“My dear Drusilla, on my honor as a gentleman, by my knowledge as a lawyer, and on my faith as a Christian, I assure you, that though your nuptial ceremony had been pronounced by a bishop, and in the presence of a thousand witnesses, the very existence of this little document as it lies before us proves that ceremony to have been illegal and of no effect.”
She clasped her hands and gazed on him with such a look of unutterable woe in her voice, that he could no more bear to meet her eyes than could the heroes of old endure Medusa’s glance and live. Yet withal she was now very calm, though with a calmness that was but a restrained frenzy; but it must have deceived Dick as to her powers of endurance, or he would not have driven the spear home to her heart as in a few moments he did.
“And Alick knew this?” she asked.
“I am not sure he knew it or thought of it on the wedding-day. But I am sure that he knows it now,” sighed Dick.
“And so his fancy was a fact after all; and he was no monomaniac?”
“No, he was no monomaniac,” said Dick. “He was only a scoundrel,” he added, under his breath.
“Alick knows this! Then this is the discovery he made in March?”
“Probably, if he made any.”
“He told me he had discovered then our marriage was not legal. He has absented himself from me ever since. Heaven help me! I thought he was suffering from a hallucination that would pass away. And it was a reality!”
“Yes, it was,” said Dick, wondering at her apparent composure and misled by it.