(Geoffrey’s stolidly-staring eyes suddenly brightened. A light of the devil’s own striking illuminated him. An idea of the devil’s own bringing entered his mind. He looked stealthily round at the man whose life he had saved—at the man who had devotedly served him in return. A hideous cunning leered at his mouth and peeped out of his eyes. “Arnold Brinkworth pretended to be married to her at the inn. By the lord Harry! that’s a way out of it that never struck me before!” With that thought in his heart he turned back again to his half-finished letter to Julius. For once in his life he was strongly, fiercely agitated. For once in his life he was daunted—and that by his Own Thought! He had written to Julius under a strong sense of the necessity of gaining time to delude Anne into leaving Scotland before he ventured on paying his addresses to Mrs. Glenarm. His letter contained a string of clumsy excuses, intended to delay his return to his brother’s house. “No,” he said to himself, as he read it again. “Whatever else may do—this won’t!” He looked round once more at Arnold, and slowly tore the letter into fragments as he looked.)
In the mean time Blanche had not done yet. “No,” she said, when Arnold proposed an adjournment to the garden; “I have something more to say, and you are interested in it, this time.” Arnold resigned himself to listen, and worse still to answer, if there was no help for it, in the character of an innocent stranger who had never been near the Craig Fernie inn.
“Well,” Blanche resumed, “and what do you think has come of my letter to Anne?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Nothing has come of it!”
“Indeed?”
“Absolutely nothing! I know she received the letter yesterday morning. I ought to have had the answer to-day at breakfast.”
“Perhaps she thought it didn’t require an answer.”
“She couldn’t have thought that, for reasons that I know of. Besides, in my letter yesterday I implored her to tell me (if it was one line only) whether, in guessing at what her trouble was, Sir Patrick and I had not guessed right. And here is the day getting on, and no answer! What am I to conclude?”
“I really can’t say!”