“I see Lady Lundie, at the other end of the room, with the map of Perthshire and the Baronial Antiquities of Scotland on the table. And I see every body but you and me obliged to listen to her.”
“Every body?”
Blanche looked carefully round the room, and noticed Geoffrey in the opposite corner; fast asleep by this time in his arm-chair.
“Uncle! you don’t mean—?”
“There is the man.”
“Mr. Delamayn—!”
“Mr. Delamayn knows every thing.”
Blanche held mechanically by her uncle’s arm, and looked at the sleeping man as if her eyes could never see enough of him.
“You saw me in the library in private consultation with Mr. Delamayn,” resumed Sir Patrick. “I have to acknowledge, my dear, that you were quite right in thinking this a suspicious circumstance, And I am now to justify myself for having purposely kept you in the dark up to the present time.”
With those introductory words, he briefly reverted to the earlier occurrences of the day, and then added, by way of commentary, a statement of the conclusions which events had suggested to his own mind.