“There you are, Henry!  After thirty years!  To think of it!”

Priam was utterly at a loss.

“I’m his wife, ma’am,” the visitor continued sadly to Alice.  “I’m sorry to have to tell you.  I’m his wife.  I’m the rightful Mrs. Henry Leek, and these are my sons, come with me to see that I get justice.”

Alice recovered very quickly from the shock of amazement.  She was a woman not easily to be startled by the vagaries of human nature.  She had often heard of bigamy, and that her husband should prove to be a bigamist did not throw her into a swoon.  She at once, in her own mind, began to make excuses for him.  She said to herself, as she inspected the real Mrs. Henry Leek, that the real Mrs. Henry Leek had certainly the temperament which manufactures bigamists.  She understood how a person may slide into bigamy.  And after thirty years!...  She never thought of bigamy as a crime, nor did it occur to her to run out and drown herself for shame because she was not properly married to Priam!

No, it has to be said in favour of Alice that she invariably took things as they were.

“I think you’d better all come in and sit down quietly,” she said.

“Eh!  It’s very kind of you,” said the mother of the curates, limply.

The last thing that the curates wanted to do was to sit down quietly.  But they had to sit down.  Alice made them sit side by side on the sofa.  The heavy, elder brother, who had not spoken a word, sat on a chair between the sideboard and the door.  Their mother sat on a chair near the table.  Priam fell into his easy-chair between the fireplace and the sideboard.  As for Alice, she remained standing; she showed no nervousness except in her handling of the toasting-fork.

It was a great situation.  But unfortunately ordinary people are so unaccustomed to the great situation, that, when it chances to come, they feel themselves incapable of living up to it.  A person gazing in at the window, and unacquainted with the facts, might have guessed that the affair was simply a tea party at which the guests had arrived a little too soon and where no one was startlingly proficient in the art of small-talk.

Still, the curates were apparently bent on doing their best.

“Now, mother!” one of them urged her.

The mother, as if a spring had been touched in her, began:  “He married me just thirty years ago, ma’am; and four months after my eldest was born—­that’s John there”—­(pointing to the corner near the door)—­“he just walked out of the house and left me.  I’m sorry to have to say it.  Yes, sorry I am!  But there it is.  And never a word had I ever given him!  And eight months after that my twins were born.  That’s Harry and Matthew”—­(pointing to the sofa)—­“Harry I called after his father because I thought he was like him, and just to show I bore no ill-feeling, and hoping he’d come back!  And there I was with these little children!  And not a word of explanation did I