feckless husband-creature ye had wi' ye at the inn,
Jaffray Delamayn? Jaffray wad mak' twa o' him, as my ain eyes ha' seen.
Gi' ye back yer letter? My certie! noo I know it is yer letter, I'll gi'
it back wi' a' the pleasure in life!"

He opened his pocket-book, and took it out, with an alacrity worthy of
the honestest man in Christendom--and (more wonderful still) he looked
with a perfectly assumed expression of indifference at the five-pound
note in Anne's hand.

"Hoot! toot!" he said, "I'm no' that clear in my mind that I'm free to
tak' yer money. Eh, weel! weel! I'll een receive it, if ye like, as a
bit Memento o' the time when I was o' some sma' sairvice to ye at the
hottle. Ye'll no' mind," he added, suddenly returning to business,
"writin' me joost a line--in the way o' receipt, ye ken--to clear me o'
ony future suspicion in the matter o' the letter?"

Anne threw down the bank-note on the table near which they were
standing, and snatched the letter from him.

"You need no receipt," she answered. "There shall be no letter to bear
witness against you!"

She lifted her other hand to tear it in pieces. Bishopriggs caught her
by both wrists, at the same moment, and held her fast.

"Bide a wee!" he said. "Ye don't get the letter, young madam, without
the receipt. It may be a' the same to _you,_ now ye've married the other
man, whether Jaffray Delamayn ance promised ye fair in the by-gone time,
or no. But, my certie! it's a matter o' some moment to _me,_ that ye've
chairged wi' stealin' the letter, and making a market o't, and Lord
knows what besides, that I suld hae yer ain acknowledgment for it in
black and white. Gi' me my bit receipt--and een do as ye will with yer
letter after that!"

Anne's hold of the letter relaxed. She let Bishopriggs repossess himself
of it as it dropped on the floor between them, without making an effort
to prevent him.

"It may be a' the same to _you,_ now ye've married the other man,
whether Jaffray Delamayn ance promised ye fair in the by-gone time,
or no." Those words presented Anne's position before her in a light in
which she had not seen it yet. She had truly expressed the loathing that
Geoffrey now inspired in her, when she had declared, in her letter to
Arnold, that, even if he offered her marriage, in atonement for the
past, she would rather be what she was than be his wife. It had never
occurred to her, until this moment, that others would misinterpret the
sensitive prid