"Well, she has done so with a vengeance," muttered his brother-in-law.
"I went to her afterward and tried to make it up," his companion resumed, "but she would have nothing to say to me. She was looking very ill, also; and when the next morning she sent me word that she was not able to join me at breakfast, I went again to her door and begged her to allow me to send for Dr. Hunt, but she would not even admit me."
"What was this quarrel about?"
"Oh, almost all our quarrels have been about a certain document which has long been a bone of contention between us, and this one was an outgrowth from the same subject."
"Was that document a certificate of marriage?" craftily inquired Emil Correlli.
"Yes."
"Gerald, were you ever really married to Anna?" demanded the young man, bending toward him with an eager look.
His companion flushed hotly at the question, and yet it assured him that he did not really know just what relations his sister had sustained toward him.
"Isn't that a very singular question, Emil?" he inquired, with a cool dignity that was very effective. "What led you to ask it?"
"Something that Anna herself once said to me suggested the thought," Emil replied. "I know, of course, the circumstances of your early attachment—that for her you left another woman whom you had taken to Rome. I once asked Anna the same question, but she would not answer me directly—she evaded it in a way to confirm my suspicions rather than to allay them. And now this will—it seems very strange that she should have made it if—"