They passed in silently where the lamp light and music and merry sounds flooded the gay rooms. Guy bent forward as they closed the little glass door behind them, and caught a glimpse of the changed, wasted, melancholy old man he loved so well, leaning on the traitorous arm of a tall, straight, handsome one, who was associated with the bitterest feelings of hatred and revenge within his breast. How he longed to be away from this merry-making crowd, where he could lay his wearied head to rest, and where the mockery of life might cease to taunt him for a little while. Only one thought saved him and encouraged him through all--the thought that _she_ had not forgotten him, in spite of the base treachery practised by the man he had trusted. Through all his painful realizations, this angelic face of his beloved, soothed and comforted and cheered him until he felt a new strength in his arm and a new fire in his heart, urging him on to retributive action. Out of all that crowd of merry-makers that landed back on the Queen's Wharf, close on to midnight of that night, not one had noticed the solitary figure under the broad felt hat, though his very friends jostled and elbowed past him in the throng. Stepping ashore, he hired a carriage and drove rapidly away. He had spent an evening with all the old faces after an absence of years, and not one of his many friends and acquaintances suspected Guy Elersley any nearer than the possible distance of the unknown. CHAPTER XXXII. "Was I deceived or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" --_Milton_ "Three months! three months!" Guy said in a low, puzzled voice, as he lay wide awake on his bed, turning and twisting all the circumstances of his recent discoveries over and over in his head. "I can never stay here all that time. Besides, I have a good deal to do." He thought over it a little while longer, and then looking quite satisfied, he turned himself comfortably on the other side and went deliberately off into a peaceful sleep. Three months never appear to us to contain half of their real length when we have much to consider and much to do in a given time of that duration. One month had already elapsed, during whose flight Guy had made some important discoveries. He had traced up the bogus parsonage, and had even found, by some lucky accident, the residence of Philip Campbell, the rescuer of Fifine de Maistre. The "Lower Farms" is, of all secluded spots, about the most secluded, and people went there just as Guy did--through curiosity. It tempted Guy in his search as being the most direct route from the house where the extraordinary wedding had taken place. He had been sitting in the small public room of the village inn a few hours after his arrival, hiding his anxious face behind the folds of the country weekly newspaper, when the conversation of a group of men at the counter in the corner interested him.