Arnold’s admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle, jump—­above all, who could swim—­as few other men could perform those exercises in contemporary England.  But that answer shook his faith.  Only for the moment—­unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.

“You know best,” he returned, a little coldly.  “What can I do?”

Geoffrey took his arm—­roughly as he took every thing; but in a companionable and confidential way.

“Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened.  We’ll start from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I’ll drop you at the foot-path, in the gig.  You can get on to your own place afterward by the evening train.  It puts you to no inconvenience, and it’s doing the kind thing by an old friend.  There’s no risk of being found out.  I’m to drive, remember!  There’s no servant with us, old boy, to notice, and tell tales.”

Even Arnold began to see dimly by this time that he was likely to pay his debt of obligation with interest—­as Sir Patrick had foretold.

“What am I to say to her?” he asked.  “I’m bound to do all I can do to help you, and I will.  But what am I to say?”

It was a natural question to put.  It was not an easy question to answer.  What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn.  Of what a man, under given social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.

“Say?” he repeated.  “Look here! say I’m half distracted, and all that.  And—­wait a bit—­tell her to stop where she is till I write to her.”

Arnold hesitated.  Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of knowledge which is called “knowledge of the world,” his inbred delicacy of mind revealed to him the serious difficulty of the position which his friend was asking him to occupy as plainly as if he was looking at it through the warily-gathered experience of society of a man of twice his age.

“Can’t you write to her now, Geoffrey?” he asked.

“What’s the good of that?”

“Consider for a minute, and you will see.  You have trusted me with a very awkward secret.  I may be wrong—­I never was mixed up in such a matter before—­but to present myself to this lady as your messenger seems exposing her to a dreadful humiliation.  Am I to go and tell her to her face:  ’I know what you are hiding from the knowledge of all the world;’ and is she to be expected to endure it?”

“Bosh!” said Geoffrey.  “They can endure a deal more than you think.  I wish you had heard how she bullied me, in this very place.  My good fellow, you don’t understand women.  The grand secret, in dealing with a woman, is to take her as you take a cat, by the scruff of the neck—­”

“I can’t face her—­unless you will help me by breaking the thing to her first.  I’ll stick at no sacrifice to serve you; but—­hang it!—­make allowances, Geoffrey, for the difficulty you are putting me in.  I am almost a stranger; I don’t know how Miss Silvester may receive me, before I can open my lips.”