XIV. DOUBTFUL INFORMATION
XXXV. BOUGHT WITH A PRICE
XXXVI. COMING ROUND
XXXVII. A FULL CONFESSION
XXXVIII. AN ILL-OMENED WEDDING
XXXIX. A DOMESTIC MYSTERY
XL. IN PURSUIT
XLI. OUTWARD BOUND
XLII. THE PLEASURES OF WYNCOMB
XLIII. MR. WHITELAW MAKES AN END OF THE MYSTERY
XLIV. AFTER THE FIRE
XLV. MR. WHITELAW MAKES HIS WILL
XLVI. ELLEN REGAINS HER LIBERTY
XLVII. CLOSING SCENES

CHAPTER I.

THE COMMON FEVER.

A warm summer evening, with a sultry haze brooding over the level
landscape, and a Sabbath stillness upon all things in the village of
Lidford, Midlandshire. In the remoter corners of the old gothic church
the shadows are beginning to gather, as the sermon draws near its close;
but in the centre aisle and about the pulpit there is broad daylight
still shining-in from the wide western window, across the lower half of
which there are tall figures of the Evangelists in old stained glass.

There are no choristers at Lidford, and the evening service is conducted
in rather a drowsy way; but there is a solemn air of repose about the
gray old church that should be conducive to tranquil thoughts and pious
meditations. Simple and earnest have been the words of the sermon, simple
and earnest seem the countenances of the congregation, looking reverently
upwards at the face of their pastor; and one might fancy, contemplating
that grand old church, so much too spacious for the needs of the little
flock gathered there to-night, that Lidford was a forgotten,
half-deserted corner of this earth, in which a man, tired of the press
and turmoil of the world, might find an almost monastic solitude and
calm.

So thought a gentleman in the Squire's pew--a good-looking man of about
thirty, who was finishing his first Sunday at Lidford by devout
attendance at evening service. He had been thinking a good deal about
this quiet country life during the service, wondering whether it was not
the best life a man could live, after all, and thinking it all the
sweeter because of his own experience, which had lain chiefly in cities.

He was a certain Mr. Gilbert Fenton, an Australian merchant, and was on a
visit to his sister, who had married the principal landowner in Lidford,
Martin Lister--a man whose father had been called "the Squire." The lady
sat opposite her brother in the wide old family pew to-night--a
handsome-looking matron, with a little rosy-cheeked damsel sitting by her
side--a damse