herself."

The ordinary relations of the two toward each other were completely
reversed. Anne was like a child in Blanche's hands. She rose, and
withdrew.

Left alone, Blanche took the letter out of her bosom, and read it again,
in the interval of waiting for the carriage.

The second reading confirmed her in a resolution which she had privately
taken, while she had been sitting by Anne on the sofa--a resolution
destined to lead to far more serious results in the future than any
previsions of hers could anticipate. Sir Patrick was the one person she
knew on whose discretion and experience she could implicitly rely.
She determined, in Anne's own interests, to take her uncle into her
confidence, and to tell him all that had happened at the inn "I'll first
make him forgive me," thought Blanche. "And then I'll see if he thinks
as I do, when I tell him about Anne."

The carriage drew up at the door; and Mrs. Inchbare showed in--not Lady
Lundie, but Lady Lundie's maid.

The woman's account of what had happened at Windygates was simple
enough. Lady Lundie had, as a matter of course, placed the right
interpretation on Blanche's abrupt departure in the pony-chaise, and
had ordered the carriage, with the firm determination of following her
step-daughter herself. But the agitations and anxieties of the day had
proved too much for her. She had been seized by one of the attacks
of giddiness to which she was always subject after excessive mental
irritation; and, eager as she was (on more accounts than one) to go to