“Ruin and disgrace!” exclaimed Bill, in a tone of deep dejection and concern. “Your words drive me mad. I wish—I—I can’t express myself. Hang it all, I have been a fool; but, never fear, I’ll make it all right, if it costs me my life.”
“How can you possibly do that?” said Mrs. Bourne. “The mischief’s done. You have been most rash and imprudent. Oh, that I could see my way out of this difficulty!”
“I confess I have been imprudent, but what of that? It was not done wilfully. Who could or would have supposed for one moment the doctor’s object in questioning me so closely about my private affairs?”
“He seldom takes the trouble to question people closely upon any subject without a special reason. He has the wiles of the serpent, the cunning of the fox. Oh, he had an object in so kindly becoming your patron; he has some well-devised scheme in his head—some plot to be rid of me.”
“I would not stay with such a wretch if I were you,” exclaimed Bill.
“I would leave him to-morrow—be too glad to leave him—upon certain conditions. I cannot consent to go out of this house penniless; but enough of this. As I before observed, the mischief’s done, the train is formed, and it cannot be undone. I do not blame you, William Rawton. You had no desire to injure me, nevertheless I cannot conceal from myself that your presence here is likely to prove fatal to me.”
“Fatal to you—how so?”
“Oh, do not torment me with questions,” cried Mrs. Bourne. “The mischief’s done. This man—this Dr. Bourne, my husband—if he could by any means in his power find out that I had been married years and years ago, would not scruple to put the machinery of the law to work to ruin and crush me. He would be but too glad of the chance of prosecuting me for bigamy.”
“Bigamy—he can’t do anything of the sort. In the first place, you were what the law calls an infant at the time; and, in the second place, there was an inquest on the body of a man who was found drowned in a millstream, and whose body was identified as that of William Rawton, or supposed to be him.”
“Ah! supposed won’t do.”