Whose
is it?'

'He's dead!' she murmured.

'Who?'

'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she said,
a sob hanging heavy in her voice.

'O, all right.'

'Do you mind my refusing? I will tell you some day.'

'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'

He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when he
had got down to his factory in the city the subject came into Marchmill's
head again.

He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the house
they had occupied at Solentsea. Having seen the volume of poems in his
wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversation
about Trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself;
'Why of course it's he! How the devil did she get to know him? What sly
animals women are!'

Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
affairs. By this time Ella at home had come to a determination. Mrs.
Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the day
of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wish
to know where they were laying him took possession of the sympathetic
woman. Caring very little now what her husband or any one else might
think of her eccentricities; she wrote Marchmill a brief note, stating
that she was called away for the afternoon and evening, but would return
on the following morning. This she left on his desk, and having given
the same information to the servants, went out of the house on foot.

When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants
looked anxious. The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that her
mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that she feared
she had gone out to drown herself. Marchmill reflected. Upon the whole
he thought that she had not done that. Without saying whither he was
bound he also started off, telling them not to sit up for him. He drove
to the railway-station, and took a ticket for Solentsea.

It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast
train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it could
only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while before his
own. The season at Solentsea was now past: the parade was gloomy, and
the flys were few and cheap. He asked the way to the Cemetery, and soon
reached it. The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring,
how