Marian's disappearance had taken a darker colour in his mind since that time. Granted that she had left the Grange of her own accord, having some special reason for leaving secretly, at whose bidding would she have so acted except her husband's—she who stood so utterly alone, without a friend in the world? But what possible motive could Mr. Holbrook have had for such an underhand course—for making a conspiracy and a mystery out of so simple a fact as the removal of his wife from a place whence he was free to remove her at any moment? Fair and honest motive for such a course there could be none. Was it possible, looking at the business from a darker point of view, to imagine any guilty reason for the carrying out of such a plot? If this man had wanted to bring about a life-long severance between himself and his wife, to put her away somewhere, to keep her hidden from the eyes of the world—in plainer words, to get rid of her—might not this pretence of losing her, this affectation of distress at her loss, be a safe way of accomplishing his purpose? Who else was interested in doing her any wrong? Who else could have had sufficient power over her to beguile her away from her home?

Pondering on these questions throughout all that weary journey across a wintry landscape of bare brown fields and leafless trees, Gilbert Fenton travelled London-wards, to the city which was so little of a home for him, but in which his life had seemed pleasant enough in its own commonplace fashion until that fatal summer evening when he first saw Marian Nowell's radiant face in the quiet church at Lidford.

He scarcely stopped to eat or drink at the end of his journey, regaling himself only with a bottle of soda-water, imperceptibly flavoured with cognac by the hands of a ministering angel at the refreshment-counter of the Waterloo Station, and then hurrying on at once in a hansom to that dingy street in Soho where Mr. Medler sat in his parlour, like the proverbial spider waiting for the advent of some too-confiding fly.

The lawyer was at home, and seemed in no way surprised to see Mr. Fenton.

"I have come to you about a bad business, Mr. Medler," Gilbert began, seating himself opposite the shabby-looking office-table, with its covering of dusty faded baize, upon which there seemed to be always precisely the same array of papers in little bundles tied with red tape; "but first let me ask you a question: Have you heard from Mrs. Holbrook?"

"Not a line."

"And have you taken no further steps, no other means of communicating with her?" Gilbert asked.

"Not yet. I think of sending my clerk down to Hampshire, or of going down myself perhaps, in a day or two, if my business engagements will permit me."

"Do you not consider the case rather an urgent one, Mr. Medler? I should have supposed that your curiosity would have been aroused by the absence of any reply to your letters—that you would have looked at the business in a more serious light than you appear to have done—that you would have taken alarm, in short."

"Why should I do so?" the lawyer demanded carelessly.

"It is Mrs. Holbrook's business to look after her affairs. The property is safe enough. She can administer to the will as soon as she pleases. I certainly wonder that the husband has not been a little sharper and more active in the business."

"You have heard nothing of him, then, I presume?"

"Nothing."

Gilbert remembered what Ellen Carley had told him about Marian's keeping the secret of her newly-acquired fortune from her husband, until she should be able to tell it to him with her own lips; waiting for that happy moment with innocent girlish delight in the thought that he was to owe prosperity to her.

It seemed evident, therefore, that Mr. Holbrook could know nothing of his wife's inheritance, nor of Mr. Medler's existence, supposing the lawyer's letter to have reached the Grange before Marian's disappearance, and to have been destroyed or carried away by her.

He inquired the date of this letter; whereupon Mr. Medler referred to a letter-book in which there was a facsimile of the document. It had been posted three days before Marian left the Grange.

Gilbert now proceeded to inform Mr. Medler of his client's mysterious disappearance, and all the useless efforts that had been made to solve the mystery. The lawyer listened with an appearance of profound interest and astonishment, but made no remark till the story was quite finished.

"You are right, Mr. Fenton," he said at last. "It is a bad business, a very bad business. May I ask you what is the common opinion among people in that part of the world—in the immediate neighbourhood of the event, as to this poor lady's fate?"

"An opinion with which I cannot bring myself to agree—an opinion which I pray God may prove as unfounded as I believe it to be. It is generally thought that Mrs. Holbrook has fallen a victim to some common crime—that she was robbed, and then thrown into the river."

"The river has been dragged, I suppose?"

"It has; but the people about there seem to consider that no conclusive test."

"Had Mrs. Holbrook anything valuable about her at the time of her disappearance?"

"Her watch and chain and a few other trinkets."

"Humph! There are scoundrels about the country who will commit the darkest crime for the smallest inducement. I confess the business has rather a black look, Mr. Fenton, and that I am inclined to concur with the country people."

"An easy way of settling the question for those not vitally interested in the lady's fate," Gilbert answered bitterly.

"The lady is my client, sir, and I am bound to feel a warm interest in her affairs," the lawyer said, with the lofty tone of a man whose finer feelings have been outraged.

"The lady was once my promised wife, Mr. Medler," returned Gilbert, "and now stands to me in the place of a beloved and only sister. For me the mystery of her fate is an all-absorbing question, an enigma to the solution of which I mean to devote the rest of my life, if need be."

"A wasted life, Mr. Fenton; and in the meantime that river down yonder may hide the only secret."

"O God!" cried Gilbert passionately, "how eager every one is to make an end of this business! Even the men whom I paid and bribed to help me grew tired of their work, and abandoned all hope after the feeblest, most miserable attempts to earn their reward."

"What can be done in such a case, Mr. Fenton?" demanded the lawyer, shrugging his shoulders with a deprecating air. "What can the police do more than you or I? They have only a little more experience, that's all; they have no recondite means of solving these social mysteries. You have advertised, of course?"

"Yes, in many channels, with a certain amount of caution, but in such a manner as to insure Mrs. Holbrook's identification, if she had fallen into the hands of any one willing to communicate with me, and to insure her own attention, were she free to act for herself."

"Humph! Then it seems to me that everything has been done that can be done."

"Not yet. The men whom I employed in Hampshire—they were recommended to me by the Scotland-yard authorities, certainly—may not have been up to the mark. In any case, I shall try some one else. Do you know anything of the detective force?"

Mr. Medler assumed an air of consideration, and then said, "No, he did not know the name of a single detective; his business did not bring him in contact with that class of people." He said this with the tone of a man whose practice was of the loftiest and choicest kind—conveyancing, perhaps, and the management of estates for the landed gentry, marriage-settlements involving the disposition of large fortunes, and so on; whereas Mr. Medler's business lying chiefly among the criminal population, his path in life might have been supposed to be not very remote from the footsteps of eminent police-officers.

"I can get the information elsewhere," Gilbert said carelessly. "Believe me, I do not mean to let this matter drop."

"My dear sir, if I might venture upon a word of friendly advice—not in a professional spirit, but as between man and man—I should warn you against wasting your time and fortune upon a useless pursuit. If Mrs. Holbrook has vanished from the world of her own free will—a thing that often happens, eccentric as it may be—she will reappear in good time of her own free will. If she has been the victim of a crime, that crime will no doubt come to light in due course, without any efforts of yours."

"That is the common kind of advice, Mr. Medler," answered Gilbert. "Prudent counsel, no doubt, if a man could be content to take it, and well meant; but, you see, I have loved this lady, love her still, and shall continue so to love her till the end of my life. It is not possible for me to rest in ignorance of her fate."

"Although she jilted you in favour of Mr. Holbrook?" suggested the lawyer with something of a sneer.

"That wrong has been forgiven. Fate did not permit me to be her husband, but I can be her friend and brother. She has need of some one to stand in that position, poor girl! for her lot is very lonely. And now I want you to explain the conditions of her grandfather's will. It is her father who would profit, I think I gathered from our last conversation, in the event of Marian's death."

"In the event of her dying childless—yes, the father would take all."

"Then he is really the only person who could profit by her death?"

"Well, yes," replied the lawyer with some slight hesitation; "under her grandfather's will, yes, her father would take all. Of course, in the event of her father having died previously, the husband would come in as heir-at-law. You see it was not easy to exclude the husband altogether."

"And do you believe that Mr. Nowell is still living to claim his inheritance?"

"I believe so. I fancy the old man had some tidings of his son before the will was executed; that he, in short, heard of his having been met with not long ago, over in America."

"No doubt he will speedily put in an appearance now," said Gilbert bitterly—"now that there is a fortune to be gained by the assertion of his identity."

"Humph!" muttered the lawyer. "It would not be very easy for him to put his hand on sixpence of Jacob Nowell's money, in the absence of any proof of Mrs. Holbrook's death. There would be no end of appeals to the Court of Chancery; and after all manner of formulas he might obtain a decree that would lock up the property for twenty-four years. I doubt, if the executor chose to stick to technicals, and the business got into chancery, whether Percival Nowell would live long enough to profit by his father's will."

"I am glad of that," said Gilbert. "I know the man to be a scoundrel, and I am very glad that he is unlikely to be a gainer by any misfortune that has befallen his daughter. Had it been otherwise, I should have been inclined to think that he had had some hand in this disappearance."

The lawyer looked at Mr. Fenton with a sharp inquisitive glance.

"In other words, you would imply that Percival Nowell may have made away with his daughter. You must have a very bad opinion of human nature, Mr. Fenton, to conceive anything so horrible."

"My suspicions do not go quite so far as that," said Gilbert. "God forbid that it should be so. I have a firm belief that Marian Holbrook lives. But it is possible to get a person out of the way without the last worst crime of which mankind is capable."

"It would seem more natural to suspect the husband than the father, I should imagine," Mr. Medler answered, after a thoughtful pause.

"I cannot see that. The husband had nothing to gain by his wife's disappearance, and everything to lose."

"He might have supposed the father to be dead, and that he would step into the fortune. He might not know enough of the law of property to be aware of the difficulties attending a succession of that kind. There is a most extraordinary ignorance of the law of the land prevailing among well-educated Englishmen. Or he may have been tired of his wife, and have seen his way to a more advantageous alliance. Men are not always satisfied with one wife in these days, and a man who married in such a strange underhand manner would be likely to have some hidden motive for secrecy."

