“’Well, Mrs. Ormistown, it is a pity, but it was quite as much her doing as mine, and maybe a little more,’ says he, looking at me with a half-laugh; but I only sighed and groaned, and would not speak to him.

“‘I’m sure, Bessie, when we were in Paris,’ says he, ’you did not take it much to heart; and I’ll do what I can to make you comfortable.’

“‘Don’t mock us with talking about comfort,’ said mother, sternly.  ’If Bessie did not feel her sin and her shame when she was in that sink of iniquity with you, I trust I have been able to convince her of her position since she returned to me.’

“‘Indeed, Harry,’ says I, ’morning, noon, and night, mother is preaching to me, and I really wish I was dead, to have a little quiet.’

“‘Tut, tut,’ says he, ’if you were really ill, you would not speak so briskly about dying;’ and he tried to soothe me down, but I kept very sulky—­but yet when he went away he did not believe there was much the matter with me.

“‘We must make you really ill,’ says my mother, when he was gone; so she got some stuff for me to take, and I swallowed it, and I really did think as I was dying.  I never felt as bad before or since, and even mother was frightened that she had made it too strong, but she sent for Harry, and he was frightened too.  She said that I had poisoned myself, and was going to die with the scorn of every one.

“’Oh, if you would but acknowledge yourself her husband, it would be enough, quite enough, to let her die with her mind easy and her name cleared,’ says mother to him.

“Harry had no notion I took things so serious, but he supposed that my mother had driven me to desperation by her reproaches, so he said he would do as she wished, and mother fetched Violet Strachan, our cousin, and a woman called Wilson, from next door to be witnesses, and he said he was my husband, and I said I was his wife, in their presence.  Harry thought that was enough, but mother wanted to make it surer still, for she wrote it out, and we all signed it, and here it is.”  Then Mrs. Peck drew out this document from her bundle of papers.

“This is a marriage in Scotland.  Without the paper it was a marriage, but mother liked to see things in black and white.  Harry never could get out of it—­though he said afterwards that he did not know what he was about when he signed it.

“Of course after mother had carried her point I was allowed to get well, but slowly, for the stuff had really half poisoned me.  Harry was in London with his brother when my boy Frank was born; but he came to me as soon as he could, and by ill-luck it happened that the very day he came my old sweetheart Jamie Stevenson was paying me a visit, and Harry heard something that was not meant for him, and off he set without seeing me or the child either.  He sent me a letter, saying I had cheated him first and last, and he would never look at me again.”

“Then your boy was not Henry Hogarth’s son,” said Brandon, eagerly, who thought he had got hold of the important part of the story, “but this man Stevenson’s?”