"It was not!"
"Mr. Ingelow!"
"No, Mollie; never Guy Oleander. He hadn't the pluck. He never cared for you enough."
"But he did it twice."
"Once only—this last time—stung, goaded into it by the lash of Mrs. Walraven's waspish tongue. But he is not the man who married you, whoever that man may be. At least," cooling down suddenly, as he saw the full blue eyes fixed upon him with piercing intentness, "I don't believe it."
"What do you believe, then, Mr. Ingelow?" Mollie said, slowly and suspiciously.
"That when you made Miriam the confidante of your story, on a certain night in your bedroom, Mrs. Carl Walraven overheard you."
"Impossible!"
"Perhaps so; but you'll find that's the way of it. She listened and heard, and patched it up with Mr. Rashleigh's dinner-table tale, and confabulated with her cousin, and put him up to this last dodge. She saw your advertisement in the paper, and understood it as well as you did, and Doctor Oleander was there in waiting. You committed one unaccountable blunder. You appointed ten for the nocturnal interview, and were at the place of the tryst at half past nine. How do you explain that little circumstance?"
"It seems to me, Mr. Ingelow," said Mollie, "that you must be a sorcerer. How do you know all this?"