I am sure she would not have gone beyond the garden and the
meadow for pleasure alone. She never had been outside the gate without
me, except when she went to meet her husband."
"Strange!" muttered Gilbert.
He was wondering about that letter: what could have been the lure which
had beguiled Marian away from the house that day; what except a letter
from her husband? It seemed hardly probable that she would have gone to
meet any one but him, or that any one else would have appointed a meeting
on the river-bank. The fact that she had gone out at an earlier hour than
the time at which she had been in the habit of meeting her husband when
he came from the Malsham station, went some way to prove that the letter
had influenced her movements. Gilbert thought of the fortune which had
been left to Marian, and which gave her existence a new value, perhaps
exposed her to new dangers. Her husband's interests were involved in her
life; her death, should she die childless, must needs deprive him of all
advantage from Jacob Nowell's wealth. The only person to profit from such
an event would be Percival Nowell; but he was far away, Gilbert believed,
and completely ignorant of his reversionary interest in his father's
property. There was Medler the attorney, a man whom Gilbert had
distrusted from the first.
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