Something in his tone made M'riar say:—"Why do you speak like that? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them.
"You've got 'em to show.... Ah! But I shouldn't show 'em, if I were you."
"Am I likely?"
"That's not what I was driving at."
"What do you mean?"
"Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel? Shall I tell you, respectable married woman?"
"Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you!"
"Right you are, old Polly! And told you shall be!... Sure you want to know?... There, there—easy does it! I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. "The name on your stifficate ain't the correct name. I saw to that. Only you needn't fret your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, you are! Poor Polly! Feel any different?"
Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the "sacred" marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but:—"Let me out! Let me out!"
The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held the door back for her exit. "Ah," said he, "go and have a look at it!" He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not wake. If she did, what did it matter? Aunt M'riar heard a small melodious dream-voice in the pillow say tenderly:—"One cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the great Censorship had disallowed.