ed. From the hour I saw that
_other_, I was lost. I will tell you all about that some day. No; we will
not go to the villa. Write and give Mrs. Branston my best thanks for the
generous offer, and invent some excuse for declining it; that's a good
fellow."

By-and-by, when the letter was written, John Saltram said,--"I do not
want to go out of town at all, Gilbert. It's no use for the doctor to
talk; I can't leave London till we have news of Marian."

Gilbert had been prepared for this, and set himself to argue the point
with admirable patience. Mr. Proul's work would go on just as well, he
urged, whether they were in London or at Hampton. A telegram would bring
them any tidings as quickly in the one place as the other. "I am not
asking you to go far, remember," he added. "You will be within an hour's
journey of London, and the doctors declare this change is indispensable
to your recovery. You have told us what a horror you have of these
rooms."

"Yes; I doubt if any one but a sick man can understand his loathing of
the scene of his illness. That room in there is filled with the shadows
that haunted me in all those miserable nights--when the fever was at its
worst, and I lived amidst a crowd of phantoms. Yes, I do most profoundly
hate that room. As for this matter of change of air, Gilbert, dispose of
me as you please; my worthless existence belongs to you."

Gilbert was quick to take advantage of this concession. He went down to
Hampton next day, and explored the neighbourhood on both sides of the
Thames. His choice fell at last on a pretty little house within a stone's
throw of the Palace gates, the back windows whereof looked out upon the
now leafless solitude of Bushy Park, and where there was a
comfortable-looking rosy-faced landlady, whose countenance was very
pleasant to contemplate after the somewhat lachrymose visage of Mrs.
Pratt. Here he found he could have all the accommodation he required, and
hither he promised to bring the invalid early in the following week.

There were as yet no tidings worth speaking of from Mr. Proul. That
distinguished member of the detective profession waited upon Gilbert
Fenton with his budget twice a week, but the budget was a barren one. Mr.
Proul's agent pronounced Mr. Medler's clerk the toughest individual it
had ever been his lot to deal with. No amount of treating at the
public-house round the corner--and the agent had ascended from the
primitive simplicity of a pint of p