And yet, it was scarcely believable.
Where now was Lionel to look for him? He could not, for Sibylla's sake,
make inquiries in the village in secret or openly; he could not go to
the inhabitants and ask--have you seen Frederick Massingbird? or say to
each individual, I must send a police officer to search your house, for
I suspect Frederick Massingbird is somewhere concealed, and I want to
find him. For _her_ sake he could not so much as breathe the name, in
connection with his being alive.
Given that it was Frederick Massingbird, what could possibly prevent his
making himself known? As he dwelt upon this problem, trying to solve it,
the idea taken up by Lucy Tempest--that the man under the tree was
watching for an opportunity to harm him--came into his mind. _That_,
surely, could not be the solution! If he had taken Frederick
Massingbird's wife to be his wife, he had done it in all innocence.
Lionel spurned the notion as a preposterous one; nevertheless, a
remembrance crossed him of the old days when the popular belief at
Verner's Pride had been, that the younger of the Massingbirds was of a
remarkably secretive and also of a revengeful nature.
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