“A wasted life, Mr. Fenton; and in the meantime that river down yonder may hide the only secret.”

“O God!” cried Gilbert passionately, “how eager every one is to make an end of this business!  Even the men whom I paid and bribed to help me grew tired of their work, and abandoned all hope after the feeblest, most miserable attempts to earn their reward.”

“What can be done in such a case, Mr. Fenton?” demanded the lawyer, shrugging his shoulders with a deprecating air.  “What can the police do more than you or I?  They have only a little more experience, that’s all; they have no recondite means of solving these social mysteries.  You have advertised, of course?”

“Yes, in many channels, with a certain amount of caution, but in such a manner as to insure Mrs. Holbrook’s identification, if she had fallen into the hands of any one willing to communicate with me, and to insure her own attention, were she free to act for herself.”

“Humph!  Then it seems to me that everything has been done that can be done.”

“Not yet.  The men whom I employed in Hampshire—­they were recommended to me by the Scotland-yard authorities, certainly—­may not have been up to the mark.  In any case, I shall try some one else.  Do you know anything of the detective force?”

Mr. Medler assumed an air of consideration, and then said, “No, he did not know the name of a single detective; his business did not bring him in contact with that class of people.”  He said this with the tone of a man whose practice was of the loftiest and choicest kind—­conveyancing, perhaps, and the management of estates for the landed gentry, marriage-settlements involving the disposition of large fortunes, and so on; whereas Mr. Medler’s business lying chiefly among the criminal population, his path in life might have been supposed to be not very remote from the footsteps of eminent police-officers.

“I can get the information elsewhere,” Gilbert said carelessly.  “Believe me, I do not mean to let this matter drop.”

“My dear sir, if I might venture upon a word of friendly advice—­not in a professional spirit, but as between man and man—­I should warn you against wasting your time and fortune upon a useless pursuit.  If Mrs. Holbrook has vanished from the world of her own free will—­a thing that often happens, eccentric as it may be—­she will reappear in good time of her own free will.  If she has been the victim of a crime, that crime will no doubt come to light in due course, without any efforts of yours.”

“That is the common kind of advice, Mr. Medler,” answered Gilbert.  “Prudent counsel, no doubt, if a man could be content to take it, and well meant; but, you see, I have loved this lady, love her still, and shall continue so to love her till the end of my life.  It is not possible for me to rest in ignorance of her fate.”

“Although she jilted you in favour of Mr. Holbrook?” suggested the lawyer with something of a sneer.