"Tremlett! Ah!" and Bufton gasped. "Tremlett."
White as a ghost now; himself shaking, as the woman he had married had shaken before; his face terrible to behold, Bufton turned round, observing as he did so that all eyes were on him, while, pushing his wife on one side, he glared at the name she had inscribed in the register. Yet, it was not Anne Tremlett--a name of hideous memories to him--but, instead, "Anne Pottle."
"What does it mean?" he cried hoarsely, his voice changed so as to be utterly unrecognisable. "Speak! Say, wanton! Speak! I say, or I will kill you!" he continued, almost in a shriek.
"Be still," cried Granger, clasping his arm, "be still; this is a church."
"I will know all. Speak, I say, or----" and he made as though he would tear to pieces the woman who stood by his side. "Speak, damn you!"
"Begone from out this house!" cried Symson now. "Though not a duly consecrated edifice, it shall not be polluted by you. Begone, I say!"
"I will not go," the wretched man snarled, "till I have an explanation of why I have been trapped, hoodwinked like this. I will know, or----" and he made a snatch at the register as though to seize the leaf which recorded his marriage with Anne Pottle. An attempt frustrated by Symson, who, big and brawny, thrust himself between it and the duped Beau.
"Let us do as he bids, let us go," his wife said now, her voice calm, and upon her face a look of intense hatred. Yet she did not go, but, standing by her mother's side, said, while all who were present listened open-mouthed--even the curiosity of the Rev. Peter Symson being aroused:
"Let me speak now. My sister and I--she was nigh blind--came to London three years ago, I to earn a living by my voice, she to be dependent on me, since mother could not ask Miss Ariadne to keep us all, though God knows she would have done so willingly; and this snake--this thing whom I have married for retaliation--he--well, he deceived her, ruined her--so--that--she slew herself. Oh, God! my sister--my dead sister--my little helpless sister!
"It was under the name of Tremlett, my mother's maiden name," she went on, recovering somewhat from her emotion, "that I earned my living by singing at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and, to save trouble and explanation, she, too, went by that name; while he, meeting her at the latter place, where she ever waited for me, persuaded her to evil--ruined her, cursed her life, caused her to kill herself." And now the newly made wife wept. Then, suddenly, again recovering herself, she cried: