“You offered to make her your wife, Sir!” cried Cane, in astonishment.
“What so surprises you in that?” said Harry, hastily. “Except it be,” added he, after a moment, “my presumption in aspiring to one so far superior to me.”
“I wish you would speak to Mrs. Cane, Mr. Luttrell. I really am very anxious you would speak to her.”
“I guess your meaning—at least, I suspect I do. You intend that your wife should tell me that scandal about the secret marriage, that dark story of her departure from Arran, and her repentant return to it; but I know it all, every word of it, already.”
“And from whom?”
“From herself—from her own lips; confirmed, if I wanted confirmation, by other testimony.”
“I think she did well to tell you,” said Cane, in a half uncertain tone.
“Of course she did right. It was for me to vindicate her, if she had been wronged, and I would have done so, too, if the law had not been before me. You know that the scoundrel is sentenced to the galleys?”
Cane did not know it, and heard the story with astonishment, and so much of what indicated curiosity, that Harry repeated all Kate had told him from the beginning to the end.
“Would you do me the great favour to repeat this to my wife? She is sincerely attached to Miss Luttrell, and this narrative will give her unspeakable pleasure.”