"Then Foster could compel her to return to him?" I said.
"As far as I see into the case, he certainly could," was the answer, which drove me nearly frantic.
"But there is this second marriage," I objected.
"There lies the kernel of the case," he said, daintily peeling his walnuts. "You tell me there are papers, which you believe to be forgeries, purporting to be the medical certificate, with corroborative proof of her death. Now, if the wife be guilty of framing these, the husband will bring them against her as the grounds on which he felt free to contract his second marriage. She has done a very foolish and a very wicked thing there."
"You think she did it?" I asked.
He smiled significantly, but without saying any thing.
"I cannot!" I cried.
"Ah! you are blind," he replied, with the same maddening smile; "but let me return. On the other hand, if the husband has forged these papers, it would go far with me as strong presumptive evidence against him, upon which we might go in for a divorce, not a separation merely. If the young lady had remained with him till she had collected proof of his unfaithfulness to her, this, with his subsequent marriage to the same person during her lifetime, would probably have set her absolutely free."
"Divorced from him?" I said.
"Divorce," he repeated.