The poor young lady was drowned--there's no doubt about that." "I don't believe it," Gilbert said, with a quiet resolute air, which seemed quite to startle Mr.Whitelaw.
"You don't believe she was drowned! You mean to say you think she's alive, then ?" he asked, with unusual sharpness and quickness of speech.
"I have a firm conviction that she still lives; that, with God's blessing, I shall see her again." "Well, sir," Mr.Whitelaw replied, relapsing into his accustomed slowness, and rubbing his clumsy chin with his still clumsier hand, in a thoughtful manner, "of course it ain't my place to go against any gentleman's convictions--far from it; but if you see Mrs.Holbrook before the dead rise out of their graves, my name isn't Stephen Whitelaw.

You may waste your time and your trouble, and you may spend your money as it was so much water, but set eyes upon that missing lady you never will; take my word for it, or don't take my word for it, as you please." Gilbert wondered at the man's earnestness.

Did he really feel some kind of benevolent interest in the fate of a helpless woman, or was it only a vulgar love of the marvellous and horrible that moved him?
Gilbert leaned to the latter opinion, and was by no means inclined to give Stephen Whitelaw credit for any surplus stock of benevolence.

He saw a good deal more of Ellen Carley's suitor in the course of his evening visits to the Grange, and had ample opportunity for observing Mr.Whitelaw's mode of courtship, which was by no means of the demonstrative order, consisting in a polite silence towards the object of his affections, broken only by one or two clumsy but florid compliments, delivered in a deliberate but semi-jocose manner.

The owner of Wyncomb Farm had no idea of making hard work of his courtship.