Gilbert walked from Lidford to Heatherly by that romantic woodland path by which he had gone with Marian and her uncle on the bright September afternoon when he first saw Sir David’s house.  The solitary walk awakened very bitter thoughts; the memory of those hopes which had then made the sunshine of his life, and without which existence seemed a weary purposeless journey across a desert land.

Sir David was at home, the woman at the lodge told him; and he went on to the house, and rang a great clanging bell, which made an alarming clamour in the utter stillness of the place.

A gray-haired old servant answered the summons, and ushered Gilbert into the state drawing-room, an apartment with a lofty arched roof, eight long windows, and a generally ecclesiastical aspect, which was more suggestive of solemn grandeur than of domestic comfort.

Here Gilbert waited for about ten minutes, at the end of which time the man returned, to request that he would be so kind as to go to Sir David’s study.  His master was something of an invalid, the man told Gilbert.

They went through the billiard-room to a very snug little apartment, with dark-panelled walls and one large window opening upon a rose-garden on the southern side of the house.  There was a ponderous carved-oak bookcase on one side of the room; on all the others the paraphernalia of sporting—­gunnery and fishing-tackle, small-swords, whips, and boxing-gloves—­artistically arranged against the panelling; and over the mantelpiece an elaborate collection of meerschaum pipes.  Through a half-open door Gilbert caught a glimpse of a comfortable bedchamber leading out of this room.

Sir David was sitting on a low easy-chair near the window, with one leg supported on a luxuriously-cushioned rest, invented for the relief of gouty subjects.  Although not yet forty, the baronet was a chronic sufferer from this complaint.

“My dear Mr. Fenton, how good of you to come to me!” he exclaimed, shaking hands very cordially with Gilbert.  “Here I am, laid by the heels in this dreary old place, and quite alone.  You can’t imagine what a treat it is to see a friendly intelligent face from the outer world.”

“The purpose of my visit is such a purely selfish one, that I am really ashamed to receive such a kindly greeting, Sir David.  If I had known you were here and an invalid, I should have gladly come to see you; but I didn’t know it.  I have been at Lidford on a matter of business for the last two days; and I came here on the hazard of finding you, and with a faint hope that you might be able to give me some help in an affair which is supremely important to me.”

Sir David Forster looked at Gilbert Fenton curiously for a moment, and then took up an empty meerschaum that lay upon a little table near him, and began to fill it with a thoughtful air.  Gilbert had dropped into an arm-chair on the opposite side of the open window, and was watching the baronet’s face, puzzled a little by that curious transient expression which had just flitted across it.