Or he may have been tired of his wife, and have seen his way to a more advantageous alliance.

Men are not always satisfied with one wife in these days, and a man who married in such a strange underhand manner would be likely to have some hidden motive for secrecy." The suggestion was not without force for Gilbert Fenton.

His face grew darker, and he was some time before he replied to Mr.Medler's remarks.
That suspicion which of late had been perpetually floating dimly in his brain--that vague distrust of his one chosen friend, John Saltram, flashed upon him in this moment with a new distinctness.

If this man, whom he had so loved and trusted, had betrayed him, had so utterly falsified his friend's estimate of his character, was it not easy enough to believe him capable of still deeper baseness, capable of growing weary of his stolen wife, and casting her off by some foul secret means, in order to marry a richer woman?
The marriage between John Holbrook and Marian Nowell had taken place several months before Michael Branston's death, at a time when perhaps Adela Branston's admirer had begun to despair of her release.

And then fate had gone against him, and Mrs.
Branston's fortune lay at his feet when it was too late.
Thus, and thus only, could Gilbert Fenton account in any easy manner for John Saltram's avoidance of the Anglo-Indian's widow.