“Father!” he said, at last, breaking the terrible silence which had fallen between them. “What does this villain mean when he says, ‘Remember by the time you get this you will have been married two whole days...’? Has he given it me two days sooner than he meant to?”
“Oh no—oh no. This would make it just about the time,” muttered Sir Francis, drearily.
“But how do you make that out? How can I have been married two whole days when I was only married this morning?”
The change in Sir Francis’s demeanour was in the last degree startling.
“What?” he almost shrieked. “What’s that you say, Phil? You were only married this morning?”
“Of course I was. I left Lau—I left her—almost at the church door.” And then he went on to detail Mrs Daventer’s inexorable insistence upon his breaking the news to his father at once.
“But the telegram, Phil? What of the telegram?” cried Sir Francis, wildly. “Look—look at the date. The 22nd—that was yesterday. And it says ‘this morning.’”
Philip had caught up the slip of paper and was staring at it with a puzzled look. “It’s as you say, father,” he said. “The office stamp does give the 22nd. Well, it is a mistake, and Fordham has been so far sold, for the most awful side of his ghastly, diabolical plot has been spared me. What an infernal fiend, in the literal sense of the word, the man must be!”
“Oh, thank God! thank God?” ejaculated poor Sir Francis, falling back in his chair. “So you parted at the church door. Oh, thank God! that unutterable horror is spared us. But the rest. My poor boy—my poor boy! You can never see them again—it would be too fearful.”
“Once, father—once I must,” was the reply, accompanied by a hard-set frown. “Once—but once only.”