“For the sake of the money?—­yes, I suppose that is the beginning and end of his scheme.  My poor girl!  No doubt he has told her all manner of lies about me, and so contrived to estrange that faithful heart.  Will you insert an advertisement in the Times, Gilbert, under initials, telling her of my illness, and entreating her to come to me?”

“I will do so if you like; but I daresay Nowell will be cautious enough to keep the advertisement-sheet away from her, or to watch it pretty closely, and prevent her seeing anything we may insert.  I am taking means to find them, John I, must entreat you to rest satisfied with that.”

“Rest satisfied,—­when I am uncertain whether I shall ever see my wife again!  That is a hard thing to do.”

“If you harass yourself, you will not live to see her again.  Trust in me, John; Marian’s safety is as dear to me as it can be to you.  I am her sworn friend and brother, her self-appointed guardian and defender.  I have skilled agents at work; we shall find her, rely upon it.”

It was a strange position into which Gilbert found himself drifting; the consoler of this man who had so basely robbed him.  They could never be friends again, these two; he had told himself that, not once, but many times during the weary hours of his watching beside John Saltram’s sick-bed.  They could never more be friends; and yet he found himself in a manner compelled to perform the offices of friendship.  Nor was it easy to preserve anything like the neutral standing which he had designed for himself.  The life of this sometime friend of his hung by so frail a link, he had such utter need of kindness; so what could Gilbert do but console him for the loss of his wife, and endeavour to inspire him with a hopeful spirit about her?  What could he do less than friendship would have done, although his affection for this old friend of his youth had perished for evermore?  The task of consolation was not an easy one.  Once restored to his right mind, with a vivid sense of all that had happened to him before his illness, John Saltram was not to be beguiled into a false security.  The idea that his wife was in dangerous hands pursued him perpetually, and the consciousness of his own impotence to rescue her goaded him to a kind of mental fever.

“To be chained here, Gilbert, lying on this odious bed like a dog, when she needs my help!  How am I to bear it?”

“Like a man,” the other answered quietly.  “Were you as well as I am this moment, there’s nothing you could do that I am not doing.  Do you think I should sit idly here, if the best measures had not been taken to find your wife?”

“Forgive me.  Yes; I have no doubt you have done what is best.  But if I were astir, I should have the sense of doing something.  I could urge on those people you employ, work with them even.”

“You would be more likely to hinder than to assist them.  They know their work, and it is a slow drudging business at best, which requires more patience than you possess.  No, John, there is nothing to be done but to wait, and put our trust in Providence and in time.”