"Accuse him—threaten him. Tell him you know his whole fraud from first to last. Accuse her! Tell him if he does not prove to your satisfaction he is the man who carried you off and married you, or if he refuses to own he is not the man, that he will go straight from the house to prison. He knows you can fulfill the threat. I think it will succeed."
"And if he confesses he is not the man who married me—if he acknowledges the fraud—what then?"
"Ah! what then? Doctor Oleander will not be your husband."
"And I will be as much in the dark as ever."
"A moment ago you were in despair because you thought he, of all men, was the man," said Hugh Ingelow. "It seems to me you are hard to satisfy."
"No," said Mollie; "if it be as you suspect, I shall be unspeakably thankful. No fate earth can have in store for me can be half so horrible as to know myself the wife of Guy Oleander."
"And if I thought you were his wife, Mollie, rest assured I should never have taken you from him," said Mr. Ingelow, decidedly. "You are no more Guy Oleander's wife than I am."
"Heaven be praised for that!" Mollie cried. "But then, I am entirely in the dark. Whose wife am I?"
Mr. Ingelow smiled.
"That question has an extraordinary sound. One doesn't hear it often in a life-time. If I were a sorcerer, as you accuse me of being, I might perhaps answer it. As it is, I leave it to your own woman's wit to discover."