CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.

A TORMENTING DOUBT.

At dinner Jack announced his intention of paying a visit to Richard Foster.

“You are not fit to deal with the fellow,” he said; “you may be sharp enough upon your own black sheep in Guernsey, but you know nothing of the breed here.  Now, if I see him, I will squeeze out of him every mortal thing he knows about Olivia.  Where did those papers come from?”

“There was no place given,” I answered.

“But there would be a post-mark on the envelop,” he replied; “I will make him show me the envelop they were in.”

“Jack,” I said, “you do not suppose he has any doubt of her death?”

“I can’t say,” he answered.  “You see he has married again, and if she were not dead that would be bigamy—­an ugly sort of crime.  But are you sure they are married?”

“How can I be sure?” I asked fretfully, for grief as often makes men fretful as illness.  “I did not ask for their marriage-certificate.”

“Well, well!  I will go,” he answered.

I awaited his return with impatience.  With this doubt insinuated by Jack, it began to seem almost incredible that Olivia’s exquisitely healthy frame should have succumbed suddenly under a malady to which she had no predisposition whatever.  Moreover, her original soundness of constitution had been strengthened by ten months’ residence in the pure, bracing air of Sark.  Yet what was I to think in face of those undated documents, and of her own short letter to her husband?  The one I knew was genuine; why should I suppose the others to be forged?  And if forgeries, who had been guilty of such a cruel and crafty artifice, and for what purpose?

I had not found any satisfactory answer to these queries before Jack returned, his face kindled with excitement.  He caught my hand, and grasped it heartily.

“I no more believe she is dead than I am,” were his first words.  “You recollect me telling you of a drunken brawl in a street off the Strand, where a fellow, as drunk as a lord, was for claiming a pretty girl as his wife; only I had followed her out of Ridley’s agency-office, and was just in time to protect her from him—­a girl I could have fallen in love with myself.  You recollect?”

“Yes, yes,” I said, almost breathless.

“He was the man, and Olivia was the girl!” exclaimed Jack.

“No!” I cried.

“Yes!” continued Jack, with an affectionate lunge at me; “at any rate I can swear he is the man; and I would bet a thousand to one that the girl was Olivia.”

“But when was it?” I asked.

“Since he married again,” he answered; “they were married on the 2d of October, and this was early in November.  I had gone to Ridley’s after a place for a poor fellow as an assistant to a druggist; and I saw the girl distinctly.  She gave the name of Ellen Martineau.  Those letters about her death are all forgeries.”