“Chance, I suppose; but he’s a deep one.  If you’d happened to come in when he was here, I daresay he’d have contrived to slip away somehow without your seeing him.”

“When did he come here last?” asked Gilbert.

“About a fortnight ago.  He came with Mr. Medler, the lawyer, who introduced him formally as my master’s son; and they took possession of the place between them for Mrs. Holbrook, making an arrangement with me to carry on the business, and making precious hard terms too.”

“Have you seen Mrs. Holbrook since that morning when she left London for Hampshire, immediately after her grandfather’s death?”

“Never set eyes on her since then; but she’s in London, they told me, living with her father.  She came up to claim the property.  I say, the husband must be rather a curious party, mustn’t he, to stand that kind of thing, and part company with her just when she’s come into a fortune?”

“Have you any notion where Mrs. Holbrook or her father is to be found?  I should be glad to make you a handsome present if you could enlighten me upon that point.”

“I wish I could, sir.  No, I haven’t the least idea where the gentleman hangs out.  Oysters ain’t closer than that party.  I thought he’d get his paw upon his father’s money, somehow, when I used to see him hanging about this place.  But I don’t believe the old man ever meant him to have a sixpence of it.”

There was very little satisfaction, to be obtained from Mr. Tulliver; and except as to the one fact of Percival Nowell’s return, Gilbert left Queen Anne’s Court little wiser than when he entered it.

Brooding upon the revelations of that day as he walked slowly westward, he began to think that Percival and Mr. Medler had been in league from the time of the prodigal son’s return, and that his own exclusion from the will as executor, and the substitution of the lawyer’s name, had been brought about for no honourable purpose.  What would a weak inexperienced woman be between two such men? or what power could Marian have, once under her father’s influence, to resist his will?  How she had fallen under that influence so completely as to leave her husband and her quiet country home, without a word of explanation, was a difficult question to answer; and Gilbert Fenton meditated upon it with a troubled mind.

He walked westward, indifferent where he went in the perplexity of his thoughts, anxious to walk off a little of his excitement if he could, and to return to his sick charge in the temple in a calmer frame of mind.  It was something gained, at the worst, to be able to return to John Saltram’s bedside freed from that hideous suspicion which had tormented him of late.

Walking thus, he found himself, towards the close of the brief winter day, at the Marble Arch.  He went through the gate into the empty Park, and was crossing the broad road near the entrance, when an open carriage passed close beside him, and a woman’s voice called to the coachman to stop.