‘She will never stay,’ the old man said to his wife, when the others had gone and they two were left together.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I am sure she will never stay.’

‘I will try.’

Mrs. Robert said the same thing when the scheme was explained to her.  ’Do you think anybody could keep me a prisoner against my will,—­unless they locked me up in a cell?  Do you think I would not scream?’

The husband endeavoured to explain that the screaming might depend on the causes which had produced the coercion.  ’I think you would scream, and scream till you were let loose, if the person locking you up had nothing to justify him.  But if you felt that the world would be all against you, then you would not scream and would not be let out.’

Mrs. Robert, however, seemed to think that no one could keep her in any house against her own will without positive bolts, bars, and chains.

In the meantime much had been settled out at Folking, or had been settled at Cambridge, so that the details were known at Folking.  Mr. Seely had taken up the case, and had of course gone into it with much more minuteness than Robert Bolton had done.  Caldigate owned to the writing of the envelope, and to the writing of the letter, but declared that that letter had not been sent in that envelope.  He had written the envelope in some foolish joke while at Ahalala,—­he remembered doing it well; but he was quite sure that it had never passed through the Sydney post-office.  The letter itself had been written from Sydney.  He remembered writing that also, and he remembered posting it at Sydney in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Smith.  When Mr. Seely assured him that he himself had seen the post-office stamp of Sydney on the cover, Caldigate declared that it must have been passed through the post-office for fraudulent purposes after it had left his hands.  ‘Then,’ said Mr. Seely, ’the fraud must have been meditated and prepared three years ago,—­which is hardly probable.’

As to the letter from the clergyman, Allan, of which Mr. Seely had procured a copy, Caldigate declared that it had certainly never been addressed to him.  He had never received any letter from Mr. Allan,—­had never seen the man’s handwriting.  He was quite sure that if he were in New South Wales he could get a dozen people to swear that there had never been such a marriage at Ahalala.  He did name many people, especially Dick Shand.  Then Mr. Seely proposed to send out an agent to the colony, who should take the depositions of such witnesses as he could find, and who should if possible bring Dick Shand back with him.  And, at whatever cost, search should be made for Mr. Allan; and Mr. Allan should, if found, be brought to England, if money could bring him.  If Mr. Allan could not be found, some document written by him might perhaps be obtained with reference to his handwriting.  But, through it all, Mr. Seely did believe that there had been some marriage ceremony between his client and Mrs. Euphemia Smith.