had been low, or his mother's reputation was damaged by some
hidden flaw with which Mrs. Catherick and Sir Percival were both
privately acquainted? I could only put the first explanation to the
test by looking at the register of her marriage, and so ascertaining
her maiden name and her parentage as a preliminary to further inquiries.

On the other hand, if the second case supposed were the true one, what
had been the flaw in her reputation? Remembering the account which
Marian had given me of Sir Percival's father and mother, and of the
suspiciously unsocial secluded life they had both led, I now asked
myself whether it might not be possible that his mother had never been
married at all. Here again the register might, by offering written
evidence of the marriage, prove to me, at any rate, that this doubt had
no foundation in truth. But where was the register to be found? At
this point I took up the conclusions which I had previously formed, and
the same mental process which had discovered the locality of the
concealed crime, now lodged the register also in the vestry of Old
Welmingham church.

These were the results of my interview with Mrs. Catherick--these were
the various considerations, all steadily converging to one point, which
decided the course of my proceedings on the next day.

The morning was cloudy and lowering, but no rain fell. I left my bag
at the hotel to wait there till I called for it, and, after inquiring
the way, set forth on foot for Old Welmingham church.

It was a walk of rather more than two miles, the ground rising slowly
all the way.

On the highest point stood the church--an ancient, weather-beaten
building, with heavy buttresses at its sides, and a clumsy square tower
in front. The vestry at the back was built out from the church, and
seemed to be of the same age. Round the building at intervals appeared
the remains of the village which Mrs. Clements had described to me as
her husband's place of abode in former years, and which the principal
inhabitants had long since deserted for the new town. Some of the
empty houses had been dismantled to their outer walls, some had been
left to decay with time, and some were still inhabited by persons
evidently of the poorest class. It was a dreary scene, and yet, in the
worst aspect of its ruin, not so dreary as the modern town that I had
just left. Here there was the brown, breezy sweep of surrounding
fields for the eye to repose on--here