The suggestion was not without force for Gilbert Fenton. His face grew darker, and he was some time before he replied to Mr. Medler's remarks. That suspicion which of late had been perpetually floating dimly in his brain—that vague distrust of his one chosen friend, John Saltram, flashed upon him in this moment with a new distinctness. If this man, whom he had so loved and trusted, had betrayed him, had so utterly falsified his friend's estimate of his character, was it not easy enough to believe him capable of still deeper baseness, capable of growing weary of his stolen wife, and casting her off by some foul secret means, in order to marry a richer woman? The marriage between John Holbrook and Marian Nowell had taken place several months before Michael Branston's death, at a time when perhaps Adela Branston's admirer had begun to despair of her release. And then fate had gone against him, and Mrs. Branston's fortune lay at his feet when it was too late.

Thus, and thus only, could Gilbert Fenton account in any easy manner for John Saltram's avoidance of the Anglo-Indian's widow. A little more than a year ago it had seemed as if the whole plan of his life was built upon a marriage with this woman; and now that she was free, and obviously willing to make him the master of her fortune, he recoiled from the position, unreasonably and unaccountably blind or indifferent to its advantages.

"There shall be an end of these shapeless unspoken doubts," Gilbert said to himself. "I will see John Saltram to-day, and there shall be an explanation between us. I will be his dupe and fool no longer. I will get at the truth somehow."

Gilbert Fenton said very little more to the lawyer, who seemed by no means sorry to get rid of him. But at the door of the office he paused.

"You did not tell me the names of the executors to Jacob Nowell's will," he said.

"You didn't ask me the question," answered Mr. Medler curtly. "There is only one executor—myself."

"Indeed! Mr. Nowell must have had a very high opinion of you to leave you so much power."

"I don't know about power. Jacob Nowell knew me, and he didn't know many people. I don't say that he put any especial confidence in me—for it was his habit to trust no one, his boast that he trusted no one. But he was obliged to name some one for his executor, and he named me."

"Shall you consider it your duty to seek out or advertise for Percival Nowell?" asked Gilbert.

"I shall be in no hurry to do that, in the absence of any proof of his daughter's death. My first duty would be to look for her."

"God grant you may be more fortunate than I have been! There is my card, Mr. Medler. You will be so good as to let me have a line immediately, at that address, if you obtain any tidings of Mrs. Holbrook."

"I will do so."



CHAPTER XXX.

STRICKEN DOWN.

A hansom carried Gilbert Fenton to the Temple, without loss of time. There was a fierce hurry in his breast, a heat and fever which he had scarcely felt since the beginning of his troubles; for his lurking suspicion of his friend had gathered shape and strength all at once, and possessed his mind now to the exclusion of every other thought.

He ran quickly up the stairs. The outer and inner doors of John Saltram's chambers were both ajar. Gilbert pushed them open and went in. The familiar sitting-room looked just a little more dreary than usual. The litter of books and papers, ink-stand and portfolio, was transferred to one of the side-tables, and in its place, on the table where his friend had been accustomed to write, Gilbert saw a cluster of medicine-bottles, a jug of toast-and-water, and a tray with a basin of lukewarm greasy-looking beef-tea.

The door between the two rooms stood half open, and from the bedchamber within Gilbert heard the heavy painful breathing of a sleeper. He went to the door and looked into the room. John Saltram was lying asleep, in an uneasy attitude, with both arms thrown over his head. His face had a haggard look that was made all the more ghastly by two vivid crimson spots upon his sunken cheeks; there were dark purple rings round his eyes, and his beard was of more than a week's growth.

"Ill," Gilbert muttered, looking aghast at this dreary picture, with strangely conflicting feelings of pity and anger in his breast; "struck down at the very moment when I had determined to know the truth."

The sick man tossed himself restlessly from side to side in his feverish sleep, changed his position two or three times with evident weariness and pain, and then opened his eyes and stared with a blank unseeing gaze at his friend. That look, without one ray of recognition, went to Gilbert's heart somehow.

"O God, how fond I was of him!" he said to himself. "And if he has been a traitor! If he were to die like this, before I have wrung the truth from him—to die, and I not dare to cherish his memory—to be obliged to live out my life with this doubt of him!"

This doubt! Had he much reason to doubt two minutes afterwards, when John Saltram raised himself on his gaunt arm, and looked piteously round the room?

"Marian!" he called. "Marian!"

"Yes," muttered Gilbert, "it is all true. He is calling his wife."

The revelation scarcely seemed a surprise to him. Little by little that suspicion, so vague and dim at first, had gathered strength, and now that all his doubts received confirmation from those unconscious lips, it seemed to him as if he had known his friend's falsehood for a long time.

"Marian, come here. Come, child, come," the sick man cried in feeble imploring tones. "What, are you afraid of me? Is this death? Am I dead, and parted from her? Would anything else keep her from me when I call for her, the poor child that loved me so well? And I have wished myself free of her—God forgive me!—wished myself free."

The words were muttered in broken gasping fragments of sentences; but Gilbert heard them and understood them very easily. Then, after looking about the room, and looking full at Gilbert without seeing him, John Saltram fell back upon his tumbled pillows and closed his eyes. Gilbert heard a slipshod step in the outer room, and turning round, found himself face to face with the laundress—that mature and somewhat depressing matron whom he had sought out a little time before, when he wanted to discover Mr. Saltram's whereabouts.

This woman, upon seeing him, burst forth immediately into jubilation.

"O, sir, what a providence it is that you've come!" she cried. "Poor dear gentleman, he has been that ill, and me not knowing what to do more than a baby, except in the way of sending for a doctor when I see how bad he was, and waiting on him myself day and night, which I have done faithful, and am that worn-out in consequence, that I shake like a haspen, and can't touch a bit of victuals. I had but just slipped round to the court, while he was asleep, poor dear, to give my children their dinner; for it's a hard trial, sir, having a helpless young family depending upon one; and it would but be fair that all I have gone through should be considered; for though I says it as shouldn't, there isn't one of your hired nurses would do more; and I'm willing to continue of it, provisoed as I have help at nights, and my trouble considered in my wages."

"You need have no apprehension; you shall be paid for your trouble. Has he been long ill?"

"Well, sir, he took the cold as were the beginning of his illness a fortnight ago come next Thursday. You may remember, perhaps, as it came on awful wet in the afternoon, last Thursday week, and Mr. Saltram was out in the rain, and walked home in it,—not being able to get a cab, I suppose, or perhaps not caring to get one, for he was always a careless gentleman in such respects,—and come in wet through to the skin; and instead of changing his clothes, as a Christian would have done, just gives himself a shake like, as he might have been a New-fondling dog that had been swimming, and sits down before the fire, which of course drawed out the steam from his things and made it worse, and writes away for dear life till twelve o'clock that night, having something particular to finish for them magazines, he says; and so, when I come to tidy-up a bit the last thing at night, I found him sitting at the table writing, and didn't take no more notice of me than a dog, which was his way, though never meant unkindly—quite the reverse."

The laundress paused to draw breath, and to pour a dose of medicine from one of the bottles on the table.

"Well, sir, the next day, he had a vi'lent cold, as you may suppose, and was low and languid-like, but went on with his writing, and it weren't no good asking him not. 'I want money, Mrs. Pratt,' he said; 'you can't tell how bad I want money, and these people pay me for my stuff as fast as I send it in.' The day after that he was a deal worse, and had a wandering way like, as if he didn't know what he was doing; and sat turning over his papers with one hand, and leaning his head upon the other, and groaned so that it went through one like a knife to hear him. 'It's no use,' he said at last; 'it's no use!' and then went and threw hisself down upon that bed, and has never got up since, poor dear gentleman! I went round to fetch a doctor out of Essex Street, finding as he was no better in the evening, and awful hot, and still more wandering-like—Mr. Mew by name, a very nice gentleman—which said as it were rheumatic fever, and has been here twice a day ever since."

"Has Mr. Saltram never been in his right senses since that day?" Gilbert asked.

"O yes, sir; off and on for the first week he was quite hisself at times; but for the last three days he hasn't known any one, and has talked and jabbered a deal, and has been dreadful restless."

"Does the doctor call it a dangerous case?"

"Well, sir, not to deceive you, he ast me if Mr. Saltram had any friends as I could send for; and I says no, not to my knowledge; 'for,' says Mr. Mew, 'if he have any relations or friends near at hand, they ought to be told that he's in a bad way;' and only this morning he said as how he should like to call in a physician, for the case was a bad one."

"I see. There is danger evidently," Gilbert said gravely. "I will wait and hear what the doctor says. He will come again to-day, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; he's sure to come in the evening."

"Good; I will stay till the evening. I should like you to go round immediately to this Mr. Mew's house, and ask for the address of some skilled nurse, and then go on, in a cab if necessary, and fetch her."

"I could do that, sir, of course,—not but what I feel myself capable of nursing the poor dear gentleman."

"You can't nurse him night and day, my good woman. Do what I tell you, and bring back a professional nurse as soon as you can. If Mr. Mew should be out, his people are likely to know the address of such a person."

He gave the woman some silver, and despatched her; and then, being alone, sat down quietly in the sick-room to think out the situation.

Yes, there was no longer any doubt; that piteous appeal to Marian had settled the question. John Saltram, the friend whom he had loved, was the traitor. John Saltram had stolen his promised wife, had come between him and his fair happy future, and had kept the secret of his guilt in a dastardly spirit that made the act fifty times blacker than it would have seemed otherwise.

Sitting in the dreary silence of that sick chamber, a silence broken only by the painful sound of the sleeper's difficult breathing, many things came back to his mind; circumstances trivial enough in themselves, but invested with a grave significance when contemplated by the light of today's revelation.

He remembered those happy autumn afternoons at Lidford; those long, drowsy, idle days in which John Saltram had given himself up so entirely to the pleasure of the moment, with surely something more than mere sympathy with his friend's happiness. He remembered that last long evening at the cottage, when this man had been at his best, full of life and gaiety; and then that sudden departure, which had puzzled him so much at the time, and yet had seemed no surprise to Marian. It had been the result of some suddenly-formed resolution perhaps, Gilbert thought.

"Poor wretch! he may have tried to be true to me," he said to himself, with a sharp bitter pain at his heart.

