“What thoughts?”

“Oh, never mind; they can never be set at rest now.  Let me make short work of this story.  I heard no more and thought no more; and the years went on, and then came my marriage with Maude.  We went to Paris—­you cannot have forgotten any of the details of that period, Anne; and after our return to London I was surprised by a visit from Dr. Mair.  That evening, that visit and its details stamped themselves on my memory for ever in characters of living fire.”

He paused for a moment, and something like a shiver seized him.  Anne said nothing.

“Maude had gone with some friends to a fete at Chiswick, and Thomas Carr was dining with me.  Hedges came in and said a gentleman wanted to see me—­would see me, and would not be denied.  I went to him, and found it was Dr. Mair.  In that interview I learnt that by the laws of Scotland Miss Waterlow was my wife.”

“And the suspicion that she was so had never occurred to you before?”

“Anne!  Should I have been capable of marrying Maude, or any one else, if it had?  On my solemn word of honour, before Heaven”—­he raised his right hand as if to give effect to his words—­“such a thought had never crossed my brain.  The evening that the nonsense took place I only regarded it as a jest, a pastime—­what you will:  had any one told me it was a marriage I should have laughed at them.  I knew nothing then of the laws of Scotland, and should have thought it simply impossible that that minute’s folly, and my calling her, to keep up the joke, Mrs. Elster, could have constituted a marriage.  I think they all played a deep part, even Agnes.  Not a soul had so much as hinted at the word ‘marriage’ to me after that evening; neither Gordon, nor she, nor Dr. Mair in his subsequent correspondence; and in that he always called her ‘Agnes.’  However—­he then told me that she was certainly my legal wife, and that Lady Maude was not.

“At first,” continued Val, “I did not believe it; but Dr. Mair persisted he was right, and the horror of the situation grew upon me.  I told all to Carr, and took him up to Dr. Mair.  They discussed Scottish law and consulted law-books; and the truth, so far, became apparent.  Dr. Mair was sorry for me; he saw I had not erred knowingly in marrying Maude.  As to myself, I was helpless, prostrated.  I asked the doctor, if it were really true, why the fact had been kept from me:  he replied that he supposed I knew it, and that delicacy alone had caused him to abstain from alluding to it in his letters.  He had been very angry when Gordon told him, he said; grew half frightened as to consequences; feared he should get into trouble for allowing me to be so entrapped in his house; and he and Gordon parted at once.  And then Dr. Mair asked a question which I could not very well answer, why, if I did not know she was my wife, I had paid so large a sum for Agnes.  He had been burying the affair in silence, as he had assumed I was doing; and it was only the