"The only man I have spoken to about it," continued Challis, "is Athelstan Taylor. Well, I suppose he's about the only man I know that I could speak to. You know he came to see me straight away. You told him?"
"Yes, I told him. I showed him my letter—the one I wrote to your wife. He said I could not possibly write a better one. And she tore it up and sent it back?"
"She did. You know he went to try and see her, and only succeeded in getting at the old hag, her mother. I had built on his being a parson—thought it might be some use for once. But I suppose he was the wrong sort somehow—out of the wrong cuvée."
"Did he give offence over the—the Deceased Wife's Sister question?"
"Why, yes! The hag said he ought to be unfrocked for saying he didn't care a straw about the legal question, and only wanted to clear up what seemed a painful misunderstanding. The cloth fell through, and the old body drove him out with religious hoots."
"There's a thing you won't mind my asking?..."
"Go on!"
"People are saying—political people—that the Bill will pass the Lords next summer, and that then all past marriages of the sort will be legalized, because it will be retrospective—I believe that's the proper word. Suppose it passes, what shall you do then?"
"Get the kids back, of course! And then Polly Anne will come to her senses. But she will—she will, you know—before that."
"Suppose she laid claim to having annulled her marriage, while she still had a legal right to do so?"