"You saw me, Jack? You saw me? How could you see me?"
"And your hand was in Lord Fylingdale's, and Mr. Purdon was pronouncing the words which made you his wife. 'Whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.'"
She stared at me with blank amazement.
"In my pink silk cloak? Jack, are you in your right mind or is it I myself who am gone distraught?"
"Indeed, I know not which."
"Did you speak to me? Did you congratulate the bride, Jack?"
"No; I was sick and sorry, Molly. I went out of the church. The clerk, however, has been telling the story of this private marriage all over the town. Everybody knows it. The marriage is duly entered in the registers. It was a marriage by the archbishop's licence. The man Purdon may be all that the vicar's letter exposed, but the marriage was in order."
Molly said nothing for a while. Then she said gently: "The letter from the bookseller, your cousin, spoke of Lord Fylingdale as ruined. If he were to marry a woman with money it would become his own."
"I believe that there are sometimes letters—bills of lading, or whatever they are called—which gives the wife the control of her own property; otherwise, everything becomes her husband's."
"Why did he wish to marry me? There was never a gleam of love in his eye—nor a note of love in his voice. Why—except that he might get my money?"