This was rather too vague a description to make any impression upon Gilbert.  It was something certainly to know that his rival had dark eyes, if indeed this man of whom the landlord spoke really were his rival.  He had never been able to make any mental picture of the stranger who had come between him and his betrothed.  He had been inclined to fancy that the man must needs be much handsomer than himself, possessed of every outward attribute calculated to subjugate the mind of an inexperienced girl like Marian; but the parish-clerk at Wygrove and Miss Long had both spoken in a disparaging tone of Mr. Holbrook’s personal appearance; and, remembering this, he was fain to believe that Marian had been won by some charm more subtle than that of a handsome face.

He went on eating his dinner in silence for some little time, meditating upon what the landlord had told him.  Then, as the man cleared the table, lingering over his work, as if eager to impart any stray scraps of information he might possess, Gilbert spoke to him again.

“I should have fancied that, as a settled inhabitant of the place, you would be likely to know every farm and farm-house within ten miles—­or within twenty miles,” he said.

“Well, sir, I daresay I do know the neighbourhood pretty well, in a general way.  But I think, if I’d known the name of the place this lady and gentleman were going to, it would have struck me more than it did, and I should have remembered it.  I was uncommonly busy through that afternoon, for it was market-day, and there were a mort of people going in and out.  I never did interfere much with the fly business; it was only by taking the gentleman out some soda-and-brandy that I came to take the notice I did of the lady’s looks and his care of her.  I know it was a ten-mile drive, and that I told the gentleman the fare, so as there might be no bother between him and William Tyler, my man, at the end; and he agreed to it in a liberal off-hand kind of way, like a man who doesn’t care much for money.  As to farms within ten miles of here, there are a dozen at least, one way and another—­some small, and some large.”

“Do you know of any place in the ownership of a gentleman who would be likely to lend his house to a friend?”

“I can’t say I do, sir.  They’re tenant-farmers about here mostly, and rather a roughish lot, as you may say.  There’s a place over beyond Crosber, ten miles off and more; I don’t know the name of it, or the person it belongs to; but I’ve noticed it many a time as I’ve driven by; a curious old-fashioned house, standing back off one of the lanes out of Crosber, with a large garden before it.  A queer lonesome place altogether.  I should take it to be two or three hundred years old; and I shouldn’t think the house had had money spent upon it within the memory of man.  It’s a dilapidated tumbledown old gazabo of a place, and yet there’s a kind of prettiness about it in summer-time, when the garden is full of flowers.  There’s a river runs through some of the land about half a mile from the house.”