"How can I be sure?" I asked fretfully, for grief as often makes men fretful as illness. "I did not ask for their marriage-certificate." "Well, well! I will go," he answered. I awaited his return with impatience. With this doubt insinuated by Jack, it began to seem almost incredible that Olivia's exquisitely healthy frame should have succumbed suddenly under a malady to which she had no predisposition whatever. Moreover, her original soundness of constitution had been strengthened by ten months' residence in the pure, bracing air of Sark. Yet what was I to think in face of those undated documents, and of her own short letter to her husband? The one I knew was genuine; why should I suppose the others to be forged? And if forgeries, who had been guilty of such a cruel and crafty artifice, and for what purpose? I had not found any satisfactory answer to these queries before Jack returned, his face kindled with excitement. He caught my hand, and grasped it heartily. "I no more believe she is dead than I am," were his first words. "You recollect me telling you of a drunken brawl in a street off the Strand, where a fellow, as drunk as a lord, was for claiming a pretty girl as his wife; only I had followed her out of Ridley's agency-office, and was just in time to protect her from him--a girl I could have fallen in love with myself. You recollect?" "Yes, yes," I said, almost breathless. "He was the man, and Olivia was the girl!" exclaimed Jack. "No!" I cried. "Yes!" continued Jack, with an affectionate lunge at me; "at any rate I can swear he is the man; and I would bet a thousand to one that the girl was Olivia." "But when was it?" I asked. "Since he married again," he answered; "they were married on the 2d of October, and this was early in November. I had gone to Ridley's after a place for a poor fellow as an assistant to a druggist; and I saw the girl distinctly. She gave the name of Ellen Martineau. Those letters about her death are all forgeries." "Olivia's is not," I said; "I know her handwriting too well." "Well, then," observed Jack, "there is only one explanation. She has sent them herself to throw Foster off the scent; she thinks she will be safe if he believes her dead." "No," I answered, hotly, "she would never have done such a thing as that." "Who else is benefited by it?" he asked, gravely. "It does not put Foster into possession of any of her property; or that would have been a motive for him to do it. But he gains nothing by it; and he is so convinced of her death that he has married a second wife."