"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing it, and calling on him to stop it."
"To stop it?"
"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if the Church is willing to give its blessing to such rank commercialism, let it bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the slave market."
"Well?"
"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young man,' he says, 'who dares to . . .' But if I thought there was nothing more to your marriage than . . . If I imagined that what occurred in the case of your dear mother . . . But that's not all."
"Not all?"
"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse—far worse."
"What does he say, Father Dan?"
"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet if it's true . . . if there's anything in it . . ."
I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had said. He told me. It was about my intended husband—that he was a man of irregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a connection with somebody in London, a kind of actress who was practically his wife already, and therefore his marriage with me would be—so Martin had said—nothing but "legalised and sanctified concubinage."