have
taken a fancy to myself, as I said before; but young women are that
wayward and uncertain like, there's no knowing where to have them."

"Was Miss Nowell long at Wygrove before her marriage?"

"About three weeks. She lodged with Miss Long, up the town, a friend of
my daughter's. If you'd like to ask any questions of Miss Long, our
Jemima might step round there with you presently."

"I should be very glad to do so," Gilbert answered quickly. He asked
several more questions; but Mr. Stoneham could give him no information,
except as to the bare fact of the marriage. Gilbert knew now that the
girl he had so fondly loved and so entirely trusted was utterly lost to
him; that he had been jilted cruelly and heartlessly, as he could but own
to himself. Yes, she had jilted him--had in all probability never loved
him. He blamed himself for having urged his suit too ardently, with
little reference to Marian's own feelings, with a rooted obstinate
conviction that he needed only to win her in order to insure the
happiness of both.

Having fully proved Mr. Stoneham's inability to afford him any further
help in this business, Gilbert availed himself of the fair Jemima's
willingness to "step round" to Miss Long's domicile with him, in the hope
of obtaining fuller information from that lady. While Miss Stoneham was
engaged in putting on her bonnet for this expedition, the clerk proposed
to take Gilbert across to the church and show him the entry of the
marriage in the register. "With a view to the satisfactory settlement of
the reward," Mr. Stoneham added in a fat voice, and with the air of a man
to whom twenty pounds more or less was an affair of very little moment.

Gilbert assented to this, and accompanied Mr. Stoneham to a little
side-door which admitted them into the old church, where the light shone
dimly through painted windows, in which there seemed more leaden
framework than glass. The atmosphere of the place was cold even on this
sultry July afternoon, and the vestry to which Mr. Stoneham conducted his
companion had a damp mouldy smell.

He opened a cupboard, with a good deal of jingling of a great bunch of
keys, and produced the register; a grim-looking volume bound in dingy
leather, and calculated to inspire gloomy feelings in the minds of the
bridegrooms and brides who had occasion to inscribe their names therein;
a volume upon which the loves and the graces who hover around the
entrance to the matrimonial state h