“Then Foster could compel her to return to him?” I said.

“As far as I see into the case, he certainly could,” was the answer, which drove me nearly frantic.

“But there is this second marriage,” I objected.

“There lies the kernel of the case,” he said, daintily peeling his walnuts.  “You tell me there are papers, which you believe to be forgeries, purporting to be the medical certificate, with corroborative proof of her death.  Now, if the wife be guilty of framing these, the husband will bring them against her as the grounds on which he felt free to contract his second marriage.  She has done a very foolish and a very wicked thing there.”

“You think she did it?” I asked.

He smiled significantly, but without saying any thing.

“I cannot!” I cried.

“Ah! you are blind,” he replied, with the same maddening smile; “but let me return.  On the other hand, if the husband has forged these papers, it would go far with me as strong presumptive evidence against him, upon which we might go in for a divorce, not a separation merely.  If the young lady had remained with him till she had collected proof of his unfaithfulness to her, this, with his subsequent marriage to the same person during her lifetime, would probably have set her absolutely free.”

“Divorced from him?” I said.

“Divorce,” he repeated.

“But what can be done now?” I asked.

“All you can do,” he answered, “is to establish your influence over this fellow, and go cautiously to work with him.  As long as the lady is in France, if she be alive, and he is too ill to go after her, she is safe.  You may convince him by degrees that it is to his interest to come to some terms with her.  A formal deed of separation might be agreed upon, and drawn up; but even that will not perfectly secure her in the future.”

I was compelled to remain satisfied with this opinion.  Yet how could I be satisfied, while Olivia, if she was still living, was wandering about homeless, and, as I feared, destitute, in a foreign country?

I made my first call upon Foster the next evening.  Mrs. Foster had been to Brook Street every day since her return, to inquire for me, and to leave an urgent message that I should go to Bellringer Street as soon as I was again in town.  The lodging-house looked almost as wretched as the forsaken dwelling down at Noireau, where Olivia had perhaps been living; and the stifling, musty air inside it almost made me gasp for breath.

“So you are come back!” was Foster’s greeting, as I entered the dingy room.

“Yes.”  I replied.

“I need not ask what success you’ve had,” he said, sneering, ’Why so pale and wan, fond lover?’ Your trip has not agreed with you, that is plain enough.  It did not agree with Carry, either, for she came back swearing she would never go on such a wild-goose chase again.  You know I was quite opposed to her going?”