There was no doubting the face with which it was said. Miriam sat staring, utterly confounded.
"Good heavens! Married! You never mean it, Mollie?"
"I do mean it. It's an accomplished fact, Mrs. Miriam Dane, and there's my wedding-ring."
She held up her left hand. Among the opals, and pearls, and pale emeralds flashing there, gleamed a little circlet of plain gold—badge of woman's servitude.
"Married!" Miriam gasped, in indescribable consternation. "I thought you were to marry Sir Roger Trajenna?"
"So I was—so I would have, if I had been let alone. But that letter from you came—that forgery, you know—and I was carried off and married, willy-nilly, to somebody else. Who that somebody else is, I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Haven't the slightest idea! I've a good mind to tell you the story. I haven't told any one yet, and the weight of a secret a month old is getting a little too much for me. It would be a relief to get some one else to keep it for me, and I fancy you could keep a secret as well as any one else I know."
"I can keep your secret, Mollie. Go on."
So Mollie began and related the romantic story of that fortnight she had passed away from home.