What other reason could there be for him to keep her hidden away in this dull place, month after month, when he must have seen that her youth and beauty and gaiety of heart were slowly vanishing away, if he had eyes to see anything ?" "But, good Heavens!" Gilbert exclaimed, startled by the sudden horror of the idea which Ellen Carley's words suggested, "you surely do not imagine that Marian's husband had any part in her disappearance?
that he could be capable of----" "I don't know what to think, sir," the girl answered, interrupting him.
"I know that I have never liked Mr.Holbrook--never liked or trusted him from the first, though he has been civil enough and kind enough in his own distant way to me.

That dear young lady could not disappear off the face of the earth, as it seems she has done, without the evil work of some one.

As to her leaving this place of her own free will, without a word of warning to her husband or to me, that I am sure she would never dream of doing.

No, sir, there has been foul play of some kind, and I'm afraid I shall never see that dear face again." The girl said this with an air of conviction that sent a deadly chill to Gilbert Fenton's heart.

It seemed to him in this moment of supreme anguish as if all his trouble of the past, all his vague fears and anxieties about the woman he loved, had been the foreshadowing of this evil to come.