“Quite sure, my dear doctor. I have indubitable proof of the fact.”
“Did you know all this when you first took the poor young woman under your protection?” inquired Mr. Merritt.
“No, not then, but in a very few weeks afterward. She was a very simple, childlike creature. She put me in possession of her short life’s story. She showed me the picture of her husband—Guilliaume Nouvellini she called him—who met her at a Parisian theater, and married her there. I recognized the picture as that of William Hanson. His sister, Rebecca Bushe, has the counterpart of it. She showed me also some of the letters and verses he had written to her, in which she took the greatest pride, poor soul! I recognized his peculiar, well-known handwriting. I was, therefore, absolutely certain that the dead Guilliaume Nouvellini, the husband for whom she had been mourning for nearly five years, and the living William Hanson, who had tried to marry me, were one and the same man.”
“You did not tell her this?”
“Of course not. Of what use could the information have been to her, poor soul? Why should I have disturbed the last days of a dying wife by such a tale? No, she never knew it.”
“Are you sure that there was a lawful marriage?” inquired Parson Shaw.
“She showed me the documentary proofs both of her marriage and of the birth and baptism of her child, which she carefully preserved, because, she said, she was the granddaughter and heiress of Mrs. Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in the Highlands of Scotland, whom, however, she had never once seen, for the reason that the stern old lady, who was of ancient family, and of the Church of Scotland, and prejudiced both by birth and by creed against the stage, had discarded her only child, Marguerite’s mother, for marrying an actor. Marguerite, however, cherished hopes that, now the old lady was nearly eighty, she might, before death, relent toward her descendants and seek them out.”
“I should think it highly probable she would,” said Lawyer Merritt.
“No professing Christian, as she is reported to be, dare go before the Divine Judge with malice in her heart,” added Parson Shaw.
“Have you these documents, my dear?” inquired the lawyer.