She gave a little scream of annoyance, but more because of the face he had put on, than from any perception in her own mind of the significance of the words.
‘A few of the things were saved—the books, I mean—but not all, not all, by any means: and all those between 1860 and 1870 perished.’
‘What do you say, James?’
She began to awaken to a little consciousness that this concerned her, which she had not at first understood. ‘The books?’—she took it up but vaguely now—‘the books? What—what does that mean, James?’
‘It means that of the period of your marriage there is no record at all. Do you understand me, Emily? No record, no certificate possible—nothing. It is as if you had planned it all. A clergyman who is dead; a chapel which is burned down; a registry which is destroyed. That is what it might be made to look by skilful hands—as if you had invented the whole.’
She sat half stupefied looking at him, the work still in her hands, her needle in her fingers, looking up at him more astonished than was compatible with speech. ‘The clergyman dead, the chapel burnt down, the registry destroyed!’ She said these words in a kind of half-conscious tone—repeating them after him, yet not knowing what she had said.
‘That is about the state of the case; if you had meant to deceive, you couldn’t have done better all round.’
Lady William looked at him with a curious half smile, yet wistful wonder in her eyes. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I did not want to deceive.’ There was a sort of startled amusement in her tone, mingling with something of reality, a question half rising, a faint feeling of the possibility, and that even, perhaps, her brother——‘James,’ she cried, ‘you do not imagine that I—I——’
The words failed her; the colour forsook her face, and she sat looking up at him dismayed; her work fallen into her lap, but the needle still in her hand.
‘Of course I do not imagine that you—nor, did I doubt that, could I doubt for a moment when there’s my father’s hand and date upon it. And I suppose that would be evidence in a court of justice,’ the Rector said, knitting his brows—‘I’m rather ignorant on such subjects, and I don’t know. But I suppose it would be evidence. I could prove my father’s handwriting, and that I found his notebooks, and produce the rest of them, and so forth. But it’s touch and go to rely upon a thing so close as that.’