What would you have done if I had?

Blenkinsop.

[With outraged dignity.] I should have screamed! And the thought of that special licence has cast a chill in my heart. I don’t know what it’s all coming to. You are my witness, Miss MacGregor, that I won’t marry her, however deeply she compromises me.

Aunt Eliza.

[Smiling.] I am your witness.

Blenkinsop.

She shan’t make an honest man of me.

[Mrs. Dot takes from a drawer of the escritoire one of the licences.

Mrs. Dot.

[Smiling.] Frances Annandale Worthley—James Blenkinsop.