ect of seeing her! Blanche was radiant with happiness, Arnold was
in high spirits for the first time since his return from Baden.

Sir Patrick tried hard to catch the infection of gayety from his young
friends; but, to his own surprise, not less than to theirs, the effort
proved fruitless. With the tide of events turning decidedly in his
favor--relieved of the necessity of taking a doubtful journey to
Scotland; assured of obtaining his interview with Anne in a few days'
time--he was out of spirits all through the evening.

"Still down on our luck!" exclaimed Arnold, as he and his host finished
their last game of billiards, and parted for the night. "Surely, we
couldn't wish for a more promising prospect than _our_ prospect next
week?"

Sir Patrick laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder.

"Let us look indulgently together," he said, in his whimsically grave
way, "at the humiliating spectacle of an old man's folly. I feel, at
this moment, Arnold, as if I would give every thing that I possess in
the world to have passed over next week, and to be landed safely in the
time beyond it."

"But why?"

"There is the folly! I can't tell why. With every reason to be in
better spirits than usual, I am unaccountably, irrationally, invincibly
depressed. What are we to conclude from that? Am I the object of a
supernatural warning of misfortune to come? Or am I the object of
a temporary derangement of the functions of the liver? There is the
question. Who is to decide it? How contemptible is humanity, Arnold,
rightly understood! Give me my candle, and let's hope it's the liver."

EIGHTH SCENE--THE PANTRY.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH.

ANNE WINS A VICTORY.

ON a certain evening in the month of September (at that period of the
month when Arnold and Blanche were traveling back from Baden to Ham
Farm) an ancient man--with one eye filmy and blind, and one eye moist
and merry--sat alone in the pantry of the Harp of Scotland Inn, Perth,
pounding the sugar softly in a glass of whisky-punch. He has hitherto
been personally distinguished in these pages as the self-appointed
father of Anne Silvester and the humble servant of Blanche at the dance
at Swanhaven Lodge. He now dawns on the view in amicable relations with
a third lady--and assumes the mystic character of Mrs. Glenarm's "Friend
in the Dark."

Arriving in Perth the day after the festivities at Swanhaven,
Bishopriggs proceeded to the Harp of Scotland--at which establishme