‘Why, pray?’

’Because he’s not buried here.  He’s not Christian-buried anywhere, as far as we know.  In short, perhaps he’s not buried at all; and between ourselves, perhaps he’s alive.’

Nicholas sank an inch shorter.  ‘Ah,’ he answered.

‘Then you don’t know the peculiar circumstances, sir?’

‘I am a stranger here—­as to late years.’

’Mr. Bellston was a traveller—­an explorer—­it was his calling; you may have heard his name as such?’

‘I remember.’  Nicholas recalled the fact that this very bent of Mr. Bellston’s was the incentive to his own roaming.

’Well, when he married he came and lived here with his wife and his wife’s father, and said he would travel no more.  But after a time he got weary of biding quiet here, and weary of her—­he was not a good husband to the young lady by any means—­and he betook himself again to his old trick of roving—­with her money.  Away he went, quite out of the realm of human foot, into the bowels of Asia, and never was heard of more.  He was murdered, it is said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ago he’s dead enough in principle, if not in corporation.  His widow lives quite humble, for between her husband and her brother she’s left in very lean pasturage.’

Nicholas went back to the Buck’s Head without hovering round her dwelling.  This then was the explanation which she had wanted to make.  Not dead, but missing.  How could he have expected that the first fair promise of happiness held out to him would remain untarnished?  She had said that she was free; and legally she was free, no doubt.  Moreover, from her tone and manner he felt himself justified in concluding that she would be willing to run the risk of a union with him, in the improbability of her husband’s existence.  Even if that husband lived, his return was not a likely event, to judge from his character.  A man who could spend her money on his own personal adventures would not be anxious to disturb her poverty after such a lapse of time.

Well, the prospect was not so unclouded as it had seemed.  But could he, even now, give up Christine?

CHAPTER VII

Two months more brought the year nearly to a close, and found Nicholas Long tenant of a spacious house in the market-town nearest to Froom-Everard.  A man of means, genial character, and a bachelor, he was an object of great interest to his neighbours, and to his neighbours’ wives and daughters.  But he took little note of this, and had made it his business to go twice a week, no matter what the weather, to the now farmhouse at Froom-Everard, a wing of which had been retained as the refuge of Christine.  He always walked, to give no trouble in putting up a horse to a housekeeper whose staff was limited.

The two had put their heads together on the situation, had gone to a solicitor, had balanced possibilities, and had resolved to make the plunge of matrimony.  ‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’ Christine had said, with some of her old audacity.