see them at church now and then in the
summer-time; but I haven't seen them lately. There's a church at
Golder's-green almost as near, and they may have been there."

"Will you tell me what they were like?" Gilbert asked eagerly.

His heart was beating loud and fast, making a painful tumult in his
breast. He felt assured that he was on the track of the people whom the
innkeeper had described to him; the people who were, in all probability,
Mr. and Mrs. Holbrook.

"The lady is very pretty and very young--quite a girl. The gentleman
older, dark, and not handsome."

"Yes. Has the lady gray eyes, and dark-brown hair, and a very bright
expressive face?"

"Yes, sir."

"Pray try to remember the name of the gentleman to whom the Grange
belongs. It is of great importance to me to know that."

"I'll ask my father, sir," the girl answered good-naturedly; "he's pretty
sure to know."

She went across the shop to the old man who was weighing sugar, and
bawled her question into his ear. He scratched his head in a meditative
way for some moments.

"I've heard the name times and often," he said, "though I never set eyes
upon the gentleman. William Carley has been bailiff at the Grange these
twenty years, and I don't believe as the owner has ever come nigh the
place in all that time. Let me see,--it's a common name enough, though
the gentleman is a baronight. Forster--that's it--Sir something Forster."

"Sir David?" cried Gilbert.

"You've hit it, sir. Sir David Forster--that's the gentleman."

Sir David Forster! He had little doubt after this that the strangers at
the Grange had been Marian and her husband. Treachery, blackest treachery
somewhere. He had questioned Sir David, and had received his positive
assurance that this man Holbrook was unknown to him; and now, against
that there was the fact that the baronet was the owner of a place in
Hampshire, to be taken in conjunction with that other fact that a place
in Hampshire had been lent to Mr. Holbrook by a friend. At the very first
he had been inclined to believe that Marian's lover must needs be one of
the worthless bachelor crew with which the baronet was accustomed to
surround himself. He had only abandoned that notion after his interview
with Sir David Forster; and now it seemed that the baronet had
deliberately lied to him. It was, of course, just possible that he was on
a false scent after all, and that it was to some other part of the
country Mr. Holbrook had b