Mr. Littelby did not at once speak: many thoughts were crowding upon his mind. He and old Mynn were standing now, and George Mynn was sitting with his elbow on the table, and his aching head leaning on his hand. The least excitement out of common, sometimes only the sitting for a day in the close office, would bring on these intolerable headaches.
"I have searched effectually—and I don't suppose the old clerk of the church blessed me for keeping him there—and I am prepared to take an affidavit, if necessary, that no such marriage is recorded in the book," continued the elder lawyer. "What could have been the aim or object of that letter, I cannot fathom."
"Mr. Carr will not come into the money, then?" said Mr. Littelby.
"Of course not, so far as things look at present. I thought it was very strange, if such a thing had been there, that Fauntleroy did not let it be known," he emphatically added.
"You are sure you have fully searched?"
"Mr. Littelby, I have fully searched," was the reply; and the lawyer was not pleased at being asked the question after what he had said. "There is no such marriage entered there; and rely upon it no such marriage ever was entered there. I might go farther and say, with safety in my opinion, that there never was such marriage entered anywhere."
"Then why should Robert Carr, the elder, have written the letter?"
"Did he write it? It may be a question."
"No, he never wrote it," interposed George Mynn, looking up. "There was some wicked plot concocted—I don't say by whom, and I can't say it—of which this letter was the prologue. Perhaps the epilogue—the insertion of the marriage in the register—was frustrated; possibly this letter was found before its time, and the despatching it to Mr. Fauntleroy marred the whole. How can we say?"
"We can't say," returned old Mynn. "One thing I can say and affirm—that there's no record; and had the letter been a genuine one, the entry would be there now."