Mr. Brinkworth had not come back. It
wanted only twenty minutes of dinner-time; and full evening-dress was
insisted on at Windygates. Blanche, nevertheless, still lingered in the
hall in the hope of seeing Arnold before she went up stairs. The hope
was realized. As the clock struck the quarter he came in. And he, too,
was out of spirits like the rest!

"Have you seen her?" asked Blanche.

"No," said Arnold, in the most perfect good faith. "The way she has
escaped by is not the way by the cross-roads--I answer for that."

They separated to dress. When the party assembled again, in the library,
before dinner, Blanche found her way, the moment he entered the room, to
Sir Patrick's side.

"News, uncle! I'm dying for news."

"Good news, my dear--so far."

"You have found Anne?"

"Not exactly that."

"You have heard of her at Craig Fernie?"

"I have made some important discoveries at Craig Fernie, Blanche. Hush!
here's your step-mother. Wait till after dinner, and you may hear more
than I can tell you now. There may be news from the station between this
and then."

The dinner was a wearisome ordeal to at least two other persons
present besides Blanche. Arnold, sitting opposite to Geoffrey, without
exchanging a word with him, felt the altered relations between his
former friend and himself very painfully. Sir Patrick, missing the
skilled hand of Hester Dethridge in every dish that was offered to
him, marked the dinner among the wasted opportunities of his life, and
resented his sister-in-law's flow of spirits as something simply inhuman
under present circumstances. Blanche followed Lady Lundie into the
drawing-room in a state of burning impatience for the rising of
the gentlemen from their wine. Her step-mother--mapping out a new
antiquarian excursion for the next day, and finding Blanche's ears
closed to her occasional remarks on baronial Scotland five hundred years
since--lamented, with satirical emphasis, the absence of an intelligent
companion of her own sex; and stretched her majestic figure on the sofa
to wait until an audience worthy of her flowed in from the dining-room.
Before very long--so soothing is the influence of an after-dinner
view of feudal antiquities, taken through the medium of an approving
conscience--Lady Lundie's eyes closed; and from Lady Lundie's nose
there poured, at intervals, a sound, deep like her ladyship's learning;
regular, like her ladyship's habits--a sound associated with nightc