"Hunt's story. There was an English marriage as well as an Australian one. He had a wife at each side of the world! Claude made a mistake. He went to the wrong church at Chelsea—to a church by the river. He had always thought it was the parish church. It is not. St. Luke's is the parish church, and there in the book they have the marriage down in black and white. Cripps found it; but he first found it somewhere else, where he says they have the records of every marriage in the country since 1850. He would have looked there the day Claude was up, but he left it too late. He looked yesterday, and found it, sure enough, on the date Hunt gave. October 22d, 1853. And he has been to Chelsea and seen it there. So there's no mistake about it this time; and you see how we stand."
"I see. My poor boy!"
"It's Claude after all. Poor chap, he's awfully cut up. He blames himself so for the mistake between the two churches; but Cripps tells me it was the most natural mistake in the world. Chelsea Old Church—that was where Claude went. And he says he'll never forgive himself."
"But I forgive him," said Olivia, with the first sign of emotion in her voice. She was holding one of his hands; her other was in his hair. Still he stared straight in front of him.
"Of course you forgive him," he said gently. "When you come to think of it, there's nothing to forgive. Claude didn't make the facts. He only failed to discover them."
"I am glad he did fail," whispered Olivia.
"Glad? You can't be glad! Why do you say that?"
And now he turned his face to her, in his astonishment; and suddenly it was she who could not meet his gaze.
"How can you be glad?" he continued to demand.
"Because—otherwise—you would never—have—spoken——"