damned nonsense! If she was ever his wife, she's
his wife now, isn't she? I shouldn't think you'd lend yourself, Father
Antoine, to any such transaction as that."

"Gently, gently!" replied Father Antoine: "rail not so at womankind. It
is she who wishes to go with him at once; and who says as thou, that she
is still his wife: but it is he who will not. He says that she hath for
ten years borne a name other than his; that in her own country she hath
been ten years mourned for as dead; that he hath by process of law, on
account of her death, inherited and sold all the estate that she did
own."

"Rich, was she rich!" interrupted Dr. Macgowan. "Well, 'pon my word,
it's the most extraordinary thing I ever did hear of: never could have
happened in England, sir, never!"

"I know not if it were a large estate," continued Father Antoine, "it
would be no difference: if it had been millions she would have left it
and come away. She was full of renunciation. Ah! but she must be beloved
of the Virgin."

"So you are really going to marry them over again, are you?" broke
in the impatient doctor. "I have said that I would," replied Father
Antoine, "and it is great joy to me: neither should it seem strange to
you. Your church doth not recognize the sacrament of baptism, when
it has been performed by unconsecrated hands of dissenters: you
do rebaptize all converts from those sects. So our church does not
recognize the sacrament of marriage, when performed by any one outside
of its own priesthood. I shall with true gladness of heart administer
the holy sacrament of marriage to these two so strangely separated, and
so strangely brought together. They have borne ten years of penance for
whatever of sin had gone before: the church will bless them now."

"Hem," said Dr. Macgowan, gruffly, unable to controvert the logic of
Father Antoine's position in regard to the sacraments; "that is all
right from your point of view: but what do they make of it; I don't
suppose they admit that their first marriage was invalid, do they?"

Dr. Macgowan was in the worst of humors. He was about to lose a nurse
who had been to him for ten years, like his right hand; and he was
utterly discomfited and confused in all his confirmed impressions of her
character, by these startling revelations of her history. He would not
have been a Briton if these untoward combinations of events had not made
him surly.

"Nay, nay!" said Father Antoine, placably. "Not so. I