said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ago
he's dead enough in principle, if not in corporation. His widow lives
quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she's left in very
lean pasturage.'

Nicholas went back to the Buck's Head without hovering round her
dwelling. This then was the explanation which she had wanted to make.
Not dead, but missing. How could he have expected that the first fair
promise of happiness held out to him would remain untarnished? She had
said that she was free; and legally she was free, no doubt. Moreover,
from her tone and manner he felt himself justified in concluding that she
would be willing to run the risk of a union with him, in the
improbability of her husband's existence. Even if that husband lived,
his return was not a likely event, to judge from his character. A man
who could spend her money on his own personal adventures would not be
anxious to disturb her poverty after such a lapse of time.

Well, the prospect was not so unclouded as it had seemed. But could he,
even now, give up Christine?

CHAPTER VII

Two months more brought the year nearly to a close, and found Nicholas
Long tenant of a spacious house in the market-town nearest to
Froom-Everard. A man of means, genial character, and a bachelor, he was
an object of great interest to his neighbours, and to his neighbours'
wives and daughters. But he took little note of this, and had made it
his business to go twice a week, no matter what the weather, to the now
farmhouse at Froom-Everard, a wing of which had been retained as the
refuge of Christine. He always walked, to give no trouble in putting up
a horse to a housekeeper whose staff was limited.

The two had put their heads together on the situation, had gone to a
solicitor, had balanced possibilities, and had resolved to make the
plunge of matrimony. 'Nothing venture, nothing have,' Christine had
said, with some of her old audacity.

With almost gratuitous honesty they had let their intentions be widely
known. Christine, it is true, had rather shrunk from publicity at first;
but Nicholas argued that their boldness in this respect would have good
results. With his friends he held that there was not the slightest
probability of her being other than a widow, and a challenge to the
missing man now, followed by no response, would stultify any unpleasant
remarks which might be thrown at her after their union. To this end a
parag