“Stop, Mr. Edward Clare,” exclaimed Tom Sampson, whose quick perception had by this time made him master of the case, “you are assuming a great deal more than you can sustain. You are going very much too fast. What evidence have you that my client’s first marriage was a legal one? What evidence have you that he was ever married to Mademoiselle Chicot? We know how very loosely tied such alliances are apt to be in that class of life.”
“How do I know that he was married to her?” echoed Edward. “Why, by his own admission.”
“My client admits nothing,” said Sampson with dignity.
“He admits everything when he tells you that he was remarried to Miss Malcolm after Madame Chicot’s death. Had he known his first marriage with Miss Malcolm to be valid there would have been no occasion for a repetition of the ceremony.”
“He may have erred from excess of caution,” said Sampson.
“John Treverton,” said the vicar, who had been looking from one speaker to the other, the facts of the case slowly dawning upon him, “this is very dreadful. Why is my son here as your accuser? What does it all mean?”
“It means that I have been guilty of a great wrong,” answered Treverton quietly, “and that I am ready to undo that wrong, so far as it lies in my power. But I cannot discuss this question in your son’s presence. He has entered this room tonight as my avowed enemy. To you—to Sampson—as the trustees under my cousin’s will, I am prepared to speak with fullest confidence—as I have already spoken to my wife—but I have no confession to make to your son, I recognise no right of his to interfere in my affairs.”
“No, Edward, really, this is no concern of yours,” said the Vicar.
“Is it not?” cried his son, bitterly. “But for my discovery, but for the presence of George Gerard in the church today, do you suppose this virtuous gentleman would have made his confession to his wife or his wife’s trustees? He saw himself identified today by the doctor who attended his first wife, who knows the story of his late career under the alias of Chicot. Finding himself face to face with an inevitable discovery, Mr. Treverton very cleverly yields to the pressure of circumstances, and makes a clean breast of it. Had Gerard never appeared in Hazlehurst, this honourable gentleman would have gone on till doomsday, untroubled by any scruples of conscience.”
The Vicar looked at his son wonderingly. Was this a loyal regard for truth and justice, or was it the spirit of hatred and envy which moved the youth so strongly? The good, easygoing Vicar, full of charity for all the world, except a bad cook, could not bring himself all in a moment to think evil of his son. Nor was he ready to believe John Treverton the vilest of sinners. Yet, here was John Treverton accused by the Vicar’s own son of an unpardonable fraud, and suspected of the darkest crime.
“If you will tell your son to retire, we may discuss this business without prejudice or passion,” said John. “But as long as he is present my lips are sealed.”
“I have no wish to remain a moment longer,” answered Edward. “I hope Mrs. Treverton knows that I am ready to serve her with zeal and devotion, should she deign to demand my aid.”
“I know that you are my husband’s enemy,” answered Laura, with freezing contempt, “and that is all I know or care to know about you.”
“That’s hard upon an old friend, Laura,” remonstrated the Vicar, as Edward left the room.
“Has he not dealt hardly by my husband?” answered Laura, with a stifled sob.
“Now, let us try and look this business in the face,” said Mr. Sampson, seating himself quietly at the table and taking out his notebook. “According to your confession, Mr. Treverton, you had a wife living at the date of your first marriage with Miss Malcolm, December the thirty-first of the year before last. We have nothing to do with your second marriage—except so far, of course, as the lady’s honour is concerned. That second marriage can’t touch the property. Now, I am sorry to tell you that if your marriage with the French dancer was a good marriage, you have no more right to be in this house, or to hold an acre of Jasper Treverton’s land, than the meanest hind in Hazlehurst.”
“I am ready to deliver up all I hold, tomorrow. Let the hospital be founded. I acknowledge myself an impostor. Shameful as the act appears now that I contemplate it coldly, it seemed hardly a fraud when it first suggested itself to my mind. I saw a way of securing the estate to my cousin’s adopted daughter. I knew it had been his dearest wish that she should possess it. When I went through the ceremony of marriage with Laura Malcolm in Hazlehurst Church, I had but the faintest hope of ever being really her husband. When I made the postnuptial settlement which was to secure to her the full enjoyment of the estate, I had no hope of ever sharing that estate with her. On my honour, as a man and a gentleman, it was for this dear girl’s sake I did these acts, and with no view to my own happiness or aggrandisement.”
Laura’s hand had been in his all the time he was speaking. Its warm grasp at the close of this speech told him that he was believed.
“If you make these facts public, you beggar yourself and your wife,” said Sampson.
“No, we shall not be penniless,” exclaimed Laura. “There will be my income left. It is not quite three hundred a year, but we can manage to live upon that, can’t we, John?”
“I could live contentedly on a crust a day in the dingiest garret in Seven Dials, if you were with me,” answered her husband, in a low voice.
Mr. Clare was walking up and down the room in a
