The marriage certificate which Mrs. Carteret had burned dated from the period of the military occupation.  Hence Mrs. Carteret, who was a good woman, and would not have done a dishonest thing, felt decidedly uncomfortable.  She had destroyed the marriage certificate, but its ghost still haunted her.

Major Carteret, having just eaten a good dinner, was in a very agreeable humor when, that same evening, his wife brought up again the subject of their previous discussion.

“Phil,” she asked, “Aunt Polly told me that once, long before my father died, when she went to remonstrate with him for keeping that Woman in the house, he threatened to marry Julia if Aunt Polly ever said another word to him about the matter.  Suppose he had married her, and had then left a will,—­would the marriage have made any difference, so far as the will was concerned?”

Major Carteret laughed.  “Your Aunt Polly,” he said, “was a remarkable woman, with a wonderful imagination, which seems to have grown more vivid as her memory and judgment weakened.  Why should your father marry his negro housemaid?  Mr. Merkell was never rated as a fool,—­he had one of the clearest heads in Wellington.  I saw him only a day or two before he died, and I could swear before any court in Christendom that he was of sound mind and memory to the last.  These notions of your aunt were mere delusions.  Your father was never capable of such a folly.”

“Of course I am only supposing a case,” returned Olivia.  “Imagining such a case, just for the argument, would the marriage have been legal?”

“That would depend.  If he had married her during the military occupation, or over in South Carolina, the marriage would have been legally valid, though morally and socially outrageous.”

“And if he had died afterwards, leaving a will?”

“The will would have controlled the disposition of his estate, in all probability.”

“Suppose he had left no will?”

“You are getting the matter down pretty fine, my dear!  The woman would have taken one third of the real estate for life, and could have lived in the homestead until she died.  She would also have had half the other property,—­the money and goods and furniture, everything except the land,—­and the negro child would have shared with you the balance of the estate.  That, I believe, is according to the law of descent and distribution.”

Mrs. Carteret lapsed into a troubled silence.  Her father had married the woman.  In her heart she had no doubt of the validity of the marriage, so far as the law was concerned; if one marriage of such a kind would stand, another contracted under similar conditions was equally as good.  If the marriage had been valid, Julia’s child had been legitimate.  The will she had burned gave this sister of hers—­she shuddered at the word—­but a small part of the estate.  Under the law, which intervened now that there was no will, the property