He finished his breakfast in a very thoughtful mood, and by the end of it had come to a definite resolve. These two must get married with as little delay as possible. There could be no better means for disposing once and for all of Mr Winsom Wyllie and his unwelcome attentions. He himself might discover and expose the scoundrel; to provide Vera with a legitimate protector was to render him innocuous for ever more. Yes, it must be done and at once; there was no reason in the world for delaying a consummation so sensible and so happy. Before starting for the office Gilead took up the paper yet once more to study the advertisement, and this time with a fine ironic laughter. He recalled very well, he believed, certain descriptive epithets applied by the young lady to her persecutor. He had been “unusual and sinister”; he had been “endowed with a demoniac energy”; he had been “a dangerous man,” affecting piratic emblems. And here he was after all grown fat, confessed of middle age, and recommended by his doctor to chop wood in order to reduce his bulk! O, to what base passes would not constitution bring us! Picturesqueness, romance, attractiveness, even, of the diabolic cast--we were each one of us in such matters at the mercy of our stomachs. No doubt this same spider, indolently watchful in his web, had waxed plump and round through too much feeding and too little exercise. Agreeable to his steadfast purpose, Gilead found both the secretary and amanuensis in his room when he reached the Agency. Somewhat high-strung as he was and sensitive to impressions, he seemed conscious of an atmosphere as it were of strain, expectancy, anxiety--he knew not what to call it, but attributed it, whatever it was, to his own suppressed emotions. However, sitting down with the best air of detachment he could muster, he called upon Nestle for his report. “I have run down the column, sir,” answered the secretary. “There is nothing whatever in it to detain or interest you.” Did his own feelings mislead him, or was there a hint of tremor in the young man’s voice, a flush of increased colour on his cheek, which belied the easy assurance of his words? He decided, at once and definitely, that the suspicion was born of nothing but his own excited fancy. For the rest he was reassured to find that Miss Halifax herself had evidently passed by the advertisement unnoticing. Had her eyes encountered it, all his chivalrous intent would have been balked at the outset.