These ladies would have retired on Gilbert’s entrance, but he begged them to remain; and after a good deal of polite hesitation they consented to do so, Mrs. Stoneham resuming her seat before the tea-tray, and Miss Stoneham retiring to a little table by the window, where she was engaged in trimming a bonnet.

“I want to know all about this marriage, Mr. Stoneham,” Gilbert began, when he had seated himself in a shining mahogany arm-chair by the empty fire-place.  “First and foremost, I want you to tell me where Mr. and Mrs. Holbrook are now living.”

The parish-clerk shook his head with a stately slowness.

“Not to be done, sir,” he said:  “when Mr. and Mrs. Holbrook left here they went the Lord knows where.  They went away the very day they were married.  There was a fly waiting for them at the church-door, with their luggage upon it, when the ceremony was over, ready to drive them to Grangewick station.  I saw them get into it and drive away; and that’s every mortal thing that I know as to what became of them after they were married in yonder church.”

“You don’t know who this Mr. Holbrook is?”

“No more than the babe unborn, sir.  He was a stranger in this place, was only here long enough to get the license for his marriage.  I should take him to be a gentleman; but he wasn’t a pleasant person to speak to—­rather stand-off-ish in his manners.  He wasn’t the sort of man I should have chosen if I’d been a pretty young woman like Miss Nowell; but there’s no accounting for taste, and she seemed uncommonly fond of him.  I never saw any one more agitated than she was when they were married.  She was crying in a quiet way all through the service, and when it was over she fainted dead-off.  I daresay it did seem hard to her to be married like that, without so much as a friend to give her away.  She was in mourning, too, deep mourning.”

“Can you give me any description of this man—­this Mr. Holbrook?”

“Well, no, sir:  he was an ordinary kind of person to look at; might be any age between thirty and forty; not a gentleman that I should have taken a fancy to myself, as I said before; but young women are that wayward and uncertain like, there’s no knowing where to have them.”

“Was Miss Nowell long at Wygrove before her marriage?”

“About three weeks.  She lodged with Miss Long, up the town, a friend of my daughter’s.  If you’d like to ask any questions of Miss Long, our Jemima might step round there with you presently.”

“I should be very glad to do so,” Gilbert answered quickly.  He asked several more questions; but Mr. Stoneham could give him no information, except as to the bare fact of the marriage.  Gilbert knew now that the girl he had so fondly loved and so entirely trusted was utterly lost to him; that he had been jilted cruelly and heartlessly, as he could but own to himself.  Yes, she had jilted him—­had in all probability never loved him.  He blamed himself for having urged his suit too ardently, with little reference to Marian’s own feelings, with a rooted obstinate conviction that he needed only to win her in order to insure the happiness of both.