Was Geoffrey’s voice among them?  No.

Were the strangers coming in?

The landlady had declined to let her have the rooms:  it was quite possible that the strangers might be coming to look at them.  There was no knowing who they might be.  In the impulse of the moment she flew to the bedchamber and locked herself in.

The door from the passage opened, and Arnold Brinkworth—­shown in by Mr. Bishopriggs—­entered the sitting-room.

“Nobody here!” exclaimed Arnold, looking round.  “Where is she?”

Mr. Bishopriggs pointed to the bedroom door.  “Eh! yer good leddy’s joost in the bedchamber, nae doot!”

Arnold started.  He had felt no difficulty (when he and Geoffrey had discussed the question at Windygates) about presenting himself at the inn in the assumed character of Anne’s husband.  But the result of putting the deception in practice was, to say the least of it, a little embarrassing at first.  Here was the waiter describing Miss Silvester as his “good lady;” and leaving it (most naturally and properly) to the “good lady’s” husband to knock at her bedroom door, and tell her that he was there.  In despair of knowing what else to do at the moment, Arnold asked for the landlady, whom he had not seen on arriving at the inn.

“The landleddy’s just tottin’ up the ledgers o’ the hottle in her ain room,” answered Mr. Bishopriggs.  “She’ll be here anon—­the wearyful woman!—­speerin’ who ye are and what ye are, and takin’ a’ the business o’ the hoose on her ain pair o’ shouthers.”  He dropped the subject of the landlady, and put in a plea for himself.  “I ha’ lookit after a’ the leddy’s little comforts, Sir,” he whispered.  “Trust in me! trust in me!”

Arnold’s attention was absorbed in the very serious difficulty of announcing his arrival to Anne.  “How am I to get her out?” he said to himself, with a look of perplexity directed at the bedroom door.

He had spoken loud enough for the waiter to hear him.  Arnold’s look of perplexity was instantly reflected on the face of Mr. Bishopriggs.  The head-waiter at Craig Fernie possessed an immense experience of the manners and customs of newly-married people on their honeymoon trip.  He had been a second father (with excellent pecuniary results) to innumerable brides and bridegrooms.  He knew young married couples in all their varieties:—­The couples who try to behave as if they had been married for many years; the couples who attempt no concealment, and take advice from competent authorities about them.  The couples who are bashfully talkative before third persons; the couples who are bashfully silent under similar circumstances.  The couples who don’t know what to do, the couples who wish it was over; the couples who must never be intruded upon without careful preliminary knocking at the door; the couples who can eat and drink in the intervals of “bliss,” and the other couples who can’t. But the bridegroom who stood helpless on one side of the door, and the bride who remained locked in on the other, were new varieties of the nuptial species, even in the vast experience of Mr. Bishopriggs himself.