‘That’s hard upon an old friend, Laura,’ remonstrated the Vicar, as Edward left the room.
‘Has he not dealt hardly by my husband?’ answered Laura, with a stifled sob.
‘Now, let us try and look this business in the face,’ said Mr. Sampson, seating himself quietly at the table and taking out his note-book. ‘According to your confession, Mr. Treverton, you had a wife living at the date of your first marriage with Miss Malcolm, December the thirty-first of the year before last. We have nothing to do with your second marriage—except so far, of course, as the lady’s honour is concerned. That second marriage can’t touch the property. Now I am sorry to tell you that if your marriage with the French dancer was a good marriage, you have no more right to be in this house, or to hold an acre of Jasper Treverton’s land, than the meanest hind in Hazlehurst.’
‘I am ready to deliver up all I hold to-morrow. Let the hospital be founded. I acknowledge myself an impostor. Shameful as the act appears now that I contemplate it coldly, it seemed hardly a fraud when it first suggested itself to my mind. I saw a way of securing the estate to my cousin’s adopted daughter. I knew it had been his dearest wish that she should possess it. When I went through the ceremony of marriage with Laura Malcolm in Hazlehurst Church, I had but the faintest hope of ever being really her husband. When I made the post-nuptial settlement which was to secure to her the full enjoyment of the estate, I had no hope of ever sharing that estate with her. On my honour, as a man and a gentleman, it was for this dear girl’s sake I did these acts, and with no view to my own happiness or aggrandisement.’
Laura’s hand had been in his all the time he was speaking. Its warm grasp at the close of this speech told him that he was believed.
‘If you make these facts public, you beggar yourself and your wife,’ said Sampson.
‘No, we shall not be penniless,’ exclaimed Laura. ‘There will be my income left. It is not quite three hundred a year, but we can manage to live upon that, can’t we, John?’
‘I could live contentedly on a crust a day in the dingiest garret in Seven Dials if you were with me,’ answered her husband, in a low voice.
Mr. Clare was walking up and down the room in a state of suppressed excitement. The whole business was too dreadful; he was hardly able to realize the enormity of the thing. This John Treverton was a scoundrel, and the estate must all go to found a hospital. Poor Laura must leave her luxurious home. The parish would be a heavy loser. It was sad, and troublesome, and altogether fraught with perplexity. And the Vicar had a cordial liking for this John Treverton.
‘What have you to say about the murder of that poor creature—your first wife?’ he exclaimed presently, walking up to the hearth by which Treverton and Laura were standing.