“The sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep, dear Jack,” she said. “There’s nothing so dreadful as suspense. We shall never know a moment’s ease until the thing is over—or, at any rate, begun. The sooner he begins the better pleased will I be.”
“I don’t think that I gave him any excuse for dallying,” said he, grimly.
“What will his next step be, do you fancy?” she asked. “Tell me what he can do beyond making the newspapers publish the story of his escape. I know how they will do it—with the column headed in big letters, ‘A Modern Enoch Arden.’ They won’t have the sense to see that he has nothing of Enoch Arden about him.”
“We shall have to face some nasty bits of publicity but we’ll face them,” said he, resolutely. “He has plainly been in touch with a man of the law; he had got hold of that legal jargon about conjugal rights. He will have to appeal to a judge to make an order for you to go to him.”
“But no judge will make such an order—surely not, Jack?”
“You may take it from me that he will get his order.”
“Is such a thing possible?”
“Absolutely certain, I should say.”
“And what then?”
“Nothing. The judge who makes the order has no way of enforcing it. Only if the man can carry you off he has the law on his side. You had much better not let him carry you off after he gets his order, Priscilla.”