With those comforting words he returned to the gentlemen. In ten minutes more they all appeared in the drawing-room; and Lady Lundie (firmly persuaded that she had never closed her eyes) was back again in baronial Scotland five hundred years since.
Blanche, watching her opportunity, caught her uncle alone.
"Now for your promise," she said. "You have made some important discoveries at Craig Fernie. What are they?"
Sir Patrick"s eye turned toward Geoffrey, dozing in an arm-chair in a corner of the room. He showed a certain disposition to trifle with the curiosity of his niece.
"After the discovery we have already made," he said, "can"t you wait, my dear, till we get the telegram from Edinburgh?"
"That is just what it"s impossible for me to do! The telegram won"t come for hours yet. I want something to go on with in the mean time."
She seated herself on a sofa in the corner opposite Geoffrey, and pointed to the vacant place by her side.
Sir Patrick had promised--Sir Patrick had no choice but to keep his word. After another look at Geoffrey, he took the vacant place by his niece.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.
BACKWARD.
"WELL?" whispered Blanche, taking her uncle confidentially by the arm.
"Well," said Sir Patrick, with a spark of his satirical humor flashing out at his niece, "I am going to do a very rash thing. I am going to place a serious trust in the hands of a girl of eighteen."
"The girl"s hands will keep it, uncle--though she _is_ only eighteen."
"I must run the risk, my dear; your intimate knowledge of Miss Silvester may be of the greatest a.s.sistance to me in the next step I take. You shall know all that I can tell you, but I must warn you first. I can only admit you into my confidence by startling you with a great surprise. Do you follow me, so far?"
"Yes! yes!"
"If you fail to control yourself, you place an obstacle in the way of my being of some future use to Miss Silvester. Remember that, and now prepare for the surprise. What did I tell you before dinner?"
"You said you had made discoveries at Craig Fernie. What have you found out?"
"I have found out that there is a certain person who is in full possession of the information which Miss Silvester has concealed from you and from me. The person is within our reach. The person is in this neighborhood. The person is in this room!"
He caught up Blanche"s hand, resting on his arm, and pressed it significantly. She looked at him with the cry of surprise suspended on her lips--waited a little with her eyes fixed on Fir Patrick"s face--struggled resolutely, and composed herself.
"Point the person out." She said the words with a self-possession which won her uncle"s hearty approval. Blanche had done wonders for a girl in her teens.
"Look!" said Sir Patrick; "and tell me what you see."
"I see Lady Lundie, at the other end of the room, with the map of Perthshire and the Baronial Antiquities of Scotland on the table. And I see every body but you and me obliged to listen to her."
"Every body?"
Blanche looked carefully round the room, and noticed Geoffrey in the opposite corner; fast asleep by this time in his arm-chair.
"Uncle! you don"t mean--?"
"There is the man."
"Mr. Delamayn--!"
"Mr. Delamayn knows every thing."
Blanche held mechanically by her uncle"s arm, and looked at the sleeping man as if her eyes could never see enough of him.
"You saw me in the library in private consultation with Mr. Delamayn,"
resumed Sir Patrick. "I have to acknowledge, my dear, that you were quite right in thinking this a suspicious circ.u.mstance, And I am now to justify myself for having purposely kept you in the dark up to the present time."
With those introductory words, he briefly reverted to the earlier occurrences of the day, and then added, by way of commentary, a statement of the conclusions which events had suggested to his own mind.
The events, it may be remembered, were three in number. First, Geoffrey"s private conference with Sir Patrick on the subject of Irregular Marriages in Scotland. Secondly, Anne Silvester"s appearance at Windygates. Thirdly, Anne"s flight.
The conclusions which had thereupon suggested themselves to Sir Patrick"s mind were six in number.
First, that a connection of some sort might possibly exist between Geoffrey"s acknowledged difficulty about his friend, and Miss Silvester"s presumed difficulty about herself. Secondly, that Geoffrey had really put to Sir Patrick--not his own case--but the case of a friend. Thirdly, that Geoffrey had some interest (of no harmless kind) in establishing the fact of his friend"s marriage. Fourthly, that Anne"s anxiety (as described by Blanche) to hear the names of the gentlemen who were staying at Windygates, pointed, in all probability, to Geoffrey.
Fifthly, that this last inference disturbed the second conclusion, and reopened the doubt whether Geoffrey had not been stating his own case, after all, under pretense of stating the case of a friend. Sixthly, that the one way of obtaining any enlightenment on this point, and on all the other points involved in mystery, was to go to Craig Fernie, and consult Mrs. Inchbare"s experience during the period of Anne"s residence at the inn. Sir Patrick"s apology for keeping all this a secret from his niece followed. He had shrunk from agitating her on the subject until he could be sure of proving his conclusions to be true. The proof had been obtained; and he was now, therefore, ready to open his mind to Blanche without reserve.
"So much, my dear," proceeded Sir Patrick, "for those necessary explanations which are also the necessary nuisances of human intercourse. You now know as much as I did when I arrived at Craig Fernie--and you are, therefore, in a position to appreciate the value of my discoveries at the inn. Do you understand every thing, so far?"
"Perfectly!"
"Very good. I drove up to the inn; and--behold me closeted with Mrs.
Inchbare in her own private parlor! (My reputation may or may not suffer, but Mrs. Inchbare"s bones are above suspicion!) It was a long business, Blanche. A more sour-tempered, cunning, and distrustful witness I never examined in all my experience at the Bar. She would have upset the temper of any mortal man but a lawyer. We have such wonderful tempers in our profession; and we can be so aggravating when we like! In short, my dear, Mrs. Inchbare was a she-cat, and I was a he-cat--and I clawed the truth out of her at last. The result was well worth arriving at, as you shall see. Mr. Delamayn had described to me certain remarkable circ.u.mstances as taking place between a lady and a gentleman at an inn: the object of the parties being to pa.s.s themselves off at the time as man and wife. Every one of those circ.u.mstances, Blanche, occurred at Craig Fernie, between a lady and a gentleman, on the day when Miss Silvester disappeared from this house And--wait!--being pressed for her name, after the gentleman had left her behind him at the inn, the name the lady gave was, "Mrs. Silvester." What do you think of that?"
"Think! I"m bewildered--I can"t realize it."
"It"s a startling discovery, my dear child--there is no denying that.
Shall I wait a little, and let you recover yourself?"
"No! no! Go on! The gentleman, uncle? The gentleman who was with Anne?
Who is he? Not Mr. Delamayn?"
"Not Mr. Delamayn," said Sir Patrick. "If I have proved nothing else, I have proved that."
"What need was there to prove it? Mr. Delamayn went to London on the day of the lawn-party. And Arnold--"
"And Arnold went with him as far as the second station from this. Quite true! But how was I to know what Mr. Delamayn might have done after Arnold had left him? I could only make sure that he had not gone back privately to the inn, by getting the proof from Mrs. Inchbare."
"How did you get it?"
"I asked her to describe the gentleman who was with Miss Silvester.
Mrs. Inchbare"s description (vague as you will presently find it to be) completely exonerates that man," said Sir Patrick, pointing to Geoffrey still asleep in his chair. "_He_ is not the person who pa.s.sed Miss Silvester off as his wife at Craig Fernie. He spoke the truth when he described the case to me as the case of a friend."
"But who is the friend?" persisted Blanche. "That"s what I want to know."
"That"s what I want to know, too."