which he had
fancied they two might lead!

"And she loves this man well enough to endure the dullest existence for
his sake," he said to himself as he turned his back at last upon the tall
iron gate, having lingered there for some minutes after Marian had
re-entered the house. "She could forget all our plans for the future at
his bidding."

He thought of this with a jealous pang, and with all his old anger
against his unknown rival. Moved by an impulse of love and pity for
Marian, he had promised that this man should suffer no injury at his
hands; and, having so pledged himself, he must needs keep his word. But
there were certain savage feelings and primitive instincts in his breast
not easily to be vanquished; and he felt that now he had bound himself to
keep the peace in relation to Mr. Holbrook, it would be well that those
two should not meet.

"But I will have some explanation from Sir David Forster as to that lie
he told me," he said to himself; "and I will question John Saltram about
this man Holbrook."

John Saltram--John Holbrook. An idea flashed into his brain that seemed
to set it on fire. What if John Saltram and John Holbrook were one! What
if the bosom friend whom he had introduced to his betrothed had played
the traitor, and stolen her from him! In the next moment he put the
supposition away from him, indignant with himself for being capable of
thinking such a thing, even for an instant. Of all the men upon earth who
could have done him this wrong, John Saltram was the last he could have
believed guilty. Yet the thought recurred to him many times after this
with a foolish tiresome persistence; and he found himself going over the
circumstances of his friend's acquaintance with Marian, his hasty
departure from Lidford, his return there later during Sir David Forster's
illness. Let him consider these facts as closely as he might, there was
no especial element of suspicion in them. There might have been a hundred
reasons for that hurried journey to London--nay, the very fact itself
argued against the supposition that Mr. Saltram had fallen in love with
his friend's plighted wife.

And now, the purpose of his life being so far achieved, Gilbert Fenton
rode back to Winchester next day, restored his horse to its proprietor,
and went on to London by an evening train.

CHAPTER XVII.

MISS CARLEY'S ADMIRERS.

There were times in which Marian Holbrook's life would have been utterly
lonely but for t