The right interpretation was not easy to discover.

Some of the events pointed apparently toward coming repairs or alterations in the cottage.  But what Geoffrey could have to do with them (being at the time served with a notice to quit), and why Hester Dethridge should have shown the violent agitation which had been described, were mysteries which it was impossible to penetrate.

Anne dismissed the girl with a little present and a few kind words.  Under other circumstances, the incomprehensible proceedings in the house might have made her seriously uneasy.  But her mind was now occupied by more pressing anxieties.  Blanche’s second letter (received from Hester Dethridge on the previous evening) informed her that Sir Patrick persisted in his resolution, and that he and his niece might be expected, come what might of it, to present themselves at the cottage on that day.

Anne opened the letter, and looked at it for the second time.  The passages relating to Sir Patrick were expressed in these terms: 

“I don’t think, darling, you have any idea of the interest that you have roused in my uncle.  Although he has not to reproach himself, as I have, with being the miserable cause of the sacrifice that you have made, he is quite as wretched and quite as anxious about you as I am.  We talk of nobody else.  He said last night that he did not believe there was your equal in the world.  Think of that from a man who has such terribly sharp eyes for the faults of women in general, and such a terribly sharp tongue in talking of them!  I am pledged to secrecy; but I must tell you one other thing, between ourselves.  Lord Holchester’s announcement that his brother refuses to consent to a separation put my uncle almost beside himself.  If there is not some change for the better in your life in a few days’ time, Sir Patrick will find out a way of his own—­lawful or not, he doesn’t care—­for rescuing you from the dreadful position in which you are placed, and Arnold (with my full approval) will help him.  As we understand it, you are, under one pretense or another, kept a close prisoner.  Sir Patrick has already secured a post of observation near you.  He and Arnold went all round the cottage last night, and examined a door in your back garden wall, with a locksmith to help them.  You will no doubt hear further about this from Sir Patrick himself.  Pray don’t appear to know any thing of it when you see him!  I am not in his confidence—­but Arnold is, which comes to the same thing exactly.  You will see us (I mean you will see my uncle and me) to-morrow, in spite of the brute who keeps you under lock and key.  Arnold will not accompany us; he is not to be trusted (he owns it himself) to control his indignation.  Courage, dearest!  There are two people in the world to whom you are inestimably precious, and who are determined not to let your happiness be sacrificed.  I am one of them, and (for Heaven’s sake keep this a secret also!) Sir Patrick is the other.”