“He has no claim that either the law or the gospel would sustain, or that your father would admit for a single instant.”
“Oh, mamma, but has he any? Oh, mother, dear mother, speak plainly to me! He referred me to you for proofs that the marriage of last Tuesday was a lawful one. What proofs? What did he mean, mother?” pleaded Odalite, wringing her hands in growing doubt and distress.
“He meant to brag, to boast, to threaten to make you grieve, fear and suffer—the brute, the poltroon, the miscreant!” hissed the lady, stamping her foot.
“But, mother—oh, mother—the proofs, the proofs he spoke of!” persisted Odalite, white with dread.
“They are no proofs of anything; but I will tell you what he was writing of. Two days after the scene at the All Faith Church, while your father and your cousin were both out, that outlying brigand seized the opportunity for which he had been watching, and came in here to see and threaten me.”
“Oh, mother, dear mother!” said Odalite, in tender compassion.
“Never mind, my child. He is away now, thank Heaven! His talk to me was all of a piece with his letters to you. That is enough to say about it—except that, during the interview, he told me something that I believe to be a mere tissue of falsehoods.”
“And what was that, mamma?”
“He told me—think of the audacity and shamelessness of such an avowal!—he told me that at the time he married the Widow Wright, at St. Sebastian, he had a wife living in London.”
“Oh, mother!” said Odalite, with a low cry of horror.