of making any present appeal of a
pecuniary nature to the confidence of Bishopriggs.

The one other way of attaining her object that she could see was to arm
herself with the influence of Sir Patrick's name. A man, placed in her
position, would have thought it mere madness to venture on such a
risk as this. But Blanche--with one act of rashness already on her
conscience--rushed, woman-like, straight to the commission of another.
The same headlong eagerness to reach her end, which had hurried her into
questioning Geoffrey before he left Windygates, now drove her, just
as recklessly, into taking the management of Bishopriggs out of Sir
Patrick's skilled and practiced hands. The starving sisterly love in he