"Mr. Harry Castlemaine has been making a strange communication to me," she began. "He says he has married you."
"Oh, madam, it is true," returned Jane hysterically, the sudden revulsion of feeling at finding it was known, the relief from her miserable concealment, taking vent in a flood of tears. "We were married last November."
"By whom?"
"Parson Marston," sobbed Jane. "He married us in his church at Stilborough."
Surprise, resentment, condemnation of Parson Marston, overpowered Miss Castlemaine and kept her silent. Thinking of this inferior girl--very inferior as compared with The Castlemaines--as they had all been thinking lately, it was not in human nature that Mary should not feel it strongly. She had her share of the Castlemaine pride; though she had perhaps thought that it was laid down within her when she came out of her home at Stilborough to enter the Grey Nunnery.
"It was very strange of Mr. Marston; very wrong."
Jane's sobs did not allow her to make any rejoinder. Of course it was wrong: nobody felt more assured of that than Jane. She did not dare to tell how Harry Castlemaine's masterful will had carried all with him, including herself and the parson. Jane had perhaps been quite willing to be carried; and the parson yielded to "You must," and was besides reprehensibly indifferent. "He would only have taken the girl off to a distance and got tied up by a strange parson," was Mr. Marston's excuse later, when speaking of it. "I am not to blame; I didn't set afloat the marriage."
"How long should you have kept it secret?" asked Miss Castlemaine, looking at Jane in her distress.
"As long as my husband had wished me to keep it, madam," was the sobbing answer. "He was always hoping some occasion might arise for declaring it; but he did not like to vex Mr. Castlemaine. It was my aunt's not knowing it that grieved me most."
"I almost wonder you did not tell Sister Mildred when you were here," observed Mary, musing on the past.