for the moment--unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.

"You know best," he returned, a little coldly. "What can I do?"

Geoffrey took his arm--roughly as he took every thing; but in a
companionable and confidential way.

"Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened. We'll start
from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I'll drop you at
the foot-path, in the gig. You can get on to your own place afterward by
the evening train. It puts you to no inconvenience, and it's doing the
kind thing by an old friend. There's no risk of being found out. I'm
to drive, remember! There's no servant with us, old boy, to notice, and
tell tales."

Even Arnold began to see dimly by this time that he was likely to pay
his debt of obligation with interest--as Sir Patrick had foretold.

"What am I to say to her?" he asked. "I'm bound to do all I can do to
help you, and I will. But what am I to say?"

It was a natural question to put. It was not an easy question to answer.
What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person
living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn. Of what a man, under given
social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.

"Say?" he repeated. "Look here! say I'm half distracted, and all that.
And--wait a bit--tell her to stop where she is till I write to her."

Arnold hesitated. Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of