“I am resolved to appeal to it.”

“Will nothing induce you to defer the close of this inquiry—­so far as you are concerned—­for four-and-twenty hours?”

“Either you or I, Sir Patrick, must say what is to be said, and do what is to be done, before we leave this room.”

“Give me the letter.”

She gave it to him.  Mr. Moy whispered to his client, “Do you know what that is?” Geoffrey shook his head.  “Do you really remember nothing about it?” Geoffrey answered in one surly word, “Nothing!”

Sir Patrick addressed himself to the assembled company.

“I have to ask your pardon,” he said, “for abruptly leaving the room, and for obliging Miss Silvester to leave it with me.  Every body present, except that man” (he pointed to Geoffrey), “will, I believe, understand and forgive me, now that I am forced to make my conduct the subject of the plainest and the fullest explanation.  I shall address that explanation, for reasons which will presently appear, to my niece.”

Blanche started.  “To me!” she exclaimed.

“To you,” Sir Patrick answered.

Blanche turned toward Arnold, daunted by a vague sense of something serious to come.  The letter that she had received from her husband on her departure from Ham Farm had necessarily alluded to relations between Geoffrey and Anne, of which Blanche had been previously ignorant.  Was any reference coming to those relations?  Was there something yet to be disclosed which Arnold’s letter had not prepared her to hear?

Sir Patrick resumed.

“A short time since,” he said to Blanche, “I proposed to you to return to your husband’s protection—­and to leave the termination of this matter in my hands.  You have refused to go back to him until you are first certainly assured that you are his wife.  Thanks to a sacrifice to your interests and your happiness, on Miss Silvester’s part—­which I tell you frankly I have done my utmost to prevent—­I am in a position to prove positively that Arnold Brinkworth was a single man when he married you from my house in Kent.”

Mr. Moy’s experience forewarned him of what was coming.  He pointed to the letter in Sir Patrick’s hand.

“Do you claim on a promise of marriage?” he asked.

Sir Patrick rejoined by putting a question on his side.

“Do you remember the famous decision at Doctors’ Commons, which established the marriage of Captain Dalrymple and Miss Gordon?”

Mr. Moy was answered.  “I understand you, Sir Patrick,” he said.  After a moment’s pause, he addressed his next words to Anne.  “And from the bottom of my heart, madam, I respect you.”

It was said with a fervent sincerity of tone which wrought the interest of the other persons, who were still waiting for enlightenment, to the highest pitch.  Lady Lundie and Captain Newenden whispered to each other anxiously.  Arnold turned pale.  Blanche burst into tears.