CHAPTER XLIV.
AFTER THE FIRE.
Yes, it was Marian.

She whom Gilbert Fenton had sought so long and patiently, with doubt and anguish in his heart; she whose double John Saltram had followed across the Atlantic, had been within easy reach of them all the time, hidden away in that dreary old farm-house, the innocent victim of Percival Nowell's treachery, and Stephen Whitelaw's greed of gain.

The whole story was told by-and-by, when the master of Wyncomb Farm lay dying.
William Carley and his daughter took her to the Grange as soon as the farmer's spring cart was ready to convey her thither.

It was all done very quickly, and none of the farm-servants saw her face.

Even if they had done so, it is more than doubtful that they would have recognised her, so pale a shadow of her former self had she become during that long dreary imprisonment; the face wan and wasted, with a strange sharpened look about the features which was like the aspect of death; all the brightness and colour vanished out of the soft brown hair; an ashen pallor upon her beauty, that made her seem like a creature risen from the grave.
They lifted her into the cart, still insensible, and seated her there, wrapped in an old horse-cloth, with her head resting on Mrs.Whitelaw's shoulder; and so they drove slowly away.