“Hold you tongue, Dick! She received authentic information, I say, of his intended marriage with me. Believing herself as I believe her to be, his wife in law, as she is in right, and wishing to save him from the sin he meditated and the punishment she feared would be its consequence, willing also to save me from the precipice of ruin upon which I unconsciously stood, this young fragile creature, notwithstanding her delicate health and broken heart, all unfit as she was to travel, came by stage-coach the whole distance from Washington to Saulsburg, and finding no conveyance there, walked all the way through this dreadful weather on this dark night, over the worst roads in the country, from Saulsburg to this house. She came to me in my chamber, privately told me her story, shielding her faithless husband as much as she could; and she besought me to withdraw from the marriage, and save him from guilt and myself from fatal wrong.”
“Then why has she attempted to force herself upon me in this shameless manner? And why have you aided and abetted her in the fraud?” fiercely demanded Alexander, his temper impetuously breaking through all his efforts to maintain a proud composure.
Anna disdained to reply to him. Not one syllable would she condescend to address to Alexander Lyon. But turning again to her grandfather she said——
“Drusilla did not do so; she will never attempt to force herself upon Mr. Lyon. The young wife came, as I said, to save him from committing a felony, and me from taking a fatal step; and not to force herself upon an unwilling husband. It will be well for him, when he shall come to himself, if he can by any means, woo her back.”
“How happened it, then, my child?” inquired the General.
“It was I, who for reasons that will be apparent, urged her to assume my dress and take my place in the wedding ceremony, and thus win back the sacred rights of which she had been so basely cheated!”
“But—still—how was this to be done in such a way, my dear?”
“By rectifying in this second marriage the informality that rendered the first one illegal.”
“And I contend,” burst forth Alexander, “that this second marriage is no more legal than the first one was; less so, if anything! for this is an imposture, a substitution of one person for another, besides being quite as irregular as the first marriage in the same particular of lacking a license!”
“He mistakes, my dear grandfather, there was a license,” said Anna, quietly.