h Lady Lundie, and not to commit
the imprudence--the useless imprudence, my love--of coming here." She
stopped--the paper swam before her eyes. "My own darling!" she thought,
"who could have foreseen that I should ever shrink from the thought of
seeing _you?"_ She sighed, and dipped the pen in the ink, and went on
with the letter.

The sky darkened rapidly as the evening fell. The wind swept in fainter
and fainter gusts across the dreary moor. Far and wide over the face of
Nature the stillness was fast falling which tells of a coming storm.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

ARNOLD.

MEANWHILE Arnold remained shut up in the head-waiter's pantry--chafing
secretly at the position forced upon him.

He was, for the first time in his life, in hiding from another person,
and that person a man. Twice--stung to it by the inevitable loss of
self-respect which his situation occasioned--he had gone to the door,
determined to face Sir Patrick boldly; and twice he had abandoned the
idea, in mercy to Anne. It would have been impossible for him to set
himself right with Blanche's guardian without betraying the unhappy
woman whose secret he was bound in honor to keep. "I wish to Heaven I
had never come here!" was the useless aspiration that escaped him, as
he doggedly seated himself on the dresser to wait till Sir Patrick's
departure set him free.

After an interval--not by any means the long interval which he had
anticipated--his solitude was enlivened by the appearance of Father
Bishopriggs.

"Well?" cried Arnold, jumping off the dresser, "is the coast clear?"

There were occasions when Mr. Bishopriggs became, on a sudden,
unexpectedly hard of hearing, This was one of them.

"Hoo do ye find the paintry?" he asked, without paying the slightest
attention to Arnold's question. "Snug and private? A Patmos in the
weelderness, as ye may say!"

His one available eye, which had begun by looking at Arnold's face,
dropped slowly downward, and fixed itself, in mute but eloquent
expectation, on Arnold's waistcoat pocket.

"I understand!" said Arnold. "I promised to pay you for the Patmos--eh?
There you are!"

Mr. Bishopriggs pocketed the money with a dreary smile and a sympathetic
shake of the head. Other waiters would have returned thanks. The sage
of Craig Fernie returned a few brief remarks instead. Admirable in many
things, Father Bishopriggs was especially great at drawing a moral. He
drew a moral on this occasion from his own gratuit