ristened John
Holbrook. My grandmother was one of the Holbrooks of Horley-place,
Sussex, people of some importance in their day, and our family were
rather proud of the name. But I have dropped it ever since I was a lad."

"No, I don't think I can ever have seen the name; I must surely have
remembered it, if I had seen it."

"Perhaps so. Well, Gilbert, there is no more to be said. I loved her,
selfishly, after the manner of mankind. I could not bring myself to give
her up, and pursued her with a passionate persistence which must plead
_her_ excuse. If her uncle had lived, I doubt whether I should ever have
succeeded. But his death left the tender womanly heart weakened by
sorrow; and so I won her, the dearest, truest wife that ever man was
blest withal. Yet, I confess to you, so wayward is my nature, that there
have been moments in which I repented my triumph--weak hours of doubt and
foreboding, in which I fear that dear girl divined my thoughts. Since our
wretched separation I have fancied sometimes that a conviction of this
kind on her part is at the root of the business, that she has alienated
herself from me, believing--in plain words--that I was tired of her."

"Such an idea as that would scarcely agree with Ellen Carley's account of
Marian's state of mind during that last day or two at the Grange. She was
eagerly expecting your return, looking forward with delight to the
pleasant surprise you were to experience when you heard of Jacob Nowell's
will."

"Yes, the girl told me that. Great heavens, why did I not return a few
days earlier! I was waiting for money, not caring to go back
empty-handed; writing and working like a nigger. I dared not meet my poor
girl at her grandfather's, since in so doing I must risk an encounter
with you."

After this they talked of Marian's disappearance for some time, going
over the same ground very often in their helplessness, and able, at last,
to arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. If she were with her father, she
was with a bad, unscrupulous man. That was a fact which Gilbert Fenton no
longer pretended to deny. They sat talking till late, and parted for the
night in very different spirits.

Gilbert had a good deal of hard work in the City on the following day; a
batch of foreign correspondence too important to be entrusted to a clerk,
and two or three rather particular interviews. All this occupied him up
to so late an hour, that he was obliged to sleep in London that night