lbrook by
a friend. It was in Hampshire, therefore, that Gilbert resolved to make
his first inquiries. He told himself that success was merely a question
of time and patience. The business of tracing these people, who were not
to be found by any public inquiry, would be slow and wearisome no doubt.
He was prepared for that. He was prepared for a thousand failures and
disappointments before he alighted on the one place in which Mr.
Holbrook's name must needs be known, the town or village nearest to the
farm-house that had been lent to him. And even if, after unheard-of
trouble and perseverance on his part, he should find the place he wanted,
it was quite possible that Marian and her husband would have gone
elsewhere, and his quest would have to begin afresh. But he fancied that
he could hardly fail to obtain some information as to their plan of life,
if he could find the place where they had stayed after their marriage.

His own scheme of action was simple enough. He had only to travel from
place to place, making careful inquiries at post-offices and in all
likely quarters at every stage of his journey. He went straight to
Winchester, having a fancy for the quiet old city and the fair pastoral
scenery surrounding it, and thinking that Mr. Holbrook's borrowed retreat
might possibly be in this neighbourhood. The business proved even slower
and more tedious than he had supposed; there were so many farms round
about Winchester, so many places which seemed likely enough, and to which
he went, only to find that no person of the name of Holbrook had ever
been heard of by the inhabitants.

He made his head-quarters in the cathedral city for nearly a week, and
explored the country round, in a radius of thirty miles, without the
faintest success. It was fine autumn weather, calm and clear, the foliage
still upon the trees, in all its glory of gold and brown, with patches of
green lingering here and there in sheltered places. The country was very
beautiful, and Gilbert Fenton's work would have been pleasant enough if
the elements of peace had been in his breast. But they were not. Bitter
regrets for all he had lost, uneasy fears and wild imaginings about the
fate of her whom he still loved with a fond useless passion,--these and
other gloomy thoughts haunted him day by flay, clouding the calm
loveliness of the scenes on which he looked, until all outer things
seemed to take their colour from his own mind. He had loved Marian Nowell