“Ay, ay—­just pet a’ yer little interests in my hands; it’s the wisest thing ye can do.  Ask for Maister Bishopriggs (that’s me) when ye want a decent ‘sponsible man to gi’ ye a word of advice.  Set ye doon again—­set ye doon.  And don’t tak’ the arm-chair.  Hech! hech! yer husband will be coming, ye know, and he’s sure to want it!” With that seasonable pleasantry the venerable Bishopriggs winked, and went out.

Anne looked at her watch.  By her calculation it was not far from the hour when Geoffrey might be expected to arrive at the inn, assuming Geoffrey to have left Windygates at the time agreed on.  A little more patience, and the landlady’s scruples would be satisfied, and the ordeal would be at an end.

Could she have met him nowhere else than at this barbarous house, and among these barbarous people?

No.  Outside the doors of Windygates she had not a friend to help her in all Scotland.  There was no place at her disposal but the inn; and she had only to be thankful that it occupied a sequestered situation, and was not likely to be visited by any of Lady Lundie’s friends.  Whatever the risk might be, the end in view justified her in confronting it.  Her whole future depended on Geoffrey’s making an honest woman of her.  Not her future with him—­that way there was no hope; that way her life was wasted.  Her future with Blanche—­she looked forward to nothing now but her future with Blanche.

Her spirits sank lower and lower.  The tears rose again.  It would only irritate him if he came and found her crying.  She tried to divert her mind by looking about the room.

There was very little to see.  Except that it was solidly built of good sound stone, the Craig Fernie hotel differed in no other important respect from the average of second-rate English inns.  There was the usual slippery black sofa—­constructed to let you slide when you wanted to rest.  There was the usual highly-varnished arm-chair, expressly manufactured to test the endurance of the human spine.  There was the usual paper on the walls, of the pattern designed to make your eyes ache and your head giddy.  There were the usual engravings, which humanity never tires of contemplating.  The Royal Portrait, in the first place of honor.  The next greatest of all human beings—­the Duke of Wellington—­in the second place of honor.  The third greatest of all human beings—­the local member of parliament—­in the third place of honor; and a hunting scene, in the dark.  A door opposite the door of admission from the passage opened into the bedroom; and a window at the side looked out on the open space in front of the hotel, and commanded a view of the vast expanse of the Craig Fernie moor, stretching away below the rising ground on which the house was built.

Anne turned in despair from the view in the room to the view from the window.  Within the last half hour it had changed for the worse.  The clouds had gathered; the sun was hidden; the light on the landscape was gray and dull.  Anne turned from the window, as she had turned from the room.  She was just making the hopeless attempt to rest her weary limbs on the sofa, when the sound of voices and footsteps in the passage caught her ear.