ere was nothing
left to Gilbert but to return to London--that marvellous city, where
there always seems the most hope of finding the lost, wide as the
wilderness is.

"In London I shall have clever detectives always at my service," Gilbert
thought; "in London I may be able to solve the question of John
Holbrook's identity."

So, apart from the fact that his own affairs necessitated his prompt
return to the great city, Gilbert had another motive for leaving the dull
rural neighbourhood where he had wasted so many anxious hours, so much
thought and care.

For the rest, he knew that Ellen Carley would be faithful--always on the
watch for any clue to the mystery of Marian Holbrook's fate, always ready
to receive the wanderer with open arms, should any happy chance bring her
back to the Grange. Assured of this, he felt less compunction in turning
his back upon the spot where his lost love had vanished from the eyes of
men.

Before leaving, he gave Ellen a letter for Marian's husband, in the
improbable event of that gentleman's reappearance at the Grange--a few
simple earnest lines, entreating Mr. Holbrook to believe in the writer's
faithful and brotherly affection for his wife, and to meet him in London
on an early occasion, in order that they might together concert fresh
means for bringing about her restoration to her husband and home. He
reminded Mr. Holbrook of his friendship for Captain Sedgewick, and that
good man's confidence in him, and declared himself bound by his respect
for the dead to be faithful to the living--faithful in all forgiveness of
any wrong done him in the past.

He went back to London cruelly depressed by the failure of his efforts,
and with a blank dreary feeling that there was little more for him to do,
except to wait the working of Providence, with the faint hope that one of
those happy accidents which sometimes bring about a desired result when
all human endeavour has been in vain, might throw a sudden light on
Marian Holbrook's fate.

During the whole of that homeward journey he brooded an those dark
suspicions of Mr. Holbrook which Ellen Carley had let fall in their
earlier interviews. He had checked the girl on these occasions, and had
prevented the full utterance of her thoughts, generously indignant that
any suspicion of foul play should attach to Marian's husband, and utterly
incredulous of such a depth of guilt as that at which the girl's hints
pointed; but now that he was leaving H