She looked him full in the face.  His eyes dropped before hers—­he made no reply.

“I am answered,” she said.

With those words, she passed him, and laid her hand on the door.

He checked her.  The tears rose in his eyes as he drew her gently back into the room.

“Why should we wait?” she asked.

“Wait,” he answered, “as a favor to me.”

She seated herself calmly in the nearest chair, and rested her head on her hand, thinking.

He bent over her, and roused her, impatiently, almost angrily.  The steady resolution in her face was terrible to him, when he thought of the man in the next room.

“Take time to consider,” he pleaded.  “Don’t be led away by your own impulse.  Don’t act under a false excitement.  Nothing binds you to this dreadful sacrifice of yourself.”

“Excitement!  Sacrifice!” She smiled sadly as she repeated the words.  “Do you know, Sir Patrick, what I was thinking of a moment since?  Only of old times, when I was a little girl.  I saw the sad side of life sooner than most children see it.  My mother was cruelly deserted.  The hard marriage laws of this country were harder on her than on me.  She died broken-hearted.  But one friend comforted her at the last moment, and promised to be a mother to her child.  I can’t remember one unhappy day in all the after-time when I lived with that faithful woman and her little daughter—­till the day that parted us.  She went away with her husband; and I and the little daughter were left behind.  She said her last words to me.  Her heart was sinking under the dread of coming death.  ’I promised your mother that you should be like my own child to me, and it quieted her mind.  Quiet my mind, Anne, before I go.  Whatever happens in years to come—­promise me to be always what you are now, a sister to Blanche.’  Where is the false excitement, Sir Patrick, in old remembrances like these?  And how can there be a sacrifice in any thing that I do for Blanche?”

She rose, and offered him her hand.  Sir Patrick lifted it to his lips in silence.

“Come!” she said.  “For both our sakes, let us not prolong this.”

He turned aside his head.  It was no moment to let her see that she had completely unmanned him.  She waited for him, with her hand on the lock.  He rallied his courage—­he forced himself to face the horror of the situation calmly.  She opened the door, and led the way back into the other room.

Not a word was spoken by any of the persons present, as the two returned to their places.  The noise of a carriage passing in the street was painfully audible.  The chance banging of a door in the lower regions of the house made every one start.

Anne’s sweet voice broke the dreary silence.

“Must I speak for myself, Sir Patrick?  Or will you (I ask it as a last and greatest favor) speak for me?”

“You insist on appealing to the letter in your hand?”