He had loved this man so well, that even now, knowing himself to have been betrayed, there was a strange mingling of pity and anger in his mind, and mixed with these a touch of contempt. He had believed in John Saltram; had fancied him nobler and grander than himself, somehow; a man who, under a careless half-scornful pretence of being worse than his fellows, concealed a nature that was far above the common herd; and yet this man had proved the merest caitiff, a weak cowardly villain.

"To take my hand in friendship, knowing what he had done, and how my life was broken! to pretend sympathy; to play out the miserable farce to the very last! Great heaven! that the man I have honoured could be capable of so much baseness!"

The sleeper moved restlessly, the eyes were opened once more and turned upon Gilbert, not with the same utter blankness as before, but without the faintest recognition. The sick man saw some one watching him, and the figure was associated with an unreal presence, the phantom of his brain, which had been with him often in the day and night.

"The man again!" he muttered. "When will she come?" And then raising himself upon his elbow, he cried imploringly, "Mother, you fetch her!"

He was speaking to his mother, whom he had loved very dearly—his mother who had been dead fifteen years.

Gilbert's mind went back to that far-away time in Egypt, when he had lain like this, helpless and unconscious, and this man had nursed and watched him with unwearying tenderness.

"I will see him safely through this," he said to himself, "and then——"

And then the account between them must be squared somehow. Gilbert Fenton had no thought of any direful vengeance. He belonged to an age in which injuries are taken very quietly, unless they are wrongs which the law can redress—wounds which can be healed by a golden plaster in the way of damages.

He could not kill his friend; the age of duelling was past, and he not romantic enough to be guilty of such an anachronism as mortal combat. Yet nothing less than a duel to the death could avenge such a wrong.

So friendship was at an end between those two, and that was all; it was only the utter severance of a tie that had lasted for years, nothing more. Yet to Gilbert it seemed a great deal. His little world had crumbled to ashes; love had perished, and now friendship had died this sudden bitter death, from which there was no possible resurrection.

In the midst of such thoughts as these he remembered the sick man's medicine. Mrs. Pratt had given him a few hurried directions before departing on her errand. He looked at his watch, and then went over to the table and prepared the draught and administered it with a firm and gentle hand.

"Who's that?" John Saltram muttered faintly. "It seems like the touch of a friend."

He dropped back upon the pillow without waiting for any reply, and fell into a string of low incoherent talk, with closed eyes.

The laundress was a long time gone, and Gilbert sat alone in the dismal little bedroom, where there had never been the smallest attempt at comfort since John Saltram had occupied it. He sat alone, or with that awful companionship of one whose mind was far away, which was so much more dreary than actual loneliness—sat brooding over the history of his friend's treachery.

What had he done with Marian? Was her disappearance any work of his, after all? Had he hidden her away for some secret reason of his own, and then acted out the play by pretending to search for her? Knowing him for the traitor he was, could Gilbert Fenton draw any positive line of demarcation between the amount of guilt which was possible and that which was not possible to him?

What had he done with Marian? How soon would he be able to answer that question? or would he ever be able to answer it? The thought of this delay was torture to Gilbert Fenton. He had come here to-day thinking to make an end of all his doubts, to force an avowal of the truth from those false lips. And behold, a hand stronger than his held him back. His interrogation must await the answer to that awful question—life or death.

The woman came in presently, bustling and out of breath. She had found a very trustworthy person, recommended by Mr. Mew's assistant—a person who would come that evening without fail.

"It was all the way up at Islington, sir, and I paid the cabman three-and-six altogether, which he said it were his fare. And how has the poor dear been while I was away?" asked Mrs. Pratt, with her head on one side and an air of extreme solicitude.

"Very much as you see him now. He has mentioned a name once or twice, the name of Marian. Have you ever heard that?"

"I should say I have, sir, times and often since he's been ill. 'Marian, why don't you come to me?' so pitiful; and then, 'Lost, lost!' in such a awful wild way. I think it must be some favourite sister, sir, or a young lady as he has kep' company with."

"Marian!" cried the voice from the bed, as if their cautious talk had penetrated to that dim brain. "Marian! O no, no; she is gone; I have lost her! Well, I wished it; I wanted my freedom."

Gilbert started, and stood transfixed, looking intently at the unconscious speaker. Yes, here was the clue to the mystery. John Saltram had grown tired of his stolen bride—had sighed for his freedom. Who should say that he had not taken some iniquitous means to rid himself of the tie that had grown troublesome to him?

Gilbert Fenton remembered Ellen Carley's suspicions. He was no longer inclined to despise them.

It was dreary work to sit by the bedside watching that familiar face, to which fever and delirium had given a strange weird look; dismal work to count the moments, and wonder when that voice, now so thick of utterance as it went on muttering incoherent sentences and meaningless phrases, would be able to reply to those questions which Gilbert Fenton was burning to ask.

Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had stricken this man down—this strong powerfully-built man, who was a stranger to illness and all physical suffering? Was the body only crushed by the burden of the mind? Gilbert could not find any answer to these questions. He only knew that his sometime friend lay there helpless, unconscious, removed beyond his reach as completely as if he had been lying in his coffin.

"O God, it is hard to bear!" he said half aloud: "it is a bitter trial to bear. If this illness should end in death, I may never know Marian's fate."

He sat in the sick man's room all through that long dismal afternoon, waiting to see the doctor, and with the same hopeless thoughts repeating themselves perpetually in his mind.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Mr. Mew at last made his evening visit. He was a grave gray-haired little man, with a shrewd face and a pleasant manner; a man who inspired Gilbert with confidence, and whose presence was cheering in a sick-room; but he did not speak very hopefully of John Saltram.

"It is a bad case, sir—a very bad case," he said gravely, after he had made his careful examination of the patient's condition. "There has been a violent cold caught, you see, through our poor friend's recklessness in neglecting to change his damp clothes, and rheumatic fever has set in. But it appears to me that there are other causes at work—mental disturbance, and so on. Our friend has been taxing his brain a little too severely, I gather from Mrs. Pratt's account of him; and these things will tell, sir; sooner or later they have their effect."

"Then you apprehend danger?"

"Well, yes; I dare not tell you that there is an absence of danger. Mr. Saltram has a fine constitution, a noble frame; but the strain is a severe one, especially upon the mind."

"You spoke just now of over-work as a cause for this mental disturbance. Might it not rather proceed from some secret trouble of mind, some hidden care?" Gilbert asked anxiously.

"That, sir, is an open question. The mind is unhinged; there is no doubt of that. There is something more here than the ordinary delirium we look for in fever cases."

"You have talked of a physician, Mr. Mew; would it not be well to call one in immediately?"

"I should feel more comfortable if my opinion were supported, sir: not that I believe there is anything more can be done for our patient than I have been doing; but the case is a critical one, and I should be glad to feel myself supported."

"If you will give me the name and address of the gentleman you would like to call in, I will go for him immediately."

"To-night? Nay, my dear sir, there is no occasion for such haste; to-morrow morning will do very well."

"To-morrow morning, then; but I will make the appointment to-night, if I can."

Mr. Mew named a physician high in reputation as a specialist in such cases as John Saltram's; and Gilbert dashed off at once in a hansom to obtain the promise of an early visit from this gentleman on the following morning. He succeeded in his errand; and on returning to the Temple found the professional nurse installed, and the sick-room brightened and freshened a little by her handiwork. The patient was asleep, and his slumber was more quiet than usual.

Gilbert had eaten nothing since breakfast, and it was now nearly nine o'clock in the evening; but before going out to some neighbouring tavern to snatch a hasty dinner, he stopped to tell Mrs. Pratt that he should sleep in his friend's chamber that night.

"Why, you don't mean that, sir, sure to goodness," cried the laundress, alarmed; "and not so much as a sofy bedstead, nor nothing anyways comfortable."

"I could sleep upon three or four chairs, if it were necessary; but there is an old sofa in the bedroom. You might bring that into this room for me; and the nurse can have it in the day-time. She won't want to be lying down to-night, I daresay. I don't suppose I shall sleep much myself, but I am a little knocked up, and shall be glad of some sort of rest. I want to be on the spot, come what may."

"But, sir, with the new nurse and me, there surely can't be no necessity; and you might be round the first thing in the morning like to see how the poor dear gentleman has slep'."

"I know that, but I would rather be on the spot. I have my own especial reasons. You can go home to your children."

"Thank you kindly, sir; which I shall be very glad to take care of 'em, poor things. And I hope, sir, as you won't forget that I've gone through a deal for Mr. Saltram—if so be as he shouldn't get better himself, which the Lord forbid—to take my trouble into consideration, bein' as he were always a free-handed gentleman, though not rich."

"Your services will not be forgotten, Mrs. Pratt, depend upon it. Perhaps I'd better give you a couple of sovereigns on account: that'll make matters straight for the present."

"Yes, sir; and many thanks for your generosity," replied the laundress, agreeably surprised by this prompt donation, and dropping grateful curtseys before her benefactor; "and Mr. Saltram shall want nothing as my care can provide for him, you may depend upon it."

"That is well. And now I am going out to get some dinner; I shall be back in half an hour."

The press and bustle of the day's work was over at the tavern to which Gilbert bent his steps. Dinners and diners seemed to be done with for one more day; and there were only a couple of drowsy-looking waiters folding table-cloths and putting away cruet-stands and other paraphernalia in long narrow closets cut in the papered walls, and invisible by day.

One of these functionaries grew brisk again, with a wan factitious briskness, at sight of Gilbert, made haste to redecorate one of the tables, and in bland insinuating tones suggested a dinner of six courses or so, as likely to be agreeable to a lonely and belated diner; well aware in the depths of his inner consciousness that the six courses would be all more or less warmings-up of viands that had figured in the day's bill of fare.

"Bring me a chop or a steak, and a pint of dry sherry," Gilbert said wearily.

"Have a slice of turbot and lobster-sauce, sir—the turbot are uncommon fine to-day; and a briled fowl and mushrooms. It will be ready in five minutes."

"You may bring me the fowl, if you like: I won't wait for fish. I'm in a hurry."

