friend's hand.

Geoffrey looked up with a frown. He had just opened his lips to answer
that ill-timed reference to Anne, in no very friendly terms, when a
voice, calling to Arnold from the lawn outside, announced the appearance
of a third person in the library, and warned the two gentlemen that
their private interview was at an end.


CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

NEARER STILL.

BLANCHE stepped lightly into the room, through one of the open French
windows.

"What are you doing here?" she said to Arnold.

"Nothing. I was just going to look for you in the garden."

"The garden is insufferable, this morning." Saying those words, she
fanned herself with her handkerchief, and noticed Geoffrey's presence
in the room with a look of very thinly-concealed annoyance at the
discovery. "Wait till I am married!" she thought. "Mr. Delamayn will be
cleverer than I take him to be, if he gets much of his friend's company
_then!_"

"A trifle too hot--eh?" said Geoffrey, seeing her eyes fixed on him, and
supposing that he was expected to say something.