CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD.

TRACED.

THE chaise rattled our through the gates.  The dogs barked furiously.  Sir Patrick looked round, and waved his hand as he turned the corner of the road.  Blanche was left alone in the yard.

She lingered a little, absently patting the dogs.  They had especial claims on her sympathy at that moment; they, too, evidently thought it hard to be left behind at the house.  After a while she roused herself.  Sir Patrick had left the responsibility of superintending the crossroads on her shoulders.  There was something to be done yet before the arrangements for tracing Anne were complete.  Blanche left the yard to do it.

On her way back to the house she met Arnold, dispatched by Lady Lundie in search of her.

The plan of occupation for the afternoon had been settled during Blanche’s absence.  Some demon had whispered to Lady Lundie to cultivate a taste for feudal antiquities, and to insist on spreading that taste among her guests.  She had proposed an excursion to an old baronial castle among the hills—­far to the westward (fortunately for Sir Patrick’s chance of escaping discovery) of the hills at Craig Fernie.  Some of the guests were to ride, and some to accompany their hostess in the open carriage.  Looking right and left for proselytes, Lady Lundie had necessarily remarked the disappearance of certain members of her circle.  Mr. Delamayn had vanished, nobody knew where.  Sir Patrick and Blanche had followed his example.  Her ladyship had observed, upon this, with some asperity, that if they were all to treat each other in that unceremonious manner, the sooner Windygates was turned into a Penitentiary, on the silent system, the fitter the house would be for the people who inhabited it.  Under these circumstances, Arnold suggested that Blanche would do well to make her excuses as soon as possible at head-quarters, and accept the seat in the carriage which her step-mother wished her to take.  “We are in for the feudal antiquities, Blanche; and we must help each other through as well as we can.  If you will go in the carriage, I’ll go too.”

Blanche shook her head.

“There are serious reasons for my keeping up appearances,” she said.  “I shall go in the carriage.  You mustn’t go at all.”

Arnold naturally looked a little surprised, and asked to be favored with an explanation.

Blanche took his arm and hugged it close.  Now that Anne was lost, Arnold was more precious to her than ever.  She literally hungered to hear at that moment, from his own lips, how fond he was of her.  It mattered nothing that she was already perfectly satisfied on this point.  It was so nice (after he had said it five hundred times already) to make him say it once more!

“Suppose I had no explanation to give?” she said.  “Would you stay behind by yourself to please me?”

“I would do any thing to please you!”