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He is a link in my chain of reasoning; and he is an old friend of mine." "A friend of yours?" "We live in days, my dear, when one workman talks of another workman as 'that gentleman. I march with the age, and feel bound to mention my clerk as my friend. A few years since Bishopriggs was employed in the clerks' room at my chambers.
In ten minutes more the first quadrille was in progress on the grass; the spectators were picturesquely grouped round, looking on; and the servants and waiters, no longer wanted, had retired out of sight, to a picnic of their own. The last person to leave the deserted tables was the venerable Bishopriggs.
In despair of knowing what else to do at the moment, Arnold asked for the landlady, whom he had not seen on arriving at the inn. "The landleddy's just tottin' up the ledgers o' the hottle in her ain room," answered Mr. Bishopriggs. "She'll be here anon the wearyful woman! speerin' who ye are and what ye are, and takin' a' the business o' the hoose on her ain pair o' shouthers."
And that is not our only chance, remember. I have something to tell you about Bishopriggs and the lost letter." "Is it found?" "No. I satisfied myself about that I had it searched for, under my own eye. The letter is stolen, Blanche; and Bishopriggs has got it. I have left a line for him, in Mrs. Inchbare's care.
The same headlong eagerness to reach her end, which had hurried her into questioning Geoffrey before he left Windygates, now drove her, just as recklessly, into taking the management of Bishopriggs out of Sir Patrick's skilled and practiced hands. The starving sisterly love in her hungered for a trace of Anne. Her heart whispered, Risk it! And Blanche risked it on the spot.
"One at tap and one at bottom?" repeated Mr. Bishopriggs, in high disdain. "De'il a bit of it! Baith yer chairs as close together as chairs can be. Hech! hech! haven't I caught 'em, after goodness knows hoo many preleeminary knocks at the door, dining on their husbands' knees, and steemulating a man's appetite by feeding him at the fork's end like a child?
Didn't know a glass o' good sherry-wine when he'd got it. Free wi' the siller that's a' ye can say for him free wi' the siller!" Finding it impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this, Blanche approached the main object of the interview.
Bearing this caution in mind, Bishopriggs made a circuit, on reaching the open ground, so as to approach the cottage at the back, under shelter of the trees behind it. One look at Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn was all that he wanted in the first instance. They were welcome to order him off again, as long as he obtained that.
"I always suspected that lost letter to be an important document," he said "or Bishopriggs would never have stolen it. We must get possession of it, Arnold, at any sacrifice. "Wait a little!" cried a voice at the veranda. "Don't forget that I have come back from Baden to help you!" Sir Patrick and Arnold both looked up. This time Blanche had heard the last words that had passed between them.
"I wish to Heaven I had never come here!" was the useless aspiration that escaped him, as he doggedly seated himself on the dresser to wait till Sir Patrick's departure set him free. After an interval not by any means the long interval which he had anticipated his solitude was enlivened by the appearance of Father Bishopriggs. "Well?" cried Arnold, jumping off the dresser, "is the coast clear?"
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