That morning Cassy had been to an agent, a saponacious person with a fabulous nose. At the moment the nose was before her. She was wondering whether it would scent out for her an engagement.
"However," Dunwoodie, twisting the edge of his towel, continued, "various amendments were afterward adopted and certain sections repealed. Among the latter was the one containing the prohibition which I have cited. In my opinion, it was not the intention of the legislature to repeal it. Yet, however that may be, repealed it was. Since then, or, more exactly, a few weeks ago, the enactments regarding the manner in which marriage must be solemnised were held to be not mandatory but directory, the result being that the law originally prevailing has now come again into operation, common-law marriages are as valid as before and——"
Here Dunwoodie flaunted the towel.
"And you are Mrs. Paliser."
Of the entire exposition, Cassy heard but that. It ousted the agent and his fabulous nose. She bristled.
"I can't be. I don't want to be. You don't seem to see that the clergyman was not a clergyman at all. He was one of the help there. I thought I told you. Why, there was not even a license! That man said he had one. It was only another of the whimsicalities that took me in."
Dunwoodie repocketing the towel, showed his yellow teeth. "A young gentlewoman who dreams in Latin, and who was brought up on the Revised Statutes, must be familiar with Byron. 'Men were deceivers ever.' Not long ago, a Lovelace whose history is given in the New York Reports conducted himself in a manner that would be precisely analogous to that of your late husband, were it not that, instead of dying, he did what was less judicious, he married again—and was sent up for bigamy. He too had omitted to secure a license. He also entertained a lady with a fancy-ball. None the less, the Supreme Court decided that he had legally tied the matrimonial noose about him and that decision the Court of Appeals affirmed."
Cassy shook her pretty self. "Well, even so, I don't see what difference it makes, now at any rate. He is dead and that is the end of it."
"Hum! Not entirely. As widow you are entitled to a share in such property as your late husband possessed. How much, or how little, he did possess I cannot say. But I assume that such share of it as may accrue, will be—ha!—adequate for you."
"But he hadn't anything. He told me so."