She was very gentle, very patient, troubling him with no vain wailings and lamentations; but he could see that her heart was almost broken.
He left her at the end of a few hours to return to London, promising to go on to Liverpool next day, in order to be on the spot to await her husband's return, and to send her the earliest possible tidings of it.
"Your friendship for us has given you nothing but trouble and pain," she said; "but if you will do this for me, I shall be grateful to you for the rest of my life." There was no occasion for that journey to Liverpool.

When he arrived in London that night, Gilbert Fenton found a letter waiting for him at his Wigmore-street lodgings--a letter with the New York post-mark, but _not_ addressed in his friend's hand.

He tore it open hurriedly, just a little alarmed by this fact.
His first feeling was one of relief.

There were three separate sheets of paper in the envelope, and the first which he took up was in John Saltram's hand--a hurried eager letter, dated some weeks before.
"My dear Gilbert," he wrote, "I have been duped.

This man Nowell is a most consummate scoundrel.