"As Mrs. Scarborough, no doubt. But we had been very little in society, and the world at large seemed willing to believe almost anything of me that was wrong. However, there's the Rummelsburg marriage, and if you send to Rummelsburg you'll find that it's all right,—a little white church up a corner, with a crooked spire. The old clergyman is, no doubt, dead, but I should imagine that they would keep their registers." Then he explained how he had travelled about the world with the two sets of certificates, and had made the second public when his object had been to convert Augustus into his eldest son. Many people then had been found who had remembered something of the marriage at Nice, and remembered to have remembered something at the time of having been in possession of some secret as to the lady. But Rummelsburg had been kept quite in the dark. Now it was necessary that a strong light should be thrown on the absolute legality of the Rummelsburg marriage.
He declared that he had more than once made up his mind to destroy those Rummelsburg documents, but had always been deterred by the reflection that, when they were once gone, they could not be brought back again. "I had always intended," he had said, "to burn the papers the last thing before my death. But as I learned Augustus's character, I made quite certain by causing them to be sealed up in a parcel addressed to him, so that if I had died by accident they might have fallen into proper hands. But I see now the wickedness of my project, and, therefore, I give them over to Mr. Grey." So saying he tendered the parcel to the attorney.
Mr. Grey, of course, refused to take, or even to touch, the Rummelsburg parcel. He then prepared to leave the room, declaring it would be his duty to act on the part of Augustus, should Augustus be pleased to accept his services. But Mr. Scarborough, almost with tears, implored him to change his purpose. "Why should you set two brothers by the ears?" At this Mr. Grey only shook his head incredulously. "And why ruin the property without an object?"
"The property will come to ruin."
"Not if you will take the matter up in the proper spirit. But if you determine to drive one brother to hostility against the other, and promote unnecessary litigation, of course the lawyers will get it all." Then Mr. Grey left the room, boiling with anger in that he, with his legal knowledge and determination to do right, had been so utterly thrown aside; while Mr. Scarborough sank exhausted by the effort he had gone through.
CHAPTER LV.
MR. GREY'S REMORSE.
Mr. Grey's feeling, as he returned home, was chiefly one of self-reproach; so that, though he persisted in not believing the story which had been told to him, he did, in truth, believe it. He believed, at any rate, in Mr. Scarborough. Mr. Scarborough had determined that the property should go hither and thither according to his will, without reference to the established laws of the land, and had carried, and would carry his purpose. His object had been to save his estate from the hands of those harpies, the money-lenders; and as far as he was concerned he would have saved it.
He had, in fact, forced the money-lenders to lend their money without interest and without security, and then to consent to accept their principal when it was offered to them. No one could say but that the deed when done was a good deed. But this man in doing it had driven his coach and horses through all the laws, which were to Mr. Grey as Holy Writ; and, in thus driving his coach and horses, he had forced Mr. Grey to sit upon the box and hold the reins. Mr. Grey had thought himself to be a clever man,—at least a well-instructed man; but Mr. Scarborough had turned him round his finger, this way and that way, just as he had pleased.