As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner
part of the house. One of the library doors had not been completely
closed. Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.

He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the
open window at the lower end of the room.


CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

GONE.

BLANCHE came in, with a glass of wine in her hand, and saw the swooning
woman on the floor.

She was alarmed, but not surprised, as she knelt by Anne, and raised her
head. Her own previous observation of her friend necessarily prevented
her from being at any loss to account for the fainting fit. The
inevitable delay in getting the wine was--naturally to her mind--alone
to blame for the result which now met her view.

If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause,
she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened,
out-of-doors, to frighten Anne--might have seen Geoffrey before he had
time to turn the corner of the house--and, making that one discovery,
might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming
life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own
destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness
at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which
persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of