"What do you say the lady's name was? Catherine what?"
"Catherine Wentworth."
"Catherine Wentworth?" he deliberated. "I never heard the name before in my life; never knew any one bearing it. Why, Sara, you do not mean to say this has seriously troubled you?"
"It has very seriously troubled me. At times, what with one dread and another, I seemed to have more upon me than I could bear. I had no one to whom I could tell the trouble and the doubt: I dared not write it to you, lest your wife should get hold of the letter."
"And if she had? What then?"
"If she had?" repeated Sara. "Do you forget the charge?"
"It's too laughable for me to forget it. Rose would have laughed at it with me. Sara, my dear, rely upon it this has arisen from some queer mistake."
His open countenance, the utter absence of all symptom of fear, the cool manner in which he treated it, caused Sara to breathe a sigh of relief. Half her doubts had vanished.
"The strange thing is, why she should make the charge--why she should say she was your wife. It was not done to extort money, for she has never asked for a farthing. She said papa knew of the marriage."
"Did she?" was the retort, delivered lightly. "Did she tell all this to you?"