The attendant gave a faint sigh, and communicated the order for the fowl and mushrooms through a speaking-tube. It was the business of his life to beguile his master's customers into over-eating themselves, and to set his face against chops and steaks; but he felt that this particular customer was proof against his blandishments. He took Gilbert an evening paper, and then subsided into a pensive silence until the fowl appeared in an agreeable frizzling state, fresh from the gridiron, but a bird of some experience notwithstanding, and wingless. It was a very hasty meal. Gilbert was eager to return to those chambers in the Temple—eager to be listening once more for some chance words of meaning that might be dropped from John Saltram's pale parched lips in the midst of incoherent ravings. Come what might, he wanted to be near at hand, to watch that sick-bed with a closer vigil than hired nurse ever kept; to be ready to surprise the briefest interval of consciousness that might come all of a sudden to that hapless fever-stricken sinner. Who should say that such an interval would not come, or who could tell what such an interval might reveal?

Gilbert Fenton paid for his dinner, left half his wine undrunk, and hurried away; leaving the waiter with rather a contemptuous idea of him, though that individual condescended to profit by his sobriety, and finished the dry sherry at a draught.

It was nearly ten when Gilbert returned to the chambers, and all was still quiet, that heavy slumber continuing; an artificial sleep at the best, produced by one of Mr. Mew's sedatives. The sofa had been wheeled from the bedroom to the sitting-room, and placed in a comfortable corner by the fire. There were preparations too for a cup of tea, to be made and consumed at any hour agreeable to the watcher; a small teakettle simmering on the hob; a tray with a cup and saucer, and queer little black earthenware teapot, on the table; a teacaddy and other appliances close at hand,—all testifying to the grateful attention of the vanished Pratt.

Gilbert shared the nurse's watch till past midnight. Long before that John Saltram woke from his heavy sleep, and there was more of that incoherent talk so painful to hear—talk of people that were dead, of scenes that were far away, even of those careless happy wanderings in which those two college friends had been together; and then mere nonsense talk, shreds and patches of random thought, that scorned to be drawn from, some rubbish-chamber, some waste-paper basket of the brain.

It was weary work. He woke towards eleven, and a little after twelve dropped asleep again; but this time, the effect of the sedative having worn off, the sleep was restless and uneasy. Then came a brief interval of quiet; and in this Gilbert left him, and flung himself down upon the sofa, to sink into a slumber that was scarcely more peaceful than that of the sick man.

He was thoroughly worn out, however, and slept for some hours, to be awakened suddenly at last by a shrill cry in the next room. He sprang up from the sofa, and rushed in. John Saltram was sitting up in bed, propped by the pillows on which his two elbows were planted, looking about him with a fierce haggard face, and calling for "Marian." The nurse had fallen asleep in her arm-chair by the fire, and was slumbering placidly.

"Marian," he cried, "Marian, why have you left me? God knows I loved you; yes, even when I seemed cold and neglectful. Everything was against me; but I loved you, my dear, I loved you! Did I ever say that you came between me and fortune—was I mean enough, base enough, ever to say that? It was a lie, my love; you were my fortune. Were poverty and obscurity hard things to bear for you? No, my darling, no; I will face them to-morrow, if you will come back to me. O no, no, she is gone; my life has gone: I broke her heart with my hard bitter words; I drove my angel away from me."

He had not spoken so coherently since Gilbert had been with him that day. Surely this must be an interval of consciousness, or semi-consciousness. Gilbert went to the bedside, and, seating himself there quietly, looked intently at the altered face, which stared at him without a gleam of recognition.

"Speak to me, John Saltram," he said. "You know me, don't you—the man who was once your friend, Gilbert Fenton?"

The other burst into a wild bitter laugh. "Gilbert Fenton—my friend, the man who trusts me still! Poor old Gilbert! and I fancied that I loved him, that I would have freely sacrificed my own happiness for his."

"And yet you betrayed him," Gilbert said in a low distinct voice. "But that may be forgiven, if you have been guilty of no deeper wrong than that. John Saltram, as you have a soul to be saved, what have you done with Marian—with—your wife?"

It cost him something, even in that moment of excitement, to pronounce those two words.

"Killed her!" the sick man answered with the same mad laugh. "She was too good for me, you see; and I grew weary of her calm beauty, and I sickened of her tranquil goodness. First I sacrificed honour, friendship, everything to win her; and then I got tired of my prize. It is my nature, I suppose; but I loved her all the time; she had twined herself about my heart somehow. I knew it when she was lost."

"What have you done with her?" repeated Gilbert, in a low stern voice, with his grasp upon John Saltram's arm.

"What have I done with her? I forget. She is gone—I wanted my freedom; I felt myself fettered, a ruined man. She is gone; and I am free, free to make a better marriage."

"O God!" muttered Gilbert, "is this man the blackest villain that ever cumbered the earth? What am I to think, what am I to believe?"

Again he repeated the same question, with a stem kind of patience, as if he would give this guilty wretch the benefit of every possible doubt, the unwilling pity which his condition demanded. Alas! he could obtain no coherent answer to his persistent questioning. Vague self-accusation, mad reiteration of that one fact of his loss; nothing more distinct came from those fevered lips, nor did one look of recognition flash into those bloodshot eyes.

The time at which this mystery was to be solved had not come yet; there was nothing to be done but to wait, and Gilbert waited with a sublime patience through all the alternations of a long and wearisome sickness.

"Talk of friends," Mrs. Pratt exclaimed, in a private conference with the nurse; "never did I see such a friend as Mr. Fenting, sacrificing of himself as he do, day and night, to look after that poor creature in there, and taking no better rest than he can get on that old horsehair sofy, which brickbats or knife boards isn't harder, and never do you hear him murmur."

And yet for this man, whose, battle with the grim enemy, Death, he watched so patiently, what feeling could there be in Gilbert Fenton's heart in all the days to come but hatred or contempt? He had loved him so well, and trusted him so completely, and this was the end of it.

Christmas came while John Saltram was lying at death's door, feebly fighting that awful battle, struggling unconsciously with the bony hand that was trying to drag him across that fatal threshold; just able to keep himself on this side of that dread portal beyond which there lies so deep a mystery, so profound a darkness. Christmas came; and there were bells ringing, and festive gatherings here and there about the great dreary town, and Gilbert Fenton was besieged by friendly invitations from Mrs. Lister, remonstrating with him for his want of common affection in preferring to spend that season among his London friends rather than in the bosom of his family.

Gilbert wrote: to his sister telling her that he had particular business which detained him in town. But had it been otherwise, had he not been bound prisoner to John Saltram's sick-room, he would scarcely have cared to take his part in the conventional feastings and commonplace jovialities of Lidford House. Had he not dreamed of a bright home which was to be his at this time, a home beautified by the presence of the woman he loved? Ah, what delight to have welcomed the sacred day in the holy quiet of such a home, they two alone together, with all the world shut out!



CHAPTER XXXI.

ELLEN CARLEY'S TRIALS.

Christmas came in the old farm-house near Crosber; and Ellen Carley, who had no idea of making any troubled thoughts of her own an excuse for neglect of her household duties, made the sombre panelled rooms bright with holly and ivy, laurel and fir, and busied herself briskly in the confection of such pies and puddings as Hampshire considered necessary to the due honour of that pious festival. There were not many people to see the greenery and bright holly-berries which embellished the grave old rooms, not many whom Ellen very much cared for to taste the pies and puddings; but duty must be done, and the bailiff's daughter did her work with a steady industry which knew no wavering.

Her life had been a hard one of late, very lonely since Mrs. Holbrook's disappearance, and haunted with a presence which was most hateful to her. Stephen Whitelaw had taken to coming to the Grange much oftener than of old. There was seldom an evening now on which his insignificant figure was not to be seen planted by the hearth in the snug little oak-parlour, smoking his pipe in that dull silent way of his, which was calculated to aggravate a lively person like Ellen Carley into some open expression of disgust or dislike. Of late, too, his attentions had been of a more pronounced character; he took to dropping sly hints of his pretensions, and it was impossible for Ellen any longer to doubt that he wanted her to be his wife. More than this, there was a tone of assurance about the man, quiet as he was, which exasperated Miss Carley beyond all measure. He had the air of being certain of success, and on more than one occasion spoke of the day when Ellen would be mistress of Wyncomb Farm.

On his repetition of this offensive speech one evening, the girl took him up sharply:—

"Not quite so fast, if you please, Mr. Whitelaw," she said; "it takes two to make a bargain of that kind, just the same as it takes two to quarrel. There's many curious changes may come in a person's life, no doubt, and folks never know what's going to happen to them; but whatever changes may come upon me, that isn't one of them. I may live to see the inside of the workhouse, perhaps, when I'm too old for service; but I shall never sleep under the roof of Wyncomb Farmhouse."

Mr. Whitelaw gave a spiteful little laugh.

"What a spirited one she is, ain't she, now?" he said with a sneer. "O, you won't, won't you, my lass; you turn up that pretty little nose of yours—it do turn up a bit of itself, don't it, though?—at Wyncomb Farm and Stephen Whitelaw; your father tells a different story, Nell."

"Then my father tells a lying story," answered the girl, blushing crimson with indignation; "and it isn't for want o' knowing the truth. He knows that, if it was put upon me to choose between your house and the union, I'd go to the union—and with a light heart too, to be free of you. I didn't want to be rude, Mr. Whitelaw; for you've been civil-spoken enough to me, and I daresay you're a good friend to my father; but I can't help speaking the truth, and you've brought it on yourself with your nonsense."

"She's got a devil of a tongue of her own, you see, Whitelaw," said the bailiff, with a savage glance at his daughter; "but she don't mean above a quarter what she says—and when her time comes, she'll do as she's bid, or she's no child of mine."

"O, I forgive her," replied Mr. Whitelaw, with a placid air of superiority; "I'm not the man to bear malice against a pretty woman, and to my mind a pretty woman looks all the prettier when she's in a passion. I'm not in a hurry, you see, Carley; I can bide my time; but I shall never take a mistress to Wyncomb unless I can take the one I like."

After this particular evening, Mr. Whitelaw's presence seemed more than ever disagreeable to poor Ellen. He had the air of her fate somehow, sitting rooted to the hearth night after night, and she grew to regard him with a half superstitious horror, as if he possessed some occult power over her, and could bend her to his wishes in spite of herself. The very quietude of the man became appalling to her. Such a man seemed capable of accomplishing anything by the mere force of persistence, by the negative power that lay in his silent nature.

