Now that he was fairly on the track, and had begun to cool down, Edward remembered that he had nothing to show—­no legal authority whatever to question Manston or interfere between him and Cytherea as husband and wife.  He now saw the wisdom of the rector in obtaining a signed confession from the porter.  The document would not be a death-bed confession—­perhaps not worth anything legally —­but it would be held by Owen; and he alone, as Cytherea’s natural guardian, could separate them on the mere ground of an unproved probability, or what might perhaps be called the hallucination of an idiot.  Edward himself, however, was as firmly convinced as the rector had been of the truth of the man’s story, and paced backward and forward the solitary compartment as the train wound through the dark heathery plains, the mazy woods, and moaning coppices, as resolved as ever to pounce on Manston, and charge him with the crime during the critical interval between the reception of the telegram and the hour at which Owen’s train would arrive—­trusting to circumstances for what he should say and do afterwards, but making up his mind to be a ready second to Owen in any emergency that might arise.

At thirty-three minutes past seven he stood on the platform of the station at Southampton—­a clear hour before the train containing Owen could possibly arrive.

Making a few inquiries here, but too impatient to pursue his investigation carefully and inductively, he went into the town.

At the expiration of another half-hour he had visited seven hotels and inns, large and small, asking the same questions at each, and always receiving the same reply—­nobody of that name, or answering to that description, had been there.  A boy from the telegraph-office had called, asking for the same persons, if they recollected rightly.

He reflected awhile, struck again by a painful thought that they might possibly have decided to cross the Channel by the night-boat.  Then he hastened off to another quarter of the town to pursue his inquiries among hotels of the more old-fashioned and quiet class.  His stained and weary appearance obtained for him but a modicum of civility, wherever he went, which made his task yet more difficult.  He called at three several houses in this neighbourhood, with the same result as before.  He entered the door of the fourth house whilst the clock of the nearest church was striking eight.

’Have a tall gentleman named Manston, and a young wife arrived here this evening?’ he asked again, in words which had grown odd to his ears from very familiarity.

‘A new-married couple, did you say?’

‘They are, though I didn’t say so.’

‘They have taken a sitting-room and bedroom, number thirteen.’

‘Are they indoors?’

‘I don’t know.  Eliza!’

‘Yes, m’m.’

‘See if number thirteen is in—­that gentleman and his wife.’

‘Yes, m’m.’