“That wrong has been forgiven.  Fate did not permit me to be her husband, but I can be her friend and brother.  She has need of some one to stand in that position, poor girl! for her lot is very lonely.  And now I want you to explain the conditions of her grandfather’s will.  It is her father who would profit, I think I gathered from our last conversation, in the event of Marian’s death.”

“In the event of her dying childless—­yes, the father would take all.”

“Then he is really the only person who could profit by her death?”

“Well, yes,” replied the lawyer with some slight hesitation; “under her grandfather’s will, yes, her father would take all.  Of course, in the event of her father having died previously, the husband would come in as heir-at-law.  You see it was not easy to exclude the husband altogether.”

“And do you believe that Mr. Nowell is still living to claim his inheritance?”

“I believe so.  I fancy the old man had some tidings of his son before the will was executed; that he, in short, heard of his having been met with not long ago, over in America.”

“No doubt he will speedily put in an appearance now,” said Gilbert bitterly—­“now that there is a fortune to be gained by the assertion of his identity.”

“Humph!” muttered the lawyer.  “It would not be very easy for him to put his hand on sixpence of Jacob Nowell’s money, in the absence of any proof of Mrs. Holbrook’s death.  There would be no end of appeals to the Court of Chancery; and after all manner of formulas he might obtain a decree that would lock up the property for twenty-four years.  I doubt, if the executor chose to stick to technicals, and the business got into chancery, whether Percival Nowell would live long enough to profit by his father’s will.”

“I am glad of that,” said Gilbert.  “I know the man to be a scoundrel, and I am very glad that he is unlikely to be a gainer by any misfortune that has befallen his daughter.  Had it been otherwise, I should have been inclined to think that he had had some hand in this disappearance.”

The lawyer looked at Mr. Fenton with a sharp inquisitive glance.

“In other words, you would imply that Percival Nowell may have made away with his daughter.  You must have a very bad opinion of human nature, Mr. Fenton, to conceive anything so horrible.”

“My suspicions do not go quite so far as that,” said Gilbert.  “God forbid that it should be so.  I have a firm belief that Marian Holbrook lives.  But it is possible to get a person out of the way without the last worst crime of which mankind is capable.”

“It would seem more natural to suspect the husband than the father, I should imagine,” Mr. Medler answered, after a thoughtful pause.

“I cannot see that.  The husband had nothing to gain by his wife’s disappearance, and everything to lose.”