No one--not even her own brother--should ever know that Anna had not
been his wife. He would do what he could to shield her memory from
every reproach, and no one should ever dream that--he could not divest
himself of the suspicion--she had died willfully.

Therefore, he replied with apparent frankness:

"I think I can explain why she did so. On the day of our return from
Wyoming, Anna and I had a more serious quarrel than usual; I never saw
her so angry as she was at that time; she even went so far as to tell
me that she hated me; and so, I presume, in the heat of her anger, she
resolved to cut me off with the proverbial shilling to be revenged
upon me."

"Well, she has done so with a vengeance," muttered his brother-in-law.

"I went to her afterward and tried to make it up," his companion
resumed, "but she would have nothing to say to me. She was looking
very ill, also; and when the next morning she sent me word that she
was not able to join me at breakfast, I went again to her door and
begged her to allow me to send for Dr. Hunt, but she would not even
admit me."

"What was this quarrel about?"

"Oh, almost all our quarrels have been about a certain document which
has long been a bone of contention between us, and this one was an
outgrowth from the same subject."

"Was that document a certificate of marriage?" craftily inquired Emil
Correlli.

"Yes."

"Gerald, were you ever really married to Anna?" demanded the young
man, bending toward him with an eager look.

His companion flushed hotly at the question, and yet it assured him
that he did not really know just what relations his sister had
sustained toward him.

"Isn't that a very singular question, Emil?" he inquired, with a cool
dignity that was very effective. "What led you to ask it?"

"Something that Anna herself once said to me suggested the thought,"
Emil replied. "I know, of course, the circumstances of your early
attachment--that for her you left another woman whom you had taken to
Rome. I once asked Anna the same question, but she would not answer me
directly--she evaded it in a way to confirm my suspicions rather than
to allay them. And now this will--it seems very strange that she
should have made it if--"

"Pray, Emil, do not distress yourself over anything so absurd," coldly
interposed Gerald Goddard, but with almost hueless lips. "However, if
you continue to entertain doubts upon the subject, you have but to go
to the Church of the --