“I’ll try the next page,” said Arnold.  “I can’t have read that before—­for I haven’t turned over yet.”

Blanche threw herself back in her chair, and flung her handkerchief resignedly over her face.  “The flies,” she explained.  “I’m not going to sleep.  Try the next page.  Oh, dear me, try the next page!”

Arnold proceeded: 

     “Say first for heaven hides nothing from thy view. 
     Nor the deep tract of hell say first what cause. 
     Moved our grand parents in that happy state—­”

Blanche suddenly threw the handkerchief off again, and sat bolt upright in her chair.  “Shut it up,” she cried.  “I can’t bear any more.  Leave off, Arnold—­leave off!”

“What’s, the matter now?”

“‘That happy state,’” said Blanche.  “What does ‘that happy state’ mean?  Marriage, of course!  And marriage reminds me of Anne.  I won’t have any more.  Paradise Lost is painful.  Shut it up.  Well, my next question to Sir Patrick was, of course, to know what he thought Anne’s husband had done.  The wretch had behaved infamously to her in some way.  In what way?  Was it any thing to do with her marriage?  My uncle considered again.  He thought it quite possible.  Private marriages were dangerous things (he said)—­especially in Scotland.  He asked me if they had been married in Scotland.  I couldn’t tell him—­I only said, ’Suppose they were?  What then?’ ‘It’s barely possible, in that case,’ says Sir Patrick, ’that Miss Silvester may be feeling uneasy about her marriage.  She may even have reason—­or may think she has reason—­to doubt whether it is a marriage at all.’”

Arnold started, and looked round at Geoffrey still sitting at the writing-table with his back turned on them.  Utterly as Blanche and Sir Patrick were mistaken in their estimate of Anne’s position at Craig Fernie, they had drifted, nevertheless, into discussing the very question in which Geoffrey and Miss Silvester were interested—­the question of marriage in Scotland.  It was impossible in Blanche’s presence to tell Geoffrey that he might do well to listen to Sir Patrick’s opinion, even at second-hand.  Perhaps the words had found their way to him? perhaps he was listening already, of his own accord?

(He was listening.  Blanche’s last words had found their way to him, while he was pondering over his half-finished letter to his brother.  He waited to hear more—­without moving, and with the pen suspended in his hand.)

Blanche proceeded, absently winding her fingers in and out of Arnold’s hair as he sat at her feet: 

“It flashed on me instantly that Sir Patrick had discovered the truth.  Of course I told him so.  He laughed, and said I mustn’t jump at conclusions We were guessing quite in the dark; and all the distressing things I had noticed at the inn might admit of some totally different explanation.  He would have gone on splitting straws in that provoking way the whole morning if I hadn’t stopped him.