Kent-Lauriston took her extended hand.
"Thank you," he said heartily. "Stanley's a good fellow; too good and too unsophisticated for the people he's thrown with, and I'm going to save him from himself if I can, both now and in the future."
She looked up at him with a wistful light in her eyes, saying:
"Perhaps you'll be wishing to save him from me—who've already one husband too many."
"I don't know," replied Kent-Lauriston, with an English bluntness, of which he was not often culpable.
She laughed merrily, answering:
"I hope you'll do so, if ever I give you cause."
"Madame," he returned, "what can I do? You've disarmed me, even before the first skirmish."
The feelings of Stanley on looking at the marriage register were difficult to describe. In the first shock of the discovery his brain whirled. The mystery had become a maze, and he felt the imperative need of a solution of the subject to steady his mind. Accordingly, he had that evening a fixed purpose in view, which dominated all matters of the moment; and though at dinner he talked about something, he knew not what, during the greater part of the meal his eyes and thoughts were almost continually on the amiable blundering, little old pastor, whom he had marked out as his prey. When the ladies left the table, and the men adjourned to the smoking-room, he never lost sight of him; but the dominie, as if warned by some instinct, contrived to slip out of the Secretary's grasp, to elude him in corners, and, smiling, vanquish him in every attempt at an interview. At last, however, the opportunity came—a move was made to the drawing-room. In a fatal moment, the parson lingered for one last whiff of his half-smoked and regretfully relinquished cigar, and the Secretary saw, with a sigh of relief, the last coat-tail vanish through the door, which he softly closed.