From Queen Anne’s Court Gilbert Fenton went on to the gloomy street where Mr. Medler had his office and abode.  It was not an hour for a professional visit; but Gilbert found the lawyer still hard at work at his desk, under the lurid light of a dirty-looking battered old oil-lamp, which left the corners of the dingy wainscoted room in profound obscurity.  He looked up from his papers with some show of surprise on hearing Mr. Fenton’s name announced by the slipshod maid-of-all-work who had admitted the late visitor, Mr. Medler’s solitary clerk having departed to his own dwelling some hours before.

“I must ask you to excuse this untimely call, Mr. Medler,” Gilbert said politely; “but the fact of the matter is, I am a little anxious about my friend Mrs. Holbrook and her affairs, and I thought you the most likely person to give me some information about them.  I should have called in business hours; but I have only just returned from the country, and did not care to delay my inquiries until to-morrow.  I have just come from Queen Anne’s Court, and am rather surprised to find that neither Mrs. Holbrook nor her husband has been there.  You have seen or heard from them since the funeral, I suppose?”

“No, Mr. Fenton, I have neither seen nor heard of them.  I wrote a formal letter to Mrs. Holbrook, setting out the contents of the will; but there has been no answer as yet.”

“Strange, is it not?” Gilbert exclaimed, with an anxious look.

“Well, yes, it is certainly not the usual course of proceeding.  However, there is time enough yet.  The funeral has not been over much more than a week.  The property is perfectly safe, you know.”

“Of course; but it is not the less extraordinary that Mr. Holbrook should hang back in this manner.  I will go down to Hampshire the first thing to-morrow and see Mrs. Holbrook.”

“Humph!” muttered the lawyer; “I can’t say that I see any necessity for that.  But of course you know best.”

Gilbert Fenton did start for Hampshire early the next morning by the same train in which Marian had travelled after her grandfather’s death.  It was still quite early in the day when he found himself at Malsham, that quiet comfortable little market-town where he had first discovered a clue to the abode of his lost love.  He went to the hotel, and hired a fly to take him to Crosber, where he left the vehicle at the old inn, preferring to walk on to the Grange.  It was a bright November day, with a pale yellow sunlight shining on the level fields, and distant hills that rose beyond them crowned with a scanty fringe of firs, that stood out black and sharp against the clear autumn sky.  It was a cheerful day, and a solitary bird was singing here and there, as if beguiled by that pleasant warmth and sunshine into the fond belief that winter was still far off and the glory of fields and woods not yet departed.  Gilbert’s spirits rose in some degree under the influence of that late