was another way by which perhaps the doubt might be solved--as it
suddenly occurred to Lionel. And that was through Captain Cannonby. If
this gentleman really was with Frederick Massingbird when he died, and
saw him buried, it was evident that it could not be Frederick come back
to life. In that case, who or what it might be, Lionel did not stay to
speculate; his business lay in ascertaining by the most direct means in
his power, whether it was, or was not, Frederick Massingbird. How was it
possible to do this? how could it be possible to set the question at
rest?

By a very simple process, it may be answered--the waiting for time and
chance. Ay, but do you know what that waiting involves, in a case like
this? Think of the state of mind that Lionel Verner must live under
during the suspense!

He made no doubt that the man who had been under the tree on the lawn a
few nights before, watching his window, whom they had set down as being
Roy, was Frederick Massingbird. And yet, it was scarcely believable.
Where now was Lionel to look for him? He could not, for Sibylla's sake,
make inquiries in the village in secret or openly; he could not go to
the inhabitants and ask--have you seen Frederick Massingbird? or say to
each individual, I must send a police officer to search your house, for
I suspect Frederick Massingbird is somewhere concealed, and I want to
find him. For _her_ sake he could not so much as breathe the name, in
connection with his being alive.

Given that it was Frederick Massingbird, what could possibly prevent his
making himself known? As he dwelt upon this problem, trying to solve it,
the idea taken up by Lucy Tempest--that the man under the tree was
watching for an opportunity to harm him--came into his mind. _That_,
surely, could not be the solution! If he had taken Frederick
Massingbird's wife to be his wife, he had done it in all innocence.
Lionel spurned the notion as a preposterous one; nevertheless, a
remembrance crossed him of the old days when the popular belief at
Verner's Pride had been, that the younger of the Massingbirds was of a
remarkably secretive and also of a revengeful nature. But all that he
barely glanced at; the terrible fear touching Sibylla absorbed him.

He was leaning against a tree in the covered walk near Verner's Pride,
the walk which led to the Willow Pond, his head bared, his brow bent
with the most unmistakable signs of care, when something not unlike a
small white balloo