“Have you seen her?” asked Blanche.

“No,” said Arnold, in the most perfect good faith.  “The way she has escaped by is not the way by the cross-roads—­I answer for that.”

They separated to dress.  When the party assembled again, in the library, before dinner, Blanche found her way, the moment he entered the room, to Sir Patrick’s side.

“News, uncle!  I’m dying for news.”

“Good news, my dear—­so far.”

“You have found Anne?”

“Not exactly that.”

“You have heard of her at Craig Fernie?”

“I have made some important discoveries at Craig Fernie, Blanche.  Hush! here’s your step-mother.  Wait till after dinner, and you may hear more than I can tell you now.  There may be news from the station between this and then.”

The dinner was a wearisome ordeal to at least two other persons present besides Blanche.  Arnold, sitting opposite to Geoffrey, without exchanging a word with him, felt the altered relations between his former friend and himself very painfully.  Sir Patrick, missing the skilled hand of Hester Dethridge in every dish that was offered to him, marked the dinner among the wasted opportunities of his life, and resented his sister-in-law’s flow of spirits as something simply inhuman under present circumstances.  Blanche followed Lady Lundie into the drawing-room in a state of burning impatience for the rising of the gentlemen from their wine.  Her step-mother—­mapping out a new antiquarian excursion for the next day, and finding Blanche’s ears closed to her occasional remarks on baronial Scotland five hundred years since—­lamented, with satirical emphasis, the absence of an intelligent companion of her own sex; and stretched her majestic figure on the sofa to wait until an audience worthy of her flowed in from the dining-room.  Before very long—­so soothing is the influence of an after-dinner view of feudal antiquities, taken through the medium of an approving conscience—­Lady Lundie’s eyes closed; and from Lady Lundie’s nose there poured, at intervals, a sound, deep like her ladyship’s learning; regular, like her ladyship’s habits—­a sound associated with nightcaps and bedrooms, evoked alike by Nature, the leveler, from high and low—­the sound (oh, Truth what enormities find publicity in thy name!)—­the sound of a Snore.

Free to do as she pleased, Blanche left the echoes of the drawing-room in undisturbed enjoyment of Lady Lundie’s audible repose.

She went into the library, and turned over the novels.  Went out again, and looked across the hall at the dining-room door.  Would the men never have done talking their politics and drinking their wine?  She went up to her own room, and changed her ear-rings, and scolded her maid.  Descended once more—­and made an alarming discovery in a dark corner of the hall.

Two men were standing there, hat in hand whispering to the butler.  The butler, leaving them, went into the dining-room—­came out again with Sir Patrick—­and said to the two men, “Step this way, please.”  The two men came out into the light.  Murdoch, the station-master; and Duncan, the valet!  News of Anne!