'He's dead!' she murmured.

'Who?'

'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she said,
a sob hanging heavy in her voice.

'O, all right.'

'Do you mind my refusing? I will tell you some day.'

'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'

He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when he
had got down to his factory in the city the subject came into Marchmill's
head again.

He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the house
they had occupied at Solentsea. Having seen the volume of poems in his
wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversation
about Trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself;
'Why of course it's he! How the devil did she get to know him? What sly
animals women are!'

Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
affairs. By this time Ella at home had come to a determination. Mrs.
Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the day
of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wish
to know where they were laying him took possession of the sympathetic