But though Mr. Fenton told himself at one moment that this was impossible, his thoughts travelled back to the same point immediately afterwards, and the image of John Saltram arose before him as that of his hidden foe.  He remembered the long autumn days which he and his friend had spent with Marian—­those unclouded utterly happy days, which he looked back upon now with a kind of wonder.  They had been so much together, Marian so bright and fascinating in her innocent enjoyment of the present, brighter and happier just then than she had ever seemed to him before, Gilbert remembered with a bitter pang.  He had been completely unsuspicious at the time, untroubled by one doubtful thought; but it appeared to him now that there had been a change in Marian from the time of his friend’s coming—­a new joyousness and vivacity, a keener delight in the simple pleasures of their daily life, and withal a fitfulness, a tendency to change from gaiety to thoughtful silence, that he had not remarked in her before.

Was it strange if John Saltram had fallen in love with her? was it possible to see her daily in all the glory of her girlish loveliness, made doubly bewitching by the sweetness of her nature, the indescribable charm of her manner—­was it possible to be with her often, as John Saltram had been, and not love her?  Gilbert Fenton had thought of his friend as utterly impregnable to any such danger; as a man who had spent all his stock of tender emotion long ago, and who looked upon matrimony as a transaction by which he might mend his broken fortunes.  That this man should fall a victim to the same subtle charm which had subjugated himself, was a possibility that never occurred to Gilbert’s mind, in this happy period of his existence.  He wanted his friend’s approval of his choice; he wished to see his passion justified in the eyes of the man whom it was his habit to regard in somewise as a superior creature; and it had been a real delight to him to hear Mr. Saltram’s warm praises of Marian.

Looking back at the past to-day from a new point of view, he wondered at his own folly.  What was more natural than that John Saltram should have found his doom, as he had found it, unthought of, undreamed of, swift, and fatal?  Nor was it difficult for him to believe that Marian—­who had perhaps never really loved him, who had been induced to accept him by his own pertinacity and her uncle’s eager desire for the match—­should find a charm and a power in John Saltram that had been wanting in himself.  He had seen too many instances of his friend’s influence over men and women, to doubt his ability to win this innocent inexperienced girl, had he set himself to win her.  He recalled with a bitter smile how his informants had all described his rival in a disparaging tone, as unworthy of so fair a bride; and he knew that it was precisely those qualities which these common people were unable to appreciate that constituted the subtle charm by which