"I suppose not, sir."
"You were well aware at the time that you were committing bigamy?"
"Sir!"
"You knew, I say, that you were committing bigamy; that the child whom you were professing to marry would not become your wife through that ceremony. I say that you knew all this at the time? Come, Mr. Mollett, answer me, if you do not wish me to have you dragged out of this by a policeman and taken at once before a magistrate."
"Oh, sir! be merciful to us; pray be merciful to us," said Mrs. Mollett, holding up her apron to her eyes.
"Father, why don't you speak out plainly to the gentleman? He will forgive you, if you do that."
"Am I to criminate myself, sir?" said Mr. Mollett, still in the humblest voice in the world, and hardly above his breath.
After all, this fox had still some running left in him, Mr. Prendergast thought to himself. He was not even yet so thoroughly beaten but what he had a dodge or two remaining at his service. "Am I to criminate myself, sir?" he asked, as innocently as a child might ask whether or no she were to stand longer in the corner.
"You may do as you like about that, Mr. Mollett," said the lawyer; "I am neither a magistrate nor a policeman; and at the present moment I am not acting even as a lawyer. I am the friend of a family whom you have misused and defrauded most outrageously. You have killed the father of that family—"
"Oh, gracious!" said Mrs. Mollett.