Possibly, in deference to the occasion, possibly, in defiance of the weather, the captain had taken another backward step toward the days of his youth.  He was painted and padded, wigged and dressed, to represent the abstract idea of a male human being of five-and twenty in robust health.  There might have been a little stiffness in the region of the waist, and a slight want of firmness in the eyelid and the chin.  Otherwise there was the fiction of five-and twenty, founded in appearance on the fact of five-and-thirty—­with the truth invisible behind it, counting seventy years!  Wearing a flower in his buttonhole, and carrying a jaunty little cane in his hand—­brisk, rosy, smiling, perfumed—­the captain’s appearance brightened the dreary room.  It was pleasantly suggestive of a morning visit from an idle young man.  He appeared to be a little surprised to find Blanche present on the scene of approaching conflict.  Lady Lundie thought it due to herself to explain.  “My step-daughter is here in direct defiance of my entreaties and my advice.  Persons may present themselves whom it is, in my opinion, improper she should see.  Revelations will take place which no young woman, in her position, should hear.  She insists on it, Captain Newenden—­and I am obliged to submit.”

The captain shrugged his shoulders, and showed his beautiful teeth.

Blanche was far too deeply interested in the coming ordeal to care to defend herself:  she looked as if she had not even heard what her step-mother had said of her.  The solicitor remained absorbed in the interesting view of the falling rain.  Lady Lundie asked after Mrs. Glenarm.  The captain, in reply, described his niece’s anxiety as something—­something—­something, in short, only to be indicated by shaking his ambrosial curls and waving his jaunty cane.  Mrs. Delamayn was staying with her until her uncle returned with the news.  And where was Julius?  Detained in Scotland by election business.  And Lord and Lady Holchester?  Lord and Lady Holchester knew nothing about it.

There was another knock at the door.  Blanche’s pale face turned paler still.  Was it Arnold?  Was it Anne?  After a longer delay than usual, the servant announced Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn and Mr. Moy.

Geoffrey, slowly entering first, saluted the two ladies in silence, and noticed no one else.  The London solicitor, withdrawing himself for a moment from the absorbing prospect of the rain, pointed to the places reserved for the new-comer and for the legal adviser whom he had brought with him.  Geoffrey seated himself, without so much as a glance round the room.  Leaning his elbows on his knees, he vacantly traced patterns on the carpet with his clumsy oaken walking-stick.  Stolid indifference expressed itself in his lowering brow and his loosely-hanging mouth.  The loss of the race, and the circumstances accompanying it, appeared to have made him duller than usual and heavier than usual—­and that was all.