"Most certainly I was," she said indignantly.
"Well, my dear lady," Melville said, raising his brows so that the eye-glass dropped from his eye into his hand outstretched to catch it, "I don't care as a rule for calling a spade a spade, but it's the simple fact that you have committed bigamy."
If Melville expected his hostess to recoil with the dismay not unnatural in a criminal suddenly unmasked, he was disappointed. For a moment Mrs. Sinclair looked at him in blank astonishment, colouring slightly, it is true, but from indignation, not from shame, and when she spoke again it was with the same obvious ignorance of guilt that she had made the statement which so much surprised Melville.
"Don't be preposterous," she remarked at length. "Bigamy? Absurd!"
"It's anything but absurd," Melville retorted. "It's an uncommonly serious matter."
"But I had left Sir Geoffrey ages before," Mrs. Sinclair argued, "and hadn't heard of him or from him for years and years. I didn't even know he was alive."
"Did you try to find out?" Melville asked curtly.
"Yes," said Mrs. Sinclair; "but I didn't succeed, and I never connected my husband with the baronet in possession of Fairbridge. Anyhow, I had heard nothing of him for ages, and everybody knows that if you lose sight of your husband or your wife for seven years, you can marry again."
Melville considered. Evidently Mrs. Sinclair was an ignorant sort of woman, and, as a rule, it is only ignorant people who can be influenced by fear. At any rate, he could try to frighten her into telling him the facts, and it would be his own fault only if he could not turn them to his own advantage. His part as accessory after the fact could be explained easily enough if the occasion should ever arise.
"I know there are people who labour under that delusion," he said, "but it is a delusion. Marriage once contracted is binding until it is dissolved by death or decree, and while Sir Geoffrey could, doubtless, get a decree now in the Divorce Court, it could only be after your conviction at the Old Bailey."