“Mr. Brinkworth!!!” she exclaimed, standing petrified with astonishment.
For a moment more neither of them spoke. Anne advanced one step into the sitting-room, and put the next inevitable question, with an instantaneous change from surprise to suspicion.
“What do you want here?”
Geoffrey’s letter represented the only possible excuse for Arnold’s appearance in that place, and at that time.
“I have got a letter for you,” he said—and offered it to her.
She was instantly on her guard. They were little better than strangers to each other, as Arnold had said. A sickening presentiment of some treachery on Geoffrey’s part struck cold to her heart. She refused to take the letter.
“I expect no letter,” she said. “Who told you I was here?” She put the question, not only with a tone of suspicion, but with a look of contempt. The look was not an easy one for a man to bear. It required a momentary exertion of self-control on Arnold’s part, before he could trust himself to answer with due consideration for her. “Is there a watch set on my actions?” she went on, with rising anger. “And are you the spy?”
“You haven’t known me very long, Miss Silvester,” Arnold answered, quietly. “But you ought to know me better than to say that. I am the bearer of a letter from Geoffrey.”
She was an the point of following his example, and of speaking of Geoffrey by his Christian name, on her side. But she checked herself, before the word had passed her lips.
“Do you mean Mr. Delamayn?” she asked, coldly.