"I suppose he means to sit in that room night after night, smoking his pipe and staring with those pale stupid eyes of his, till I change my mind and promise to marry him," Ellen said to herself, as she meditated angrily on the annoyance of Mr. Whitelaw's courtship. "He may sit there till his hair turns gray—if ever such red hair does turn to anything better than itself—and he'll find no change in me. I wish Frank were here to keep up my courage. I think if he were to ask me to run away with him, I should be tempted to say yes, at the risk of bringing ruin upon both of us; anything to escape out of the power of that man. But come what may, I won't endure it much longer. I'll run away to service soon after Christmas, and father will only have himself to thank for the loss of me."

It was Mr. Whitelaw who appeared as principal guest at the Grange on Christmas-day; Mr. Whitelaw, supported on this occasion by a widowed cousin of his who had kept house for him for some years, and who bore a strong family likeness to him both in person and manner, and Ellen Carley thought that it was impossible for the world to contain a more disagreeable pair. These were the guests who consumed great quantities of Ellen's pies and puddings, and who sat under her festal garlands of holly and laurel. She had been especially careful to hang no scrap of mistletoe, which might have afforded Mr. Whitelaw an excuse for a practical display of his gallantry; a fact which did not escape the playful observation of his cousin, Mrs. Tadman.

"Young ladies don't often forget to put up a bit of mistletoe," said this matron, "when there's a chance of them they like being by;" and she glanced in a meaning way from Ellen to the master of Wyncomb Farm.

"Miss Carley isn't like the generality of young ladies," Mr. Whitelaw answered with a glum look, and his kinswoman was fain to drop the subject.

Alone with Ellen, sly Mrs. Tadman took occasion to launch out into enthusiastic praises of her cousin; to which the girl listened in profound silence, closely watched all the time by the woman's sharp gray eyes. And then by degrees her tone changed ever so little, and she owned that her kinsman was not altogether faultless; indeed it was curious to perceive what numerous shortcomings were coexistent with those shining merits of his.

"He has been a good friend to me," continued the matron; "that I never have denied and never shall deny. But I have been a good servant to him; ah! there isn't a hired servant as would toil and drudge, and watch and pinch, as I have done to please him, and never have had payment from him more than a new gown at Christmas, or a five-pound note after harvest. And of course, if ever he marries, I shall have to look for a new home; for I know too much of his ways, I daresay, for a wife to like to have me about her—and me of an age when it seem a hard to have to go among strangers—and not having saved sixpence, where I might have put by a hundred pounds easy, if I hadn't been working without wages for a relation. But I've not been called a servant, you see; and I suppose Stephen thinks that's payment enough for my trouble. Goodness knows I've saved him many a pound, and that he'll know when I'm gone; for he's near, is Stephen, and it goes to his heart to part with a shilling."

"But why should you ever leave him, Mrs. Tadman?" Ellen asked kindly. "I shouldn't think he could have a better housekeeper."

"Perhaps not," answered the widow, shaking her head with mysterious significance; "but his wife won't think that; and when he's got a wife he'll want her to be his housekeeper, and to pinch and scrape as I've pinched and scraped for him. Lord help her!" concluded Mrs. Tadman, with a faint groan, which was far from complimentary to her relative's character.

"But perhaps he never will marry," argued Ellen coolly.

"O, yes, he will, Miss Carley," replied Mrs. Tadman, with another significant movement of her head; "he's set his heart on that, and he's set his heart on the young woman he means to marry."

"He can't marry her unless she's willing to be his wife, any how," said Ellen, reddening a little.

"O, he'll find a way to make her consent, Miss Carley, depend upon that. Whatever Stephen Whitelaw sets his mind upon, he'll do. But I don't envy that poor young woman; for she'll have a hard life of it at Wyncomb, and a hard master in my cousin Stephen."

"She must be a very weak-minded young woman if she marries him against her will," Ellen said laughing; and then ran off to get the tea ready, leaving Mrs. Tadman to her meditations, which were not of a lively nature at the best of times.

That Christmas-day came to an end at last, after a long evening in the oak parlour enlivened by a solemn game at whist and a ponderous supper of cold sirloin and mince pies; and looking out at the wintry moonlight, and the shadowy garden and flat waste of farm-land from the narrow casement in her own room. Ellen Carley wondered what those she loved best in the world were doing and thinking of under that moonlit sky. Where was Marian Holbrook, that new-found friend whom she had loved so well, and whose fate remained so profound a mystery? and what was Frank Randall doing, far away in London, where he had gone to fill a responsible position in a large City firm of solicitors, and whence he had promised to return faithful to his first love, as soon as he found himself fairly on the road to a competence wherewith to endow her?

Thus it was that poor Ellen kept the close of her Christmas-day, looking out over the cold moonlit fields, and wondering how she was to escape from the persecution of Stephen Whitelaw.

That obnoxious individual had invited Mr. Carley and his daughter to spend New-year's-day at Wyncomb; a display of hospitality so foreign to his character, that it was scarcely strange that Mrs. Tadman opened her eyes and stared aghast as she heard the invitation given. It had been accepted too, much to Ellen's disgust; and her father told her more than once in the course of the ensuing week that she was to put on her best gown, and smarten herself up a bit, on New-year's-day.

"And if you want a new gown, Nell, I don't mind giving it you," said the bailiff, in a burst of generosity, and with the prevailing masculine idea that a new gown was a panacea for all feminine griefs. "You can walk over to Malsham and buy it any afternoon you like."

But Ellen did not care for a new gown, and told her father so, with a word or two of thanks for his offer. She did not desire fine dresses; she had indeed been looking over and furbishing up her wardrobe of late, with a view to that possible flight of hers, and it was to her cotton working gowns that she had paid most attention: looking forward to begin a harder life in some stranger's service—ready to endure anything rather than to marry Stephen Whitelaw. And of late the conviction had grown upon her that her father was very much in earnest, and that before long it would be a question whether she should obey him, or be turned out of doors. She had seen his dealings with other people, and she knew him to be a passionate determined man, hard as iron in his anger.

"I won't give him the trouble to turn me out of doors," Ellen said to herself. "When I know his mind, and that there's no hope of turning him, I'll get away quietly, and find some new home. He has no real power over me, and I have but to earn my own living to be independent of him. And I don't suppose Frank will think any the worse of me for having been a servant," thought the girl, with something like a sob. It seemed hard that she must needs sink lower in her lover's eyes, when she was so far beneath him already; he a lawyer's son, a gentleman by education, and she an untaught country girl.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE PADLOCKED DOOR AT WYNCOMB.

The countenance of the new year was harsh, rugged, and gloomy—as of a stony-hearted, strong-minded new year, that had no idea of making his wintry aspect pleasant, or brightening the gloom of his infancy with any deceptive gleams of January sunshine. A bitter north wind made a dreary howling among the leafless trees, and swept across the broad bare fields with merciless force—a bleak cruel new-year's-day, on which to go out a-pleasuring; but it was more in harmony with Ellen Carley's thoughts than brighter weather could have been; and she went to and fro about her morning's work, up and down cold windy passages, and in and out of the frozen dairy, unmoved by the bitter wind which swept the crisp waves of dark brown hair from her low brows, and tinged the tip of her impertinent little nose with a faint wintry bloom.

The bailiff was in very high spirits this first morning of the new year—almost uproarious spirits indeed, which vented themselves in snatches of boisterous song, as he bustled backwards and forwards from house to stables, dressed in his best blue coat and bright buttons and a capacious buff waistcoat; with his ponderous nether limbs clothed in knee-cords, and boots with vinegar tops; looking altogether the typical British farmer.

Those riotous bursts of song made his daughter shudder. Somehow, his gaiety was more alarming to her than his customary morose humour. It was all the more singular, too, because of late William Carley had been especially silent and moody, with the air of a man whose mind is weighed down by some heavy burden—so gloomy indeed, that his daughter had questioned him more than once, entreating to know if he were distressed by any secret trouble, anything going wrong about the farm, and so on. The girl had only brought upon herself harsh angry answers by these considerate inquiries, and had been told to mind her own business, and not pry into matters that in no way concerned her.

"But it does concern me to see you downhearted, father," she answered gently.

"Does it really, my girl? What! your father's something more than a stranger to you, is he? I shouldn't have thought it, seeing how you've gone again me in some things lately. Howsomedever, when I want your help, I shall know how to ask for it, and I hope you'll give it freely. I don't want fine words; they never pulled anybody out of the ditch that I've heard tell of."

Whatever the bailiff's trouble had been, it seemed to be lightened to-day, Ellen thought; and yet that unusual noisy gaiety of his gave her an uncomfortable feeling: it did not seem natural or easy.

Her household work was done by noon, and she dressed hurriedly, while her father called for her impatiently from below—standing at the foot of the wide bare old staircase, and bawling up to her that they should be late at Wyncomb. She looked very pretty in her neat dark-blue merino dress and plain linen collar, when she came tripping downstairs at last, flushed with the hurry of her toilet, and altogether so bright a creature that it seemed a hard thing she should not be setting out upon some real pleasure trip, instead of that most obnoxious festival to which she was summoned.

Her father looked at her with a grim kind of approval.

"You'll do well enough, lass," he said; "but I should like you to have had something smarter than that blue stuff. I wouldn't have minded a couple of pounds or so to buy you a silk gown. But you'll be able to buy yourself as many silk gowns as ever you like by-and-by, if you play your cards well and don't make a fool of yourself."

Ellen knew what he meant well enough, but did not care to take any notice of the speech. The time would soon come, no doubt, when she must take her stand in direct opposition to him, and in the meanwhile it would be worse than foolish to waste breath in idle squabbling.

They were to drive to Wyncomb in the bailiff's gig; rather an obsolete vehicle, with a yellow body, a mouldy leather apron, and high wheels picked out with red, drawn by a tall gray horse that did duty with the plough on ordinary occasions. Stephen Whitelaw's house was within an easy walk of the Grange; but the gig was a more dignified mode of approach than a walk, and the bailiff insisted on driving his daughter to her suitor's abode in that conveyance.

