“He insulted the lady with the offer of his heart and——”
“Hand?”
“Protection!” murmured the squire.
The earl sprang into the air as if he had been shot, but came down upon his feet. He said nothing. There are some things that will not bear a single word of comment. This was one.
“She ordered the venomous reptile from her presence, and he crawled away, but left his poisoned sting behind. The consummate art of his false evidence had convinced her, as it afterward convinced her father, and, later on, myself also, that her marriage ceremony with Saviola was an empty form—null and void. Her father never knew otherwise. She does not know otherwise to this day. And I knew no better until to-night.”
“You believed my sister, your wife, to have been the victim of a false first marriage until to-night?”
“Yes, until the moment when Gen. Anglesea produced the certificate, and told the true story.”
“And yet you married her!”
“Yes, thank Heaven, I was permitted to marry her, and she has been the light of my life,” said the squire, fervently.
“With this cloud overshadowing her.”