It was more easily said than done.  Geoffrey kept close behind them.

“Consider my lameness, Mr. Delamayn,” said Sir Patrick.  “Not quite so fast.”

It was well intended.  But Geoffrey’s cunning had taken the alarm.  Instead of dropping behind with Sir Patrick, he called to his wife.

“Consider Sir Patrick’s lameness,” he repeated.  “Not quite so fast.”

Sir Patrick met that check with characteristic readiness.  When Anne slackened her pace, he addressed himself to Geoffrey, stopping deliberately in the middle of the path.  “Let me give you my message from Holchester House,” he said.  The two ladies were still slowly walking on.  Geoffrey was placed between the alternatives of staying with Sir Patrick and leaving them by themselves—­or of following them and leaving Sir Patrick.  Deliberately, on his side, he followed the ladies.

Sir Patrick called him back.  “I told you I wished to speak to you,” he said, sharply.

Driven to bay, Geoffrey openly revealed his resolution to give Blanche no opportunity of speaking in private to Anne.  He called to Anne to stop.

“I have no secrets from my wife,” he said.  “And I expect my wife to have no secrets from me.  Give me the message in her hearing.”

Sir Patrick’s eyes brightened with indignation.  He controlled himself, and looked for an instant significantly at his niece before he spoke to Geoffrey.

“As you please,” he said.  “Your brother requests me to tell you that the duties of the new position in which he is placed occupy the whole of his time, and will prevent him from returning to Fulham, as he had proposed, for some days to come.  Lady Holchester, hearing that I was likely to see you, has charged me with another message, from herself.  She is not well enough to leave home; and she wishes to see you at Holchester House to-morrow—­accompanied (as she specially desires) by Mrs. Delamayn.”

In giving the two messages, he gradually raised his voice to a louder tone than usual.  While he was speaking, Blanche (warned to follow her instructions by the glance her uncle had cast at her) lowered her voice, and said to Anne: 

“He won’t consent to the separation as long as he has got you here.  He is trying for higher terms.  Leave him, and he must submit.  Put a candle in your window, if you can get into the garden to-night.  If not, any other night.  Make for the back gate in the wall.  Sir Patrick and Arnold will manage the rest.”

She slipped those words into Anne’s ears—­swinging her parasol to and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her lips—­with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called on to assist a deception in which her own interests are concerned.  Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey’s inveterate distrust was stirred into action by it.  Blanche had got to her last sentence before he was able to turn his attention from what Sir Patrick was saying to what his niece was saying.  A quicker man would have heard more.  Geoffrey had only distinctly heard the first half of the last sentence.