Wyncomb was a long low gray stone house, of an unknown age; a spacious habitation enough, with many rooms, and no less than three staircases, but possessing no traces of that fallen grandeur which pervaded the Grange. It had been nothing better than a farm-house from time immemorial, and had been added to and extended and altered to suit the convenience of successive generations of farmers. It was a gloomy-looking house at all times, Ellen Carley thought, but especially gloomy under that leaden winter sky; a house which it would have been almost impossible to associate with pleasant family gatherings or the joyous voices of young children; a grim desolate-looking house, that seemed to freeze the passing traveller with its cold blank stare, as if its gloomy portal had a voice to say to him, "However lost you may be for lack of shelter, however weary for want of rest, come not here!"

Idle fancies, perhaps; but they were the thoughts with which Wyncomb Farmhouse always inspired Ellen Carley.

"The place just suits its master's hard miserly nature," she said. "One would think it had been made on purpose for him; or perhaps the Whitelaws have been like that from generation to generation."

There was no such useless adornment as a flower-garden at Wyncomb. Stephen Whitelaw cared about as much for roses and lilies as he cared for Greek poetry or Beethoven's sonatas. At the back of the house there was a great patch of bare shadowless ground devoted to cabbages and potatoes, with a straggling border of savoury herbs; a patch not even divided from the farm land beyond, but melting imperceptibly into a field of mangel-wurzel. There were no superfluous hedges upon Mr. Whitelaw's dominions; not a solitary tree to give shelter to the tired cattle in the long hot summer days. Noble old oaks and patriarch beeches, tall sycamores and grand flowering chestnuts, had been stubbed up remorselessly by that economical agriculturist; and he was now the proud possessor of one of the ugliest and most profitable farms in Hampshire.

In front of the gray-stone house the sheep browsed up to the parlour windows, and on both sides of the ill-kept carriage-drive leading from the white gate that opened into the meadow to the door of Mr. Whitelaw's abode. No sweet-scented woodbine or pale monthly roses beautified the front of the house in spring or summer time. The neglected ivy had overgrown one end of the long stone building and crept almost to the ponderous old chimneys; and this decoration, which had come of itself, was the only spot of greenery about the place. Five tall poplars grew in a row about a hundred yards from the front windows; these, strange to say, Mr. Whitelaw had suffered to remain. They served to add a little extra gloom to the settled grimness of the place, and perhaps harmonised with his tastes.

Within Wyncomb Farmhouse was no more attractive than without. The rooms were low and dark; the windows, made obscure by means of heavy woodwork and common glass, let in what light they did admit with a grudging air, and seemed to frown upon the inmates of the chamber they were supposed to beautify. There were all manner of gloomy passages, and unexpected flights of half-a-dozen stairs or so, in queer angles of the house, and there was a prevailing darkness everywhere; for the Whitelaws of departed generations, objecting to the window tax, had blocked up every casement that it was possible to block up; and the stranger exploring Wyncomb Farmhouse was always coming upon those blank plastered windows, which had an unpleasant ghostly aspect, and set him longing for a fireman's hatchet to hew them open and let in the light of day.

The furniture was of the oldest, black with age, worm-eaten, ponderous; queer old four-post bedsteads, with dingy hangings of greenish brown or yellowish green, from which every vestige of the original hue had faded long ago; clumsy bureaus, and stiff high-backed chairs with thick legs and gouty feet, heavy to move and uncomfortable to sit upon. The house was clean enough, and the bare floors of the numerous bed-chambers, which were only enlivened here and there with small strips or bands of Dutch carpet, sent up a homely odour of soft soap; for Mrs. Tadman took a fierce delight in cleaning, and the solitary household drudge who toiled under her orders had a hard time of it. There was a dismal kind of neatness about everything, and a bleak empty look in the sparsely furnished rooms, which wore no pleasant sign of occupation, no look of home. The humblest cottage, with four tiny square rooms and a thatched roof, and just a patch of old-fashioned garden with a sweetbrier hedge and roses growing here and there among the cabbages; would have been a pleasanter habitation than Wyncomb, Ellen Carley thought.

Mr. Whitelaw exhibited an unwonted liberality upon this occasion. The dinner was a ponderous banquet, and the dessert a noble display of nuts and oranges, figs and almonds and raisins, flanked by two old-fashioned decanters of port and sherry; and both the bailiff and his host did ample justice to the feast. It was a long dreary afternoon of eating and drinking; and Ellen was not sorry to get away from the prim wainscoted parlour, where her father and Mr. Whitelaw were solemnly sipping their wine, to wander over the house with Mrs. Tadman.

It was about four o'clock when she slipped quietly out of the room at that lady's invitation, and the lobbies and long passages had a shadowy look in the declining light. There was light enough for her to see the rooms, however; for there were no rare collections of old china, no pictures or adornments of any kind, to need a minute inspection.

"It's a fine old place, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Tadman. "There's not many farmers can boast of such a house as Wyncomb."

"It's large enough," Ellen answered, with a tone which implied the reverse of admiration; "but it's not a place I should like to live in. I'm not one to believe in ghosts or such nonsense, but if I could have any such foolish thoughts, I should have them here. The house looks as if it was haunted, somehow."

Mrs. Tadman laughed a shrill hard laugh, and rubbed her skinny hands with an air of satisfaction.

"You're not easy to please, Miss Carley," she said; "most folks think a deal of Wyncomb; for, you see, it's only them that live in a house as can know how dull it is; and as to the place being haunted, I never heard tell of anything of that kind. The Whitelaws ain't the kind of people to come back to this world, unless they come to fetch their money, and then they'd come fast enough, I warrant. I used to see a good deal of my uncle, John Whitelaw, when I was a girl, and never did a son take after his father closer than my cousin Stephen takes after him; just the same saving prudent ways, and just the same masterful temper, always kept under in that quiet way of his."

As Ellen Carley showed herself profoundly indifferent to the lights and shades of Mr. Whitelaw's character, Mrs. Tadman did not pursue the subject, but with a gentle sigh led the way to another room, and so on from room to room, till they had explored all that floor of the house.

"There's the attics above; but you won't care to see them," she said. "The shepherd and five other men sleep up there. Stephen thinks it keeps them steadier sleeping under the same roof with their master; and he's able to ring them up of a morning, and to know when they go to their work. It's wearying for me to have to get up and see to their breakfasts, but I can't trust Martha Holden to do that, or she'd let them eat us out of house and home. There's no knowing what men like that can eat, and a side of bacon would go as fast as if you was to melt it down to tallow. But you must know what they are, Miss Carley, having to manage for your father."

"Yes," Ellen answered, "I'm used to hard work."

"Ah," murmured the matron, with a sigh, "you'd have plenty of it, if you came here."

They were at the end of a long passage by this time; a passage leading to the extreme end of the house, and forming part of that ivy-covered wing which seemed older than the rest of the building. It was on a lower level than the other part, and they had descended two or three steps at the entrance to this passage. The ceilings were lower too, the beams that supported them more massive, the diamond-paned windows smaller and more heavily leaded, and there was a faint musty odour as of a place that was kept shut up and uninhabited.

"There's nothing more to see here," said Mrs. Tadman quickly; "I had better go back I don't know what brought me here; it was talking, I suppose, made me come without thinking. There's nothing to show you this way."

"But there's another room there," Ellen said, pointing to a door just before them—a heavy clumsily-made door, painted black.

"That room—well, yes; it's a kind of a room, but hasn't been used for fifty years and more, I've heard say. Stephen keeps seeds there and such-like. It's always locked, and he keeps the key of it."

There was nothing in this closed room to excite either curiosity or interest in Ellen's mind, and she was turning away from the door with perfect indifference, when she started and suddenly seized Mrs. Tadman's arm.

"Hark!" she said, in a frightened, breathless way; "did you hear that?"

"What, child?"

"Did you say there was no one in there—no one?"

"Lord bless your heart, no, Miss Carley, nor ever is. What a turn you did give me, grasping hold of my arm like that!"

"I heard something in there—a footstep. It must be the servant."

"What, Martha Holden! I should like to see her venturing into any room Stephen keeps private to himself. Besides, that door's kept locked; try it, and satisfy yourself."

The door was indeed locked—a door with a clumsy old-fashioned latch, securely fastened by a staple and padlock. Ellen tried it with her own hand.

"Is there no other door to the room?" she asked.

"None; and only one window, that looks into the wood-yard, and is almost always blocked up with the wood piled outside it. You must have heard the muslin bags of seed blowing about, if you heard anything."

"I heard a footstep," said Ellen firmly; "a human footstep. I told you the house was haunted, Mrs. Tadman."

"Lor, Miss Carley, I wish you wouldn't say such things; it's enough to make one's blood turn cold. Do come downstairs and have a cup of tea. It's quite dark, I declare; and you've given me the shivers with your queer talk."

"I'm sorry for that; but the noise I heard must have been either real or ghostly, and you won't believe it's real."

"It was the seed-bags, of course."

"They couldn't make a noise like human footsteps. However, it's no business of mine, Mrs. Tadman, and I don't want to frighten you."

They went downstairs to the parlour, where the tea-tray and a pair of candles were soon brought, and where Mrs. Tadman stirred the fire into a blaze with an indifference to the consumption of fuel which made her kinsman stare, even on that hospitable occasion. The blaze made the dark wainscoted room cheerful of aspect, however, which the two candles could not have done, as their light was almost absorbed by the gloomy panelling.

After tea there was whist again, and a considerable consumption of spirits-and-water on the part of the two gentlemen, in which Mrs. Tadman joined modestly, with many protestations, and, with the air of taking only an occasional spoonful, contrived to empty her tumbler, and allowed herself to be persuaded to take another by the bailiff, whose joviality on the occasion was inexhaustible.

The day's entertainment came to an end at last, to Ellen's inexpressible relief; and her father drove her home in the yellow gig at rather an alarming pace, and with some tendency towards heeling over into a ditch. They got over the brief journey safely, however, and Mr. Carley was still in high good humour. He went off to see to the putting up of his horse himself, telling his daughter to wait till he came back, he had something particular to say to her before she went to bed.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

"WHAT MUST BE SHALL BE."

