What Jack confessed his inability to account for was the flight of the man across the Atlantic, when he had such good prospects opening before him as the husband of Priscilla, the daughter of that prosperous agriculturist, Mr. Wadhurst. To be sure, it was just on this point that he had allowed his imagination some play when he had that conversation with Marcus Blaydon. He had suggested that the fellow had gone across the Atlantic in order to be with some woman whom he had known before; but Jack was scarcely inclined to give the man credit for a disinterested attachment such as this, when he had such good prospects at home as the lawful husband of a beautiful young woman, whose society (post-nuptial) he had had but a very restricted opportunity of enjoying. That was a matter which, he saw, required some explanation; but he felt sure that the explanation would come in good time; and it would be his, Jack Wingfield’s, aim to expedite its arrival; and he knew that the success of the nullity suit depended on his finding out all about that unaccountable attachment which had forced a mercenary trickster into an unaccountable position. But here were the newspapers at last containing the information that Marcus Blaydon, who had been placed in the early part of the summer in the forefront of the rank of maritime heroes--by far the most picturesque of all heroic phalanxes--had returned to England, none the less a hero because he had by a miracle (described in detail) escaped the consequences of his heroism; and engaged--also without prejudice to the claims made on his behalf when his name was last before the eyes of the public--in the discharge of a duty so painful as to cause him to feel that it would have been better if he had perished among the rocks where he had lain insensible for many hours after doing his best to rescue his messmates from a watery grave, than to have survived that terrible night. That is what the announcements in some of the newspapers came to. But they had the tone of the preliminary announcements of a matter which is supposed to contain certain elements of interest to the public later on, if the public will only have the kindness to keep an eye upon the papers. Some of the phrases--including that important one about the “watery grave,” appeared in all the accounts of the matter; but in a few cases the news did not occupy a greater space than an ordinary paragraph, while in others the attention of casual readers was drawn to it by the adventitious aid of some startling headlines--two of these introducing the name of Enoch Arden. Not once, however, in any newspaper, was the name of Mr. Wingfield introduced. “They read like a rangefinder,” remarked Mr. Wingfield, when he had gone through every line of the paragraphs. “That is what the fellow is doing--he is trying to find out our position.”