“On the day when you went to Craig Fernie, had you not, a few hours previously, applied for my permission to marry my niece?”
“I applied for your permission, Sir Patrick; and you gave it me.”
“From the moment when you entered the inn to the moment when you left it, were you absolutely innocent of the slightest intention to marry Miss Silvester?”
“No such thing as the thought of marrying Miss Silvester ever entered my head.”
“And this you say, on your word of honor as a gentleman?”
“On my word of honor as a gentleman.”
Sir Patrick turned to Anne.
“Was it a matter of necessity, Miss Silvester, that you should appear in the assumed character of a married woman—on the fourteenth of August last, at the Craig Fernie inn?”
Anne looked away from Blanche for the first time. She replied to Sir Patrick quietly, readily, firmly—Blanche looking at her, and listening to her with eager interest.
“I went to the inn alone, Sir Patrick. The landlady refused, in the plainest terms, to let me stay there, unless she was first satisfied that I was a married woman.”