"Whose? Mr. Jones'?"
"Paliser's, my dear young lady. However fictitious the ceremony, you consented to be Paliser's wife."
"What if I did? It has nothing to do with it now."
"Just a little, perhaps. Did you hear Jones say that he would renew his acquaintance with Swinburne?"
"From the way he talks, one might think he knew him by heart."
"Yaas, he is very objectionable. But you are referring to the poet. He was referring to the jurist. The jurist wrote a very fine book. Let me quote a passage from it. 'It is the present and perfect consent the which alone maketh matrimony, without either solemnisation or'—here, Dunwoodie, skipping the frank old English, substituted—'or anything else, for neither the one nor the other is the essence of matrimony, but consent only. Consensus non concubitus facit matrimoniam.' Hum! Ha! In other words, whether marriage is or is not contracted in facie ecclesiæ, it is consent alone that constitutes its validity. You understand Latin?"
Cassy laughed. "I dream in it."
Dunwoodie laughed too. "Pleasant dreams to you always. But what I have quoted was the common law, and so remained until altered by the Revised Statutes, with which no doubt you are equally familiar."
Cassy smoothed her frock. "I was brought up on them."
"I don't need to tell you then that when adopted here they provided that marriage should be a civil contract. In so providing, they merely reaffirmed the existing common law. Subsequently, the law was changed. The legislature enacted that a marriage must be solemnised by certain persons—ecclesiastic, judicial or municipal—or else, that it should be entered into by written contract, which contract was to be filed in the office of the town clerk. Coincidentally the legislature prohibited any marriage contracted otherwise than in the manner then prescribed."