bit of money I may leave behind
me when I die won't be much; but it might as well go to my son's child as
to a stranger."

"If your son's child can be found, you will discover her to be well
worthy of your love. Yes, though she has done me a cruel wrong, I believe
her to be all that is good and pure and true."

"What is the wrong that she has done you?"

Gilbert told Jacob Nowell the story of his engagement, and the bitter
disappointment which had befallen him on his return from Australia. The
old man listened with every appearance of interest. He approved of
Gilbert's notion of advertising for the particulars of a possible
marriage, and offered to bear his part in the expenses of the search for
his granddaughter.

Gilbert smiled at this offer.

"You do not know what a worthless thing money is to me now," he said, "or
now lightly I hold my own trouble or loss in this matter."

He left Queen Anne's Court soon after this, after having promised Jacob
Nowell to return and report progress so soon as there should be anything
worth telling. He went back to Wigmore Street heavy-hearted, depressed by
the reaction that followed the vain hope which the silversmith's letter
had inspired. It mattered little to him to know the antecedents of
Marian's father, while Marian's destiny remained still hidden from him.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MARRIAGE AT WYGROVE.

On the following day Gilbert Fenton took his second advertisement to the
office in Printing House Square; an advertisement offering a reward of
twenty pounds for any reliable information as to the marriage of Marian
Nowell. A week went by, during which the advertisement appeared on
alternate days; and at the end of that time there came a letter from the
parish-clerk of Wygrove, a small town about forty miles farther from
London than Lidford, stating that, on the 14th of March, John Holbrook
and Marian Nowell had been married at the church in that place. Gilbert
Fenton left London by an early train upon the morning after his receipt
of this letter; and at about three o'clock in the afternoon found himself
on the outskirts of Wygrove, rather a difficult place to reach, involving
a good deal of delay at out-of-the-way junctions, and a six-mile journey
by stage-coach from the nearest station.

It was about the dullest dreariest little town to which his destiny had
ever brought Gilbert Fenton, consisting of a melancholy high-street, with
a blank market-place, and a town