"Bessie would have been much more suitable—a plain pretext; but you have no idea what complications you may be storing up for yourself by marrying a young girl—What is the sense in it?" he continued, a little excited now. "The younger and prettier she is makes her all the more unsuitable to be used merely as a tool in your game. Confound it, Michael!"
"And her game, too," his host reminded him. His eyes were flashing now, and that expression, which all his underlings knew meant he intended to have his own will at any cost, grew upon his face.
"You forget that in Scotland divorce is not an impossibility and—I am going to do it, Henry. Now, I had better write to old Fergusson, my chaplain, and tell him to be in readiness, and I suppose I ought to see my lawyers in Edinburgh, although, as there are no settlements and it is just between ourselves, perhaps it does not matter about them."
"How old is the girl?" Mr. Fordyce felt it prudent to ask. "It is a pretty serious thing you contemplate, you know."
"Oh! rot!—she is seventeen, I believe—and for that sort of a marriage and mere business arrangement, her age is no consequence."
Henry turned to the window and looked out for a moment, then he said gravely:
"Is it quite fair to her?"
Michael had gone to his writing-table, and was busily scribbling to his chaplain, but he looked over his shoulder startled, and then a gleam of blue fire came into his eyes, and his handsome mouth shut like a vise.
"Of course, it is quite fair. She wishes to be free as much as I do. She gets what she wants and I get what I want—a mere ceremony can be annulled at any time. She jumped at the idea, I tell you, Henry—I have not got time to go into the pros and cons of that side of the question, and I don't want to hear your views or any one else's on the matter. I mean to marry the girl on Thursday night—and you can quite well put off going South until Friday morning, and see me through it."
Mr. Fordyce prepared to go towards the door, and when there said, in a voice of ice: