"Dr. Senior is delighted to have you here," he went on; "you will see very good society in this house, and that is what you should do. You ought to see more and better people than you have yet known. Does it seem strange to you that we have assumed a sort of authority over you and your affairs? You do not yet know how we have been involved in them."
"How?" I asked, looking up into his face with a growing curiosity.
"Olivia," he said, "Foster was my patient for some months, and I knew all his affairs intimately. He had married that person—"
"Married her!" I ejaculated.
"Yes. You want to know how he could do that? Well, he produced two papers, one a medical certificate of your death, the other a letter purporting to be from some clergyman. He had, too, a few lines in your own handwriting, which stated you had sent him your ring, the only valuable thing left to you, as you had sufficient for your last necessities. Even I believed for a few hours that you were dead. But I must tell you all about it another time."
"Did he believe it?" I asked, in a trembling voice.
"I do not know," he answered; "I cannot tell, even now, whether he knew them to be forgeries or not. But I have no doubt, myself, that they were forged by Mrs. Foster's brother and his partner, Scott and Brown."
"But for what reason?" I asked again.
"What reason!" he repeated; "you were too rich a prize for them to allow Foster to risk losing any part of his claim upon you, if he found you. You and all you had were his property on certain defined conditions. You do not understand our marriage laws; it is as well for you not to understand them. Mrs. Foster gave up to me to-day all his papers, and the letters and credentials from your trustees in Melbourne to your bankers here. There will be very little trouble for you now. Thank God! all your life lies clear and fair before you."
I had still many questions to ask, but my lips trembled so much that I could not speak readily. He was himself silent, probably because he also had so much to say. All the others were sitting a little apart from us at a chess-table, where Dr. Senior and Miss Carey were playing, while Dr. John sat by holding Minima in his arm, though she was gazing wistfully across to Martin and me.