The Rev. George covered his face with his handkerchief and sobbed.
“Come, shut up, old fellow; and dont make an ass of yourself,” said Marmaduke. “What are you going to do, Conolly?”
“I must simply divorce her.”
“Go for heavy damages, Conolly. Knock a few thousand out of him, just to punish him.”
“He could easily afford it. Besides, why should I punish him?”
“My dear friend,” cried the clergyman, “you must not dream of a divorce. I implore you to abandon such an idea. Consider the disgrace, the impiety! The publicity would kill my father.”
Conolly shook his head.
“There is no such thing as divorce known to the Church. ‘What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’”
“She had no right to bolt,” said Marmaduke. “Thats certain.”
“I was married by a registrar,” said Conolly; “and as there is no such thing as civil marriage known to the Church, our union, from the ecclesiastical point of view, has no existence. We were not joined by God, in fact, in your sense. To deny her the opportunity of remarrying would be to compel her to live as an adulteress in the eye of the law, which, by the bye, would make me the father of Douglas’s children. I cannot, merely because your people are afraid of scandal, take such a revenge on Marian as to refuse her the freedom she has sacrificed so much for. After all, since our marriage has proved a childless one, the only reason for our submitting to be handcuffed to one another, now that our hearts are no longer in the arrangement, is gone.”