“I daresay I shall be able to find them.  It is a strange business, Sarah.  It is most unaccountable that my dearest girl should have left Lidford without writing me word of her removal and her intentions with regard to the future—­that she should have sent me no announcement of her uncle’s death, although she must have known how well I loved him, I am going to ask you a question that is very painful to me, but which must be asked sooner or later.  Do you know of any one else whom she may have liked better than me—­any one whose influence may have governed her at the time she left Lidford?”

“No, indeed, sir,” replied the woman, promptly.  “Who else was there?  Miss Nowell knew so few gentlemen, and saw no one except the Rector’s family and two or three ladies after the uncle’s death.”

“Not at the cottage, perhaps.  But she may have seen some one out-of-doors.  You say she always went out alone at that time, and preferred to do so.”

“Yes, sir, that is true.  But it seemed natural enough that she should like to be alone on account of her grief.”

“There must have been some reason for her silence towards me, Sarah.  She could not have acted so cruelly without some powerful motive.  Heaven only knows what it may have been.  The business of my life will be to find her—­to see her face to face once more, and hear the explanation of her conduct from her own lips.”

He thanked the woman for her information, slipped a sovereign into her hand, and departed.  He called upon the proprietor of Hazel Cottage, an auctioneer, surveyor, and house-agent in the High-street of Fairleigh, but could obtain no fresh tidings from this gentleman, except the fact that the money realised by the Captain’s furniture had been sent to Miss Nowell at a post-office in the City, and had been duly acknowledged by her, after a delay of about a week.  The auctioneer showed Gilbert the letter of receipt, which was worded in a very formal business-like manner, and bore no address but “London.”  The sight of the familiar hand gave him a sharp pang.  O God, how he had languished for a letter in that handwriting!

He had nothing more to do after this in the neighbourhood of Lidford, except to pay a pious visit to the Captain’s grave, where a handsome slab of granite recorded the virtues of the dead.  It lay in the prettiest, most retired part of the churchyard, half-hidden under a wide-spreading yew.  Gilbert Fenton sat down upon a low wall near at hand for a long time, brooding over his broken life, and wishing himself at rest beneath that solemn shelter.

“She never loved me,” he said to himself bitterly.  “I shut my eyes obstinately to the truth, or I might have discovered the secret of her indifference by a hundred signs and tokens.  I fancied that a man who loved a woman as I loved her must succeed in winning her heart at last.  And I accepted her girlish trust in me, her innocent gratitude for my attentions, as the evidence of her