“Yet you led me to believe that I had married your sister?”
“No. You assumed it.”
“What really happened was that you assumed the name of Madeleine. Nina, you are my wife!”
“In a sense, yes.”
Though the promenade deck was lighted by a few lamps, there was a certain gloom in that corner. Nina’s face was discernable, but not its expression, and a curious hardening in her voice brought to Maseden a whiff of surprise, almost of anxiety. Happily he had mapped out the line he meant to follow, and adhered to it inflexibly.
“In the sense that you are legally Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden,” he persisted.
“I may or may not be. I am not sure. I used a name not my own. It was the first that come into my head—a frightened woman’s attempt to leave herself some loophole of escape in the future.”
“You are mistaken, Nina. I know enough about the law to say definitely that it is the ceremony which counts, not the name. You will see at once that this must be so. If you married another man to-morrow, and signed yourself ‘Mary Smith,’ you would still be committing bigamy.”
At that she laughed.