orter to the highest flights in the
art of compound liquors--could exert a softening influence upon that
rigid nature. Either the clerk knew nothing about Percival Nowell, or had
been so well schooled as to disclose nothing of what he knew. Money had
been employed by the agent, as well as drink, as a means of temptation;
but even every insidious hint of possible gains had failed to move the
ill-paid underling to any revelation.

"It's my belief the man knows nothing, or else I should have had it out
of him by hook or by crook," Mr. Proul's agent told him, and Mr. Proul
repeated to his client.

This first agent having thus come to grief, and having perhaps made
himself a suspected person in the eyes of the Medler office by his
manoeuvres, a second spy had been placed to keep close watch upon the
house, and to follow any person who at all corresponded with the
detective idea of Mr. Nowell. It could be no more than an idea,
unfortunately, since Gilbert had been able to give the accomplished Proul
no description of the man he wanted to trace. Above all, the spy was to
take special note of any lady who might be seen to enter or leave the
office, and to this end he was furnished with a close description of
Marian.

Gilbert called upon Mrs. Branston before carrying John Saltram out of
town; he fancied that her offer of the Maidenhead villa would be better
acknowledged personally than by a letter. He found the pretty little
widow sorely disappointed by Mr. Saltram's refusal to occupy her house,
and it was a little difficult to explain to her why they both preferred
other quarters for the convalescent.

"Why will he not accept the smallest favour from me?" Adela Branston
asked plaintively. "He ought to know that there is no _arriere pensee_ in
any offer which I make him--that I have no wish except for his welfare.
Why does he not trust me a little more?"

"He will do so in future, I think, Mrs. Branston," Gilbert answered
gravely. "I fancy he has learned the folly and danger of all underhand
policy, and that he will put more faith in his friends for the rest of
his life."

"And he is really much better, quite out of danger? Do the doctors say
that?"

"He is as much out of danger as a man can well be whose strength has all
been wasted in a perilous illness. He has that to regain yet, and the
recovery will be slow work. Of course in his condition a relapse would be
fatal; but there is no occasion to apprehend a relapse."