Gilbert started, and stood transfixed, looking intently at the unconscious speaker.  Yes, here was the clue to the mystery.  John Saltram had grown tired of his stolen bride—­had sighed for his freedom.  Who should say that he had not taken some iniquitous means to rid himself of the tie that had grown troublesome to him?

Gilbert Fenton remembered Ellen Carley’s suspicions.  He was no longer inclined to despise them.

It was dreary work to sit by the bedside watching that familiar face, to which fever and delirium had given a strange weird look; dismal work to count the moments, and wonder when that voice, now so thick of utterance as it went on muttering incoherent sentences and meaningless phrases, would be able to reply to those questions which Gilbert Fenton was burning to ask.

Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had stricken this man down—­this strong powerfully-built man, who was a stranger to illness and all physical suffering?  Was the body only crushed by the burden of the mind?  Gilbert could not find any answer to these questions.  He only knew that his sometime friend lay there helpless, unconscious, removed beyond his reach as completely as if he had been lying in his coffin.

“O God, it is hard to bear!” he said half aloud:  “it is a bitter trial to bear.  If this illness should end in death, I may never know Marian’s fate.”

He sat in the sick man’s room all through that long dismal afternoon, waiting to see the doctor, and with the same hopeless thoughts repeating themselves perpetually in his mind.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Mr. Mew at last made his evening visit.  He was a grave gray-haired little man, with a shrewd face and a pleasant manner; a man who inspired Gilbert with confidence, and whose presence was cheering in a sick-room; but he did not speak very hopefully of John Saltram.

“It is a bad case, sir—­a very bad case,” he said gravely, after he had made his careful examination of the patient’s condition.  “There has been a violent cold caught, you see, through our poor friend’s recklessness in neglecting to change his damp clothes, and rheumatic fever has set in.  But it appears to me that there are other causes at work—­mental disturbance, and so on.  Our friend has been taxing his brain a little too severely, I gather from Mrs. Pratt’s account of him; and these things will tell, sir; sooner or later they have their effect.”

“Then you apprehend danger?”

“Well, yes; I dare not tell you that there is an absence of danger.  Mr. Saltram has a fine constitution, a noble frame; but the strain is a severe one, especially upon the mind.”

“You spoke just now of over-work as a cause for this mental disturbance.  Might it not rather proceed from some secret trouble of mind, some hidden care?” Gilbert asked anxiously.

“That, sir, is an open question.  The mind is unhinged; there is no doubt of that.  There is something more here than the ordinary delirium we look for in fever cases.”