“It is about Jennie Montgomery, the true wife of the counterfeit Randolph Hay——” began the speaker.
“Yes! yes!” eagerly exclaimed Mrs. Walling and Palma in a breath, while Judy looked up in eager curiosity.
“You know, without any one’s planning—unless fate be some one—that Jennie and her child were passengers on the same steamship, and even in the same cabin, with her fraudulent husband and his false bride?”
“Yes! yes!”
“I said when I discovered that complication that those elements were as explosive as dynamite. Neither could have expected the presence of the other on the steamer, and so I was really anxious to hear what happened when Miss Leegh and her ‘bridegroom’ met his lawful wife and child on the ship, on the ocean, whence neither could escape without jumping into the sea.”
“Well, have you heard?” impatiently demanded Mrs. Walling.
“Yes; I have just received a long letter from Jennie, dated November 15th. She had been at home four weeks before she found time to write to me.”
“And——” breathlessly exclaimed Mrs. Walling.
“She met her husband on the deck of the steamer. She was as much astonished as he was confounded. But I had better read her letter to you.”
And the visitor drew a thickly packed envelope, with a foreign stamp, from her pocket, and read the pages describing Jennie’s voyage, her meeting with her husband and Miss Leegh on the Scorpio, and her arrival at home in her father’s new vicarage, as these events are already known to our readers.