“Be free to speak your mind, Mr. Stair,” said I.

“’Tis this,” he cried, gathering himself as with an effort.  “You’ve claimed my daughter as your wife before them all, and when you die to-morrow morning you’ll leave her neither wife nor maid.  I think—­I think you’d best make that lie of yours the truth.”

If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I should have been the less astounded.  Indeed, for some short space I thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his madness.  Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to cut the knot of all entanglements.

As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never dare aver the truth.  So in common justice she should own the name the world would call her by.  Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any.  Dick would love her none the less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours.  And if, at any future time, the Ireton title should revive and this poor double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby Hundred, my father’s acres would be hers in her own right.  One breach in all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it.  With the Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with greater vigor than before.  But as to this, no further act of mine could help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a while.

So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you, I gave my host his answer.

“I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair.  If you can make your daughter understand—­”

“The jade will do as she is bid,” he cut in wrathfully.  “If she will drag my good name in the mire, I’m damned if she sha’n’t pay the scot.  And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you’ll be making her legatee residuary?”

At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle for his daughter’s honor, but for the quieting of his title to my father’s lands—­a title that my cousin Septimus might dispute.  It was enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty miser.

“I’ll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean,” I said.  “But ’tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over.  As you said a while ago, the wife will be the husband’s heir-at-law, in any event.”

“True; but we’d best be at it in due and proper form.”  He rose and hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand played a rattling tattoo on the latch.  “I—­I’ll go and have the papers drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your passed word that you will sign them?”