Patrick in an eager whisper.

"I hardly dare ask you what I have got it on my mind to say," he began.
"I must bear it if you are angry with me, Sir Patrick. But--only tell me
one thing. Is there a way out of it for us? Have you thought of that?"

"I can not trust myself to speak of it clearly and composedly to-night,"
said Sir Patrick. "Be satisfied if I tell you that I have thought it all
out--and wait for the rest till to-morrow."

Other persons concerned in the coming drama had had past difficulties
to think out, and future movements to consider, during the interval
occupied by Arnold and Blanche on their return journey to England.
Between the seventeenth and the twentieth of September Geoffrey Delamayn
had left Swanhaven, on the way to his new training quarters in the
neighborhood in which the Foot-Race at Fulham was to be run. Between
the same dates, also, Captain Newenden had taken the opportunity, while
passing through London on his way south, to consult his solicitors. The
object of the conference was to find means of discovering an anonymous
letter-writer in Scotland, who had presumed to cause serious annoyance
to Mrs. Glenarm.

Thus, by ones and twos, converging from widely distant quarters, they
were now beginning to draw together, in the near neighborhood of the
great city which was soon destined to assemble them all, for the first
and the last time in this world, face to face.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.

THE WAY OUT.

BREAKFAST was just over. Blanche, seeing a pleasantly-idle morning
before her, proposed to Arnold to take a stroll in the grounds.

The garden was blight with sunshine, and the bride was bright with
good-humor. She caught her uncle's eye, looking at her admiringly, and
paid him a little compliment in return. "You have no idea," she said,
"how nice it is to be back at Ham Farm!"

"I am to understand then," rejoined Sir Patrick, "that I am forgiven for
interrupting the honey-moon?"

"You are more than forgiven for interrupting it," said Blanche--"you are
thanked. As a married woman," she proceeded, with the air of a matron of
at least twenty years' standing, "I have been thinking the subject over;
and I have arrived at the conclusion that a honey-moon which takes the
form of a tour on the Continent, is one of our national abuses which
stands in need of reform. When you are in love with each other (consider
a marriage without love to be no marriage at all), what do you want with
t