“Well, in a manner of speaking we were.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, old man, you’re having a bit of game with me to-day.”
“No, I aint—it’s all fair and square what I’ve been a telling yer. It’s as right as the mail—aint a bit of falsehood about it—not a morsel. I tell ye I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head, and if needs be, if needs be, I’d lay down my life for her. There, I’ve said it out—I mean it!”
“It is a most extraordinary thing that you should never have told me anything about your having a wife before,” cried Peace—“a most extraordinary circumstance.”
“I never told anyone, ’cos why, it’s so many years ago that I had really forgotten all about Hester Teige, as she was called.”
“That was her maiden name, then?”
“Yes, Hester Teige. She had changed it three or four times, I believe, before she became Mrs. Bourne.”
“But how about the bit of a mess you were likely to get into?”
“You shall hear.”
Bill Rawton at this point proceeded to give Peace a succinct detail of all the particulars connected with his visit to Bourne’s house, with which the reader is already acquainted.