‘I thank you, madam, there is no occasion to trouble you with any message. I am staying with a friend in the village, and shall call directly I hear Mr. Treverton has returned.’ ‘A very superior man,’ remarked the Vicar, when the stranger had raised his hat and walked on briskly enough to be speedily out of earshot. ‘The owner of some of those smart new shops in Beechampton High Street, no doubt. Odd that I should never have seen him before. I thought I knew every one in the town.’ It was a small thing, proving the nervous state into which Laura had been thrown by the troubles of the last few days--even the appearance of this courteous stranger discomposed her, and seemed a presage of evil. CHAPTER XXXVIII. CELIA’S LOVERS. The day after Mr. Clare’s visit brought Laura the expected letter from her husband, a long letter telling her his adventures at Auray. ‘So you see, dearest,’ he wrote, after he had related all that Father le Mescam had told him, ‘come what may, our position as regards my cousin Jasper’s estate is secure. Malice cannot touch us there. From the hour I knelt beside you before the altar in Hazlehurst Church, I have been your husband. That unhappy Frenchwoman was never legally my wife. Whether she wilfully deceived me, or whether she had reasons of her own for supposing Jean Kergariou to be dead, I know not. It is quite possible that she honestly believed herself to be a widow. She might have heard that Kergariou had been lost at sea. Shipwreck and death are too common among those Breton sailors who go to the North Seas. The little seaports in Brittany are populated with widows and orphans. I am quite willing to believe that poor Zaïre thought herself free to marry. This would account for her terrible agitation when she recognised her husband’s body in the Morgue. And now, dear love, I shall but stay in Paris long enough to procure all documents necessary to prove Jean Kergariou’s death; and then I shall hasten home to comfort my sweet wife, and to face any new trouble that may arise from Edward Clare’s enmity. I feel that it is he only whom we have to fear in the future; and it will go hard if I am not equal to the struggle with so despicable a foe. The omnibus is waiting to take us to the station. God bless you, love, and reward you for your generous devotion to your unworthy husband,--JOHN TREVERTON.’ This letter brought unspeakable comfort to Laura’s mind. The knowledge that her first marriage was valid was much. It was still more to know that her husband was exempted from the charge of having possessed himself of his cousin’s estate by treachery and fraud. The moral wrong in his conduct was not lessened; but he had no longer to fear the disgrace which must have attached to his resignation of the estate.