BLANCHE found her lover as attentive as usual to her slightest wish, but not in his customary good spirits.  He pleaded fatigue, after his long watch at the cross-roads, as an excuse for his depression.  As long as there was any hope of a reconciliation with Geoffrey, he was unwilling to tell Blanche what had happened that afternoon.  The hope grew fainter and fainter as the evening advanced.  Arnold purposely suggested a visit to the billiard-room, and joined the game, with Blanche, to give Geoffrey an opportunity of saying the few gracious words which would have made them friends again.  Geoffrey never spoke the words; he obstinately ignored Arnold’s presence in the room.

At the card-table the whist went on interminably.  Lady Lundie, Sir Patrick, and the surgeon, were all inveterate players, evenly matched.  Smith and Jones (joining the game alternately) were aids to whist, exactly as they were aids to conversation.  The same safe and modest mediocrity of style distinguished the proceedings of these two gentlemen in all the affairs of life.

The time wore on to midnight.  They went to bed late and they rose late at Windygates House.  Under that hospitable roof, no intrusive hints, in the shape of flat candlesticks exhibiting themselves with ostentatious virtue on side-tables, hurried the guest to his room; no vile bell rang him ruthlessly out of bed the next morning, and insisted on his breakfasting at a given hour.  Life has surely hardships enough that are inevitable without gratuitously adding the hardship of absolute government, administered by a clock?

It was a quarter past twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of going to bed.  Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a last rubber.  Blanche vanished while her stepmother’s eye was on her; and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the hands of her maid.  Nobody followed the example of the mistress of the house but Arnold.  He left the billiard-room with the certainty that it was all over now between Geoffrey and himself.  Not even the attraction of Blanche proved strong enough to detain him that night.  He went his way to bed.

It was past one o’clock.  The final rubber was at an end, the accounts were settled at the card-table; the surgeon had strolled into the billiard-room, and Smith and Jones had followed him, when Duncan came in, at last, with the telegram in his hand.

Blanche turned from the broad, calm autumn moonlight which had drawn her to the window, and looked over her uncle’s shoulder while he opened the telegram.

She read the first line—­and that was enough.  The whole scaffolding of hope built round that morsel of paper fell to the ground in an instant.  The train from Kirkandrew had reached Edinburgh at the usual time.  Every passenger in it had passed under the eyes of the police, and nothing had been seen of any person who answered the description given of Anne!