"All dead!"
The lawyer rubbed his hands with still greater energy.
"Very good, very good indeed; nothing could be better! Just tell me, could you prove the thing yourselves?"
"Prove what?" said Mrs. Warren, half in terror, while the prisoner remained motionless, paralyzed, as it seemed, by the weakness of his wife.
"Prove?—why, that you were ever married. The truth is, madam, you could not have been married to the prisoner—never where the thing is impossible. It spoils you for a witness—do you understand?"
"No," said the old woman—"no, how should I? What does it mean?"
"Mean?—you are not his wife!"
"Not his wife—not his wife! Why, didn't I tell you we had lived together above forty years?"
"Certainly; no objection to that, a beautiful reproof to the slander that there is no constancy in woman. Still you are not his wife—remember that!"
"But I am his wife. Look up, husband, and tell him if I am not your own lawfully married wife."