Ellen Carley waited in the little parlour, dimly lighted by one candle. The fire had very nearly gone out, and she had some difficulty in brightening it a little. She waited very patiently, wondering what her father could have to say to her, and not anticipating much pleasure from the interview. He was going to talk about Stephen Whitelaw and his hateful money perhaps. But let him say what he would, she was prepared to hold her own firmly, determined to provoke him by no open opposition, unless matters came to an extremity, and then to let him see at once and for ever that her resolution was fixed, and that it was useless to persecute her.

"If I have to go out of this house to-night, I will not flinch," she said to herself.

She had some time to wait. It had been past midnight when they came home, and it was a quarter to one when William Carley came into the parlour. He was in a unusually communicative mood to-night, and had been superintending the grooming of his horse, and talking to the underling who had waited up to receive him.

He was a little unsteady in his gait as he came into the parlour, and Ellen knew that he had drunk a good deal at Wyncomb. It was no new thing for her to see him in this condition unhappily, and the shrinking shuddering sensation with which he inspired her to-night was painfully familiar.

"It's very late, father," she said gently, as the bailiff flung himself heavily into an arm-chair by the fire-place. "If you don't want me for anything particular, I should be glad to go to bed."

"Would you, my lass?" he asked grimly. "But, you see, I do want you for something particular, something uncommon particular; so there's no call for you to be in a hurry. Sit down yonder," he added, pointing to the chair opposite his own. "I've got something to say to you, something serious."

"Father," said the girl, looking him full in the face, pale to the lips, but very firm, "I don't think you're in a state to talk seriously of anything."

"O, you don't, don't you, Miss Impudence? You think I'm drunk, perhaps. You'll find that, drunk or sober, I've only one mind about you, and that I mean to be obeyed. Sit down, I tell you. I'm not in the humour to stand any nonsense to-night. Sit down."

Ellen obeyed this mandate, uttered with a fierceness unusual even in Mr. Carley, who was never a soft-spoken man. She seated herself quietly on the opposite side of the hearth, while her father took down his pipe from the chimney-piece, and slowly filled it, with hands that trembled a little over the accustomed task.

When he had lighted the pipe, and smoked about half-a-dozen whiffs with a great assumption of coolness, he addressed himself to his daughter in an altered and conciliating tone.

"Well, Nelly," he said, "you've had a rare day at Wyncomb, and a regular ramble over the old house with Steph's cousin. What do you think of it?"

"I think it's a queer gloomy old place enough, father. I wonder there's any one can live in it. The dark bare-looking rooms gave me the horrors. I used to think this house was dull, and seemed as if it was haunted; but it's lively and gay as can be, compared to Wyncomb."

"Humph!" muttered the bailiff. "You're a fanciful young lady, Miss Nell, and don't know a fine substantial old house when you see one. Life's come a little too easy to you, perhaps. It might have been better for you if you'd seen more of the rough side. Being your own missus too soon, and missus of such a place as this, has spoiled you a bit. I tell you, Nell, there ain't a better house in Hampshire than Wyncomb, though it mayn't suit your fanciful notions. Do you know the size of Stephen Whitelaw's farm?"

"No, father; I've never thought about it."

"What do you say to three hundred acres—over three hundred, nigher to four perhaps?"

"I suppose it's a large farm, father. But I know nothing about such things."

"You suppose it's large, and you know nothing about such things!" cried the bailiff, with an air of supreme irritation. "I don't believe any man was ever plagued with such an aggravating daughter as mine. What do you say to being mistress of such a place, girl?—mistress of close upon four hundred acres of land; not another man's servant, bound to account for every blade of grass and every ear of corn, as I am, but free and independent mistress of the place, with the chance of being left a widow by and by, and having it all under your own thumb; what do you say to that?"

"Only the same that I have always said, father. Nothing would ever persuade me to marry Stephen Whitelaw. I'd rather starve."

"And you shall starve, if you stick to that," roared William Carley with a blasphemous oath. "But you won't be such a fool, Nell. You'll hear reason; you won't stand out against your poor old father and against your own interests. The long and the short of it is, I've given Whitelaw my promise that you shall be his wife between this and Easter."

"What!" exclaimed Ellen, with a faint cry of horror; "you don't mean that you've promised that, father! You can't mean it!"

"I can and do mean it, lass."

"Then you've made a promise that will never be kept. You might have known as much when you made it. I'm sure I've been plain-spoken enough about Stephen Whitelaw."

"That was a girl's silly talk. I didn't think to find you a fool when I came to the point. I let you have your say, and looked to time to bring you to reason. Come, Nell, you're not going against your father, are you?"

"I must, father, in this. I'd rather die twenty deaths than marry that man. There's nothing I wouldn't rather do."

"Isn't there? You'd rather see your father in gaol, I suppose, if it came to that?"

"See you in gaol!" cried the girl aghast. "For heaven's sake, what do you mean, father? What fear is there of your being sent to prison, because I won't marry Stephen Whitelaw? I'm not a baby," she added, with a hysterical laugh; "you can't frighten me like that."

"No; you're a very wise young woman, I daresay; but you don't know everything. You've seen me downhearted and out of sorts for this last half-year; but I don't suppose you've troubled yourself much about it, except to worry me with silly questions sometimes, when I've not been in the humour to be talked to. Things have been going wrong with me ever since hay-harvest, and I haven't sent Sir David sixpence yet for last year's crops. I've put him off with one excuse after another from month to month. He's a careless master enough at most times, and never over-sharp with my accounts. But the time has come when I can't put him off any longer. He wants money badly, he says; and I'm afraid he begins to suspect something. Any way, he talks of coming here in a week or so to look into things for himself. If he does that, I'm ruined."

"But the money, father—the money for the crops—how has it gone? You had it, haven't you?"

"Yes," the bailiff answered with a groan; "I've had it, worse luck."

"And how has it gone?"

"What's that to you? What's the good of my muddling my brains with figures to-night? It's gone, I tell you. You know I'm fond of seeing a race, and never miss anything in that way that comes-off within a day's drive of this place. I used to be pretty lucky once upon a time, when I backed a horse or bet against one. But this year things have gone dead against me; and my bad luck made me savage somehow, so that I went deeper than I've been before, thinking to get back what I'd lost."

"O, father, father! how could you, and with another man's money?"

"Don't give me any of your preaching," the bailiff answered gloomily; "I can get enough of that at Malsham Chapel if I want it. It's in your power to pull me through this business if you choose."

"How can I do that, father?"

"A couple of hundred pounds will set me square. I don't say there hasn't been more taken, first and last; but that would do it. Stephen Whitelaw would lend me the money—give it me, indeed, for it comes to that—the day he gets your consent to be his wife."

"And you'd sell me to him for two hundred pounds, father?" the girl asked bitterly.

"I don't want to go to gaol."

"And if you don't get the money from Stephen, what will happen?"

"I can't tell you that to a nicety. Penal servitude for life, most likely. They'd call mine a bad case, I daresay."

"But Sir David might be merciful to you, father. You've served him for along time."

"What would he care for that? I've had his money, and he's not a man that can afford to lose much. No, Nell, I look for no mercy from Sir David; those careless easy-going men are generally the hardest in such a business as this. It's a clear case of embezzlement, and nothing can save me unless I can raise money enough to satisfy him."

"Couldn't you borrow it of some one else besides Stephen Whitelaw?"

"Who else is there that would lend me two hundred pounds? Ask yourself that, girl. Why, I haven't five pounds' worth of security to offer."

"And Mr. Whitelaw will only lend the money upon one condition?"

"No, curse him!" cried William Carley savagely. "I've been at him all this afternoon, when you and that woman were out of the room, trying to get it out of him as a loan, without waiting for your promise; but he's too cautious for that. 'The day Ellen gives her consent, you shall have the money,' he told me; 'I can't say anything fairer than that or more liberal.'"

"He doesn't suspect why you want it, does he, father?" Ellen asked with a painful sense of shame.

"Who can tell what he may suspect? He's as deep as Satan," said the bailiff, with a temporary forgetfulness of his desire to exhibit this intended son-in-law of his in a favourable light. "He knows that I want the money very badly; I couldn't help his knowing that; and he must think it's something out of the common that makes me want two hundred pounds."

"I daresay he guesses the truth," Ellen said, with a profound sigh.

It seemed to her the bitterest trial of all, that her father's wrong-doing should be known to Stephen Whitelaw. That hideous prospect of the dock and the gaol was far off as yet; she had not even begun to realise it; but she did fully realise the fact of her father's shame, and the blow seemed to her a heavy one, heavier than she could bear.

For some minutes there was silence between father and daughter. The girl sat with her face hidden in her hands; the bailiff smoked his pipe in sullen meditation.

"Is there no other way?" Ellen asked at last, in a plaintive despairing tone; "no other way, father?"

"None," growled William Carley. "You needn't ask me that question again; there is no other way; you can get me out of my difficulties if you choose. I should never have been so venturesome as I was, if I hadn't made sure my daughter would soon be a rich woman. You can save me if you like, or you can hold-off and let me go to prison. There's no good preaching about it or arguing about it; you've got the choice and you must make it. Most young women in your place would think themselves uncommon lucky to have such a chance as you've got, instead of making a trouble about it, let alone being able to get their father out of a scrape. But you're your own mistress, and you must do as you please."

"Let me have time to think," the girl pleaded piteously; "let me have only a little time to think, father. And you do believe that I'm sorry for you, don't you?" she asked, kneeling beside him and clasping his unwilling hand. "O father, I hope you believe that!"

"I shall know what to believe when I know what you're going to do," the bailiff answered moodily; and his daughter knew him too well to hope for any more gracious speech than this.

She bade him good-night, and went slowly up to her own room to spend the weary wakeful hours in a bitter struggle, praying that she might be enlightened as to what she ought to do; praying that she might die rather than become the wife of Stephen Whitelaw.

When she and her father met at breakfast in the dull gray January morning, his aspect was even darker than it had been on the previous night; but he did not ask her if she had arrived at any conclusion. He took his meal in sullen silence, and left her without a word.

They met again a little before noon, at which hour it was Mr. Carley's habit to consume a solid luncheon. He took his seat in the same gloomy silence that he had preserved at breakfast-time, but flung an open letter across the table towards his daughter.

"Am I to read this?" she asked gently.

