d burst out laughing.

"When I am quite sure I can do nothing more to assist you," he answered.

"Pray don't think of _me_ any longer."

"In your situation! who else am I to think of?"

Anne laid her hand earnestly on his arm, and answered:

"Blanche!"

"Blanche?" repeated Arnold, utterly at a loss to understand her.

"Yes--Blanche. She found time to tell me what had passed between you
this morning before I left Windygates. I know you have made her an
offer: I know you are engaged to be married to her."

Arnold was delighted to hear it. He had been merely unwilling to leave
her thus far. He was absolutely determined to stay with her now.

"Don't expect me to go after that!" he said. "Come and sit down again,
and let's talk about Blanche."

Anne declined impatiently, by a gesture. Arnold was too deeply
interested in the new topic to take any notice of it.

"You know all about her habits and her tastes," he went on, "and what
she likes, and what she dislikes. It's most important that I should talk
to you about her. When we are husband and wife, Blanche is to have
all her own way in every thing. That's my idea of the Whole Duty of
Man--when Man is married. You are still standing? Let me give you a
chair."

It was cruel--under other circumstances it would have been
impossible--to disappoint him. But the vague fear of consequences which
had taken possession of Anne was not to be trifled with. She had no
clear conception of the risk (and it is to be added, in justice to
Geoffrey, that _he_ had no clear conception of the risk) on which
Arnold had unconsciously ventured, in undertaking his errand to the inn.
Neither of them had any adequate idea (few people have) of the infamous
absence of all needful warning, of all decent precaution and restraint,
which makes the marriage law of Scotland a trap to catch unmarried men
and women, to this day. But, while Geoffrey's mind was incapable of
looking beyond the present emergency, Anne's finer intelligence told her
that a country which offered such facilities for private marriage as the
facilities of which she had proposed to take advantage in her own case,
was not a country in which a man could act as Arnold had acted, without
danger of some serious embarrassment following as the possible result.
With this motive to animate her, she resolutely declined to take the
offered chair, or to enter into the proposed conversation.

"Whatever we have to say about Blanche, Mr. Bri