Astley Fenton, the local manager.

The letter was a very sensible one, calculated to arouse a careless man
from a false sense of security. Gilbert was so much disturbed by it, that
he determined upon going back to London by the earliest fast train next
morning. It was cutting short his holiday only by a few days. He had
meant to return at the beginning of the following week, and he felt that
he had already some reason to reproach himself for his neglect of
business.

He left Lidford happy in the thought that Captain Sedgewick and Marian
were to come to London in October. The period of separation would be
something less than a month. And after that? Well, he would of course
spend Christmas at Lidford; and he fancied how the holly and mistletoe,
the church-decorations and carol-singing, and all the stereotyped
genialities of the season,--things that had seemed trite and dreary to
him since the days of his boyhood,--would have a new significance and
beauty for him when he and Marian kept the sacred festival together. And
then how quickly would begin the new year, the year whose spring-tide
would see them man and wife! Perhaps there is no period of this mortal
life so truly happy as that in which all our thoughts are occupied in
looking forward to some great joy to come. Whether the joy, when it does
come, is ever so unqualified a delight as it seemed in the distance, or
whether it ever comes at all, are questions which we have all solved for
ourselves somehow or other. To Gilbert Fenton these day-dreams were
bright and new, and he was troubled by no fear of their not being
realized.

He went at his business with considerable ardour, and made a careful and
detailed investigation of all affairs connected with their Melbourne