I certainly wonder that the husband has not been a little sharper and more active in the business." "You have heard nothing of him, then, I presume ?" "Nothing." Gilbert remembered what Ellen Carley had told him about Marian's keeping the secret of her newly-acquired fortune from her husband, until she should be able to tell it to him with her own lips; waiting for that happy moment with innocent girlish delight in the thought that he was to owe prosperity to her.
It seemed evident, therefore, that Mr.Holbrook could know nothing of his wife's inheritance, nor of Mr.Medler's existence, supposing the lawyer's letter to have reached the Grange before Marian's disappearance, and to have been destroyed or carried away by her.
He inquired the date of this letter; whereupon Mr.Medler referred to a letter-book in which there was a facsimile of the document.

It had been posted three days before Marian left the Grange.
Gilbert now proceeded to inform Mr.Medler of his client's mysterious disappearance, and all the useless efforts that had been made to solve the mystery.

The lawyer listened with an appearance of profound interest and astonishment, but made no remark till the story was quite finished.
"You are right, Mr.Fenton," he said at last.

"It is a bad business, a very bad business.

May I ask you what is the common opinion among people in that part of the world--in the immediate neighbourhood of the event, as to this poor lady's fate ?" "An opinion with which I cannot bring myself to agree--an opinion which I pray God may prove as unfounded as I believe it to be.