“God bless you for that promise!  I have so dreaded the chance of a meeting between you two.  It has often been the thought of that which has made me unhappy when that faithful girl, Nelly, has noticed my low spirits.  You have removed a great weight from my mind.”

“And you will trust me better after that promise?”

“Yes; I will trust you as you deserve to be trusted, with all my heart.”

“And now, good-bye.  It is a hard word for me to say; but I must not detain you here in the cold.”

He bent his head, and pressed his lips upon the slender little hand which held the key of the gate.  In the next moment he was outside that tall iron barrier; and it seemed to him as if he were leaving Marian in a prison.  The garden, with its poor pale scentless autumn flowers, had a dreary look under the dull gray sky.  He thought of the big empty house, with its faded traces of vanished splendour, and of Marian’s lonely life in it, with unspeakable pain.  How different from the sunny home which he had dreamed of in the days gone by—­the happy domestic life which he had fancied they two might lead!

“And she loves this man well enough to endure the dullest existence for his sake,” he said to himself as he turned his back at last upon the tall iron gate, having lingered there for some minutes after Marian had re-entered the house.  “She could forget all our plans for the future at his bidding.”

He thought of this with a jealous pang, and with all his old anger against his unknown rival.  Moved by an impulse of love and pity for Marian, he had promised that this man should suffer no injury at his hands; and, having so pledged himself, he must needs keep his word.  But there were certain savage feelings and primitive instincts in his breast not easily to be vanquished; and he felt that now he had bound himself to keep the peace in relation to Mr. Holbrook, it would be well that those two should not meet.

“But I will have some explanation from Sir David Forster as to that lie he told me,” he said to himself; “and I will question John Saltram about this man Holbrook.”

John Saltram—­John Holbrook.  An idea flashed into his brain that seemed to set it on fire.  What if John Saltram and John Holbrook were one!  What if the bosom friend whom he had introduced to his betrothed had played the traitor, and stolen her from him!  In the next moment he put the supposition away from him, indignant with himself for being capable of thinking such a thing, even for an instant.  Of all the men upon earth who could have done him this wrong, John Saltram was the last he could have believed guilty.  Yet the thought recurred to him many times after this with a foolish tiresome persistence; and he found himself going over the circumstances of his friend’s acquaintance with Marian, his hasty departure from Lidford, his return there later during Sir David Forster’s illness.  Let him consider these facts as closely as he might, there was no especial element of suspicion in them.  There might have been a hundred reasons for that hurried journey to London—­nay, the very fact itself argued against the supposition that Mr. Saltram had fallen in love with his friend’s plighted wife.