"Yes, read it, and see what I've got to look to."

The letter was from Sir David Forster; an angry one, revealing strong suspicions of his agent's dishonesty, and announcing that he should be at the Grange on the fifth of the month, to make a close investigation of all matters connected with the bailiff's administration. It was a letter that gave little hope of mercy, and Ellen Carley felt that it was so. She saw that there were no two sides to the question: she must save her father by the utter sacrifice of her own feelings, or suffer him to perish.

She sat for some minutes in silence, with Sir David's letter in her hand, staring blankly at the lines in a kind of stupor; while her father ate cold roast-beef and pickled-cabbage—she wondered how he could eat at such a time—looking up at her furtively every now and then.

At last she laid down the letter, and lifted her eyes to his face. A deadly whiteness and despair had come over the bright soubrette beauty, and even William Carley's hard nature was moved a little by the altered expression of his daughter's countenance.

"It must be as you wish, father," she said slowly; "there is no help for it; I cannot see you brought to disgrace. Stephen Whitelaw must have the price he asks for his money."

"That's a good lass," cried the bailiff, springing up and clasping his daughter in his arms, a most unusual display of affection on his part; "that's bravely spoken, Nell, and you never need repent the choice that'll make you mistress of Wyncomb Farm, with a good home to give your father in his old age."

The girl drew herself hastily from his embrace, and turned away from him with a shudder. He was her father, and there was something horrible in the idea of his disgrace; but there was very little affection for him in her mind. He was willing to sell her into bondage in order to save himself. It was in this light she regarded the transaction with Stephen Whitelaw.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

DOUBTFUL INFORMATION.

The early days of the new year brought little change in John Saltram's condition. Mr. Mew, and the physician who saw him once in every three days, seemed perhaps a shade more hopeful than they had been, but would express no decided opinion when Gilbert pressed them with close questioning. The struggle was still going on—the issue still doubtful.

"If we could keep the mind at rest," said the physician, "we should have every chance of doing better; but this constant restlessness, this hyper-activity of the brain, of which you and Mr. Mew tell me, must needs make a perpetual demand upon the patient's physical powers. The waste is always going on. We cannot look for recovery until we obtain more repose."

Several weeks had passed since the beginning of John Saltram's illness, and there were no tidings from Mr. Medler. Every day Gilbert had expected some communication from that practitioner, only to be disappointed. He had called twice in Soho, and on both occasions had been received by a shabby-looking clerk, who told him that Mr. Medler was out, and not likely to come home within any definite time. He was inclined to fancy, by the clerk's manner on his second visit, that there was some desire to avoid an interview on Mr. Medler's part; and this fancy made him all the more anxious to see that gentleman. He did not, therefore, allow much time to elapse between this second visit to the dingy chambers in Soho and a third. This time he was more fortunate; for he saw the lawyer let himself in at the street-door with his latch-key, just as the cab that drove him approached the house.

The same shabby clerk opened the door to him.

"I want to see your master," he said decisively, making a move towards the office-door.

The clerk contrived to block his way.

"I beg your pardon, sir, I don't think Mr. Medler's in; but I'll go and see."

"You needn't give yourself the trouble. I saw your master let himself in at this door a minute ago. I suppose you were too busy to hear him come in."

The clerk coughed a doubtful kind of cough, significant of perplexity.

"Upon my word, sir, I believe he's out; but I'll see."

"Thanks; I'd rather see myself, if you please," Gilbert said, passing the perturbed clerk before that functionary could make up his mind whether he ought to intercept him.

He opened the office-door and went in. Mr. Medler was sitting at his desk, bending over some formidable document, with the air of a man who is profoundly absorbed by his occupation; with the air also, Gilbert thought, of a man who has been what is vernacularly called "on the listen."

"Good-morning, Mr. Medler," Gilbert said politely; "your clerk had such a conviction of your being out, that I had some difficulty in convincing him you were at home."

"I've only just come in; I suppose Lucas didn't hear me."

"I suppose not; I've been here twice before in search of you, as I conclude you have been told. I have expected to hear from you daily."

"Well, yes—yes," replied the lawyer in a meditative way; "I am aware that I promised to write—under certain circumstances."

"Am I to conclude, then, that you were silent because you had nothing to communicate? that you have obtained no tidings of any kind respecting Mrs. Holbrook?"

Mr. Medler coughed; a cough no less expressive of embarrassment than that of his clerk.

"Why, you see, Mr. Fenton," he began, crossing his legs, and rubbing his hands in a very deliberate manner, "when I made that promise with reference to Mrs. Holbrook, I made it of course without prejudice to the interests or inclinations of my client. I might be free to communicate to you any information I received upon this subject—or I might find myself pledged to withhold it."

Gilbert's face flushed with sudden excitement.

"What!" he cried, "do you mean to say that you have solved the mystery of Marian Holbrook's fate? that you know her to be alive—safe—well, and have kept back the knowledge from me?"

"I have been compelled to submit to the wishes of my client. I will not say that I have not offered considerable opposition to her desire upon this point, but finding her resolution fixed, I was bound to respect it."

"She is safe—then all this alarm has been needless? You have seen her?"

"Yes, Mr. Fenton, I have seen her."

"And she—she forbade you to let me know of her safety? She was willing that I should suffer all the anguish of uncertainty as to her fate? I could not have believed her so unkind."

"Mrs. Holbrook had especial reasons for wishing to avoid all communication with former acquaintances. She explained those reasons to me, and I fully concurred in them."

"She might have such reasons with regard to other people; she could have none with reference to me."

"Pardon me, she mentioned your name in a very particular manner."

"And yet she has had good cause to trust in my fidelity."

"She has a very great respect and esteem for you, I am aware. She said as much to me. But her reasons for keeping her affairs to herself just now are quite apart from her personal feeling for yourself."

"I cannot understand this. I am not to see her then, I suppose; not to be told her address?"

"No; I am strictly forbidden to disclose her address to any one."

"Yet you can positively assure me that she is in safety—her own mistress—happy?"

"She is in perfect safety—her own mistress—and as happy as it is possible she can be under the unfortunate circumstances of her married life. She has left her husband for ever; I will venture to tell you so much as that."

"I am quite aware of that fact."

"How so? I thought Mr. Holbrook was quite unknown to you?"

"I have learnt a good deal about him lately."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the lawyer, with a genuine air of surprise.

"But of course your client has been perfectly frank in her communications with you upon this subject?" Gilbert said.

"Yes; I know that Mrs. Holbrook has left her husband, but I did not for a moment suppose she had left him of her own free will. From my knowledge of her character and sentiments, that is just the last thing I could have imagined possible. There was no quarrel between them; indeed, she was expecting his return with delight at the very time when she left her home in Hampshire. The thought of sharing her fortune with him was one of perfect happiness. How can you explain her abrupt flight from him in the face of this?"

"I am not free to explain matters, Mr. Fenton," answered the lawyer; "you must be satisfied with the knowledge that the lady about whom you have been so anxious is safe."

"I thank God for that," Gilbert said earnestly; "but that, knowledge of itself is not quite enough. I shall be uneasy so long as there is this secrecy and mystery surrounding her fate. There is something in this sudden abandonment of her husband which is painfully inexplicable to me."

"Mrs. Holbrook may have received some sudden revelation of her husband's unworthiness. You are aware that a letter reached her a few hours before she left Hampshire? There is no doubt that letter influenced her actions. I do not mind admitting a fact which is so obvious."

"The revelation that could move her to such a step must have been a very startling one."

"It was strong enough to decide her course," replied the lawyer gravely.

"And you can assure me that she is in good hands?" Gilbert asked anxiously.

"I have every reason to suppose so. She is with her father."

Mr. Medler announced this fact as if there were nothing extraordinary in it. Gilbert started to his feet.

"What!" he exclaimed; "she is with Mr. Nowell—the father who neglected her in her youth, who of course seeks her now only for the sake of her fortune? And you call that being in good hands, Mr. Medler? For my own part, I cannot imagine a more dangerous alliance. When did Percival Nowell come to England?"

"A very short time ago. I have only been aware of his return within the last two or three weeks. His first step on arriving in this country was to seek for his daughter."

"Yes; when he knew that she was rich, no doubt."

"I do not think that he was influenced by mercenary motives," the lawyer said, with a calm judicial air. "Of course, as a man of the world, I am not given to look at such matters from a sentimental point of view. But I really believe that Mr. Nowell was anxious to find his daughter, and to atone in some measure for his former neglect."

"A very convenient repentance," exclaimed Gilbert, with a short bitter laugh. "And his first act is to steal his daughter from her home, and hide her from all her former friends. I don't like the look of this business, Mr. Medler; I tell you so frankly."

"Mr. Nowell is my client, you must remember, Mr. Fenton. I cannot consent to listen to any aspersion of his character, direct or indirect."

"And you positively refuse to tell me where Mrs. Holbrook is to be found?"

"I am compelled to respect her wishes as well as those of her father."

"She has been placed in possession of her property, I suppose?"

"Yes; her grandfather's will has been proved, and the estate now stands in her name. There was no difficulty about that—no reason for delay."

"Will you tell me if she is in London?" Gilbert asked impatiently.

"Pardon me, my dear sir, I am pledged to say nothing about Mrs. Holbrook's whereabouts."

Gilbert gave a weary sigh.

"Well, I suppose it is useless to press the question, Mr. Medler," he said. "I can only repeat that I don't like the look of this business. Your client, Mr. Nowell, must have a very strong reason for secrecy, and my experience of life has shown me that there is very seldom mystery without wrong doing of some kind behind it. I thank God that Mrs. Holbrook is safe, for I suppose I must accept your assurance that she is so; but until her position is relieved from all this secrecy, I shall not cease to feel uneasy as to her welfare. I am glad, however, that the issue of events has exonerated her husband from any part in her disappearance."

He was glad to know this—glad to know that however base a traitor to himself, John Saltram had not been guilty of that deeper villany which he had at times been led to suspect. Gilbert Fenton left Mr. Medler's office a happier man than when he had entered it, and yet only half satisfied. It was a great thing to know that Marian was safe; but he would have wished her in the keeping of any one rather than of him whom the world would have called her natural protector.