e, 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