"Well, sir," Mr. Whitelaw replied, relapsing into his accustomed slowness, and rubbing his clumsy chin with his still clumsier hand, in a thoughtful manner, "of course it ain't my place to go against any gentleman's convictions--far from it; but if you see Mrs. Holbrook before the dead rise out of their graves, my name isn't Stephen Whitelaw. You may waste your time and your trouble, and you may spend your money as it was so much water, but set eyes upon that missing lady you never will; take my word for it, or don't take my word for it, as you please."

Gilbert wondered at the man's earnestness. Did he really feel some kind of benevolent interest in the fate of a helpless woman, or was it only a vulgar love of the marvellous and horrible that moved him? Gilbert leaned to the latter opinion, and was by no means inclined to give Stephen Whitelaw credit for any surplus stock of benevolence. He saw a good deal more of Ellen Carley's suitor in the course of his evening visits to the Grange, and had ample opportunity for observing Mr. Whitelaw's mode of courtship, which was by no means of the demonstrative order, consisting in a polite silence towards the object of his affections, broken only by one or two clumsy but florid compliments, delivered in a deliberate but semi-jocose manner. The owner of Wyncomb Farm had no idea of making hard work of his courtship. He had been angled for by so many damsels, and courted by so many fathers and mothers, that he fancied he had but to say the word when the time came, and the thing would be done. Any evidence of avoidance, indifference, or even dislike upon Ellen Carley's part, troubled him in the smallest degree. He had heard people talk of young Randall's fancy for her, and of her liking for him, but he knew that her father meant to set his heel upon any nonsense of this kind; and he did not for a moment imagine it possible that any girl would resolutely oppose her father's will, and throw away such good fortune as he could offer her--to ride in her own chaise-cart, and wear a silk gown always on Sundays, to say nothing of a gold watch and chain; and Mr. Whitelaw meant to endow his bride with a ponderous old-fashioned timepiece and heavy bra.s.sy-looking cable which had belonged to his mother.

CHAPTER XXIX.

BAFFLED, NOT BEATEN.

The time came when Gilbert Fenton was fain to own to himself that there was no more to be done down in Hampshire: professional science and his own efforts had been alike futile. If she whom he sought still lived--and he had never for a moment suffered himself to doubt this--it was more than likely that she was far away from Crosber Grange, that there had been some motive for her sudden flight, unaccountable as that flight might seem in the absence of any clue to the mystery.

Every means of inquiry being exhausted in Hampshire, there was nothing left to Gilbert but to return to London--that marvellous city, where there always seems the most hope of finding the lost, wide as the wilderness is.

"In London I shall have clever detectives always at my service," Gilbert thought; "in London I may be able to solve the question of John Holbrook's ident.i.ty."

So, apart from the fact that his own affairs necessitated his prompt return to the great city, Gilbert had another motive for leaving the dull rural neighbourhood where he had wasted so many anxious hours, so much thought and care.

For the rest, he knew that Ellen Carley would be faithful--always on the watch for any clue to the mystery of Marian Holbrook's fate, always ready to receive the wanderer with open arms, should any happy chance bring her back to the Grange. a.s.sured of this, he felt less compunction in turning his back upon the spot where his lost love had vanished from the eyes of men.

Before leaving, he gave Ellen a letter for Marian's husband, in the improbable event of that gentleman's reappearance at the Grange--a few simple earnest lines, entreating Mr. Holbrook to believe in the writer's faithful and brotherly affection for his wife, and to meet him in London on an early occasion, in order that they might together concert fresh means for bringing about her restoration to her husband and home. He reminded Mr. Holbrook of his friendship for Captain Sedgewick, and that good man's confidence in him, and declared himself bound by his respect for the dead to be faithful to the living--faithful in all forgiveness of any wrong done him in the past.

He went back to London cruelly depressed by the failure of his efforts, and with a blank dreary feeling that there was little more for him to do, except to wait the working of Providence, with the faint hope that one of those happy accidents which sometimes bring about a desired result when all human endeavour has been in vain, might throw a sudden light on Marian Holbrook's fate.

During the whole of that homeward journey he brooded an those dark suspicions of Mr. Holbrook which Ellen Carley had let fall in their earlier interviews. He had checked the girl on these occasions, and had prevented the full utterance of her thoughts, generously indignant that any suspicion of foul play should attach to Marian's husband, and utterly incredulous of such a depth of guilt as that at which the girl's hints pointed; but now that he was leaving Hampshire, he felt vexed with himself for not having urged her to speak freely--not having considered her suspicions, however preposterous those suspicions might have appeared to him.

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 doc.u.ment. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d!" cried Gilbert pa.s.sionately, "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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.s 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.