Ned, regarding himself once more from the outside, felt vaguely amused, and acquiesced.
"Of course," began Ted, for his part feeling absolutely a somewhat ill-used and thoroughly misunderstood man, "I know the whole affair must seem, as it were underhand; but--" he looked doubtfully at his companion as if uncertain how much he knew, before resolving on the whole truth as safest. "I suppose you know now, or guess, that when you came here last Aura and I were engaged. Well! it was so. Your coming and telling me you had asked her, put me in an awful hole for I had no right, on my part, to tell you--anything. The whole affair was strictly private, I hope you understand."
"I understand that you wished it to be private," remarked Ned clearly.
"It had to be, my dear fellow," replied Ted eagerly. "To begin with, we were engaged rather hurriedly in order to please her grandfather--chiefly; and I--I felt I had no right to presume on it; it might never have come to anything. It couldn't for a long time, for I wasn't in a position to marry." Here his face fell, and he threw down the pen with which he had been fiddling in sudden impatience. "For the matter of that, I'm not in it now. These confounded interruptions have played the dickens, and we shall have to begin in a small way; for she hasn't a penny. The place is over-mortgaged and even the furniture has to be sold. In fact, if it doesn't realise a decent price, I might be let in. Where was I? Oh! yes. Then in February, just as I was in the throes of a really good thing, I was telegraphed for again. I had been down twice before, and really, only because the old man was not satisfied, that we would keep to our engagement. So----" he paused.
"Well?" remarked Ned.
"I took down a marriage license with me--it was absolutely necessary, you see, that I should get away again as soon as I could, and I thought, if the worst came to the worst, it would calm the old man to feel that we were married. So you see there was no time to give any one any notice."
"And you were married," remarked Ned again in the same clear, hard voice.
"Yes! The rector married us in the old man's room, with Martha and him as witnesses, half an hour before I started. That is really the whole story--exactly how it came about."
"And you went back, when?" asked Ned Blackborough quickly.
"I never went back. It was awfully important that I should have a free hand, and that is how it came--about the telegrams, I mean--I had purposely left no address----"