inly--may not have been up to
the mark. In any case, I shall try some one else. Do you know anything of
the detective force?"

Mr. Medler assumed an air of consideration, and then said, "No, he did
not know the name of a single detective; his business did not bring him
in contact with that class of people." He said this with the tone of a
man whose practice was of the loftiest and choicest kind--conveyancing,
perhaps, and the management of estates for the landed gentry,
marriage-settlements involving the disposition of large fortunes, and so
on; whereas Mr. Medler's business lying chiefly among the criminal
population, his path in life might have been supposed to be not very
remote from the footsteps of eminent police-officers.

"I can get the information elsewhere," Gilbert said carelessly. "Believe
me, I do not mean to let this matter drop."

"My dear sir, if I might venture upon a word of friendly advice--not in a
professional spirit, but as between man and man--I should warn you
against wasting your time and fortune upon a useless pursuit. If Mrs.
Holbrook has vanished from the world of her own free will--a thing that
often happens, eccentric as it may be--she will reappear in good time of
her own free will. If she has been the victim of a crime, that crime will
no doubt come to light in due course, without any efforts of yours."

"That is the common kind of advice, Mr. Medler," answered Gilbert.
"Prudent counsel, no doubt, if a man could be content to take it, and
well meant; but, you see, I have loved this lady, love her still, and
shall continue so to love her till the end of my life. It is not possible
for me to rest in ignorance of her fate."

"Although she jilted you in favour of Mr. Holbrook?" suggested the lawyer
with something of a sneer.

"That wrong has been forgiven. Fate did not permit me to be her husband,
but I can be her friend and brother. She has need of some one to stand in
that position, poor girl! for her lot is very lonely. And now I want you
to explain the conditions of her grandfather's will. It is her father who
would profit, I think I gathered from our last conversation, in the event
of Marian's death."

"In the event of her dying childless--yes, the father would take all."

"Then he is really the only person who could profit by her death?"

"Well, yes," replied the lawyer with some slight hesitation; "under her
grandfather's will, yes, her father would take all